Visions of Mana [Review]

With unbelievably gorgeous art and music and a great battle system, Visions for me was a very, very good attempt on the said “AA” games from big publishers, and, considering all the other attempts at the category, one of the best.

Nothing in this game reinvents the wheel of action RPGs. It has an amazing class system with swappable jobs with different play styles, each character having at least 3 different weapons that are super unique between one another, and many jobs within these weapon styles to choose from. Not all of these said classes are good or balanced, but the amount of them makes it nice to experiment. Unfortunately, resetting the progressions is locked behind an item that appears in the end of the third act.

Different from many other Action RPGs, even ones with bigger budgets like Tales of Arise, in Visions of Mana I was basically forced to change tactics and formations to some big encounters, in which there are many. The monster and boss variety of the game really impressed me, I often found new and exciting monsters throughout the game, even in the endgame.

The vistas are amazing, the art team really delivered. Places feel bigger than what they really are. The structure of the game reminded me a lot of Dragon Quest XI, with “smaller” open sections with treasures and challenges until the next “small” open section.

There are a lot of problems in this game, though. Too many loading screens – between cities, buildings, roads – that breaks the flow of exploration a ton, some cut-scenes that look like a Pixar movie and others that I don't think they even finished the facial animations. Also, as I progressed through the game, more and more technical issues started to add up.

Many moments I needed to reload the game because of world clipping. There was a map closer to the end of the last chapter that a specific system of the game bugged and, because of it, the map itself bugged, playing in about 20 FPS and constantly crashed if I entered fights there. It still happens even now [as of writing, sep. 22, 2024], with the game finished, if I return to that specific map in the same save file.

Other bugs that I've suffered are damage points not showing up or characters being stuck inoperable in the battle if I change to them mid cast. Overall, the game gets rougher and rougher as you go through, and combined with the constant loading screens, makes what could have been a great game in just a good game.

It doesn't change the fact that it is, indeed, a good game. What Ouka has done here is very impressive, the story is super nice (even if simple) and the characters are funny and well voice acted. The battle system is crisp, the game has a good challenge in hard mode, and some maps are gorgeous. I liked a lot, but can't really ignore the problems.

7.5/10