When people start listing their favorite SNES-era RPG’s, chances are SquareSoft’s Secret of Mana is likely going to be somewhere near the top. It’s certainly one of my favorites on a system that had plenty of quality RPG’s to choose from. Secret of Mana’s world, combat, and music made for a grand experience, and it even offered co-op throughout the adventure which was a neat and underutilized idea in other RPG’s of the era.
Since its release in 1993, SquareSoft, now Square Enix, has certainly tried to keep the series alive with varying degrees of success. However, there have only been a few of mainline follow-ups, with most of the other games that sport the Mana name being offshoots of a sort, like Legend of Mana or Children of Mana, which shy away from the action-RPG elements and tried to do something new or outside of the norm for action-RPG’s. There have been a whole host of mobile Mana games, a remake or two, and even the long-awaited western release of Trials of Mana in recent years.
If you recall a couple years back Square Enix put out a handful of RPG’s that I’d argue were kind of mid-budget, like DioField Chronicles and Valkyria Elysium, and I think Visions of Mana slots into that level of quality as well. It definitely does its best to echo Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana, offering a similar, simple combat system but in a 3D, fairly open environment. You can swap between party members on the fly, even in the middle of combat, and series staples like enemy types (Hello Rabites!), the inventory wheel, and even the occasional, maniacally dancing merchant appear here. It all feels very familiar to anyone that has experience with the older Mana games, which is probably the best approach if you’re trying to get people excited for a new Mana game.
While I like that the game implements some sort of job system, unfortunately the combat rarely feels like it takes advantage of your party’s diverse skill options. Most combat encounters are pretty basic, run up on a group of enemies in a field, enter combat, and have a limited field of movement to hack and slash your way to victory. Party members are AI controlled, and do well enough, but you can also switch between them in battle if you’d like more direct control. However, your ability to reliably dodge enemy attacks is pretty basic, and enemies don’t offer up much of a challenge on the default difficulty. Boss encounters are kind of basic, and feel more like damage sponges than any real type of threat to your party. While you may have a variety of spells at your disposal, you’ll rarely feel the need to employ them. As such, combat starts to feel like a chore, even early on, and there’s enough of it present in the game that it’ll start to drag down some of your enjoyment.
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