It has been a long time since we've had a new Mana title on consoles. Beyond the recent remakes of older games, it's been decades since the franchise was in the limelight. Visions of Mana is a genuine attempt to bring back one of Square's more obscure franchises from obscurity. The result is a game that is simultaneously flawed and arguably the best Mana title to date.

Visions of Mana is set in a fantastical world where elemental spirits govern the various lands. Every four years, the spirits choose Alms, individuals whose goal is to travel to the Mana Tree and offer up their souls to empower the elementals. The Alms are protected by a Soul Guard, a warrior who escorts them. The newest Soul Guard, Val, is prepared to set off on his journey when his girlfriend Hinna is chosen as the Alm of Fire. The duo must make its way to the Mana Tree to complete the journey, and perhaps along the way, they will discover the truth about the system of sacrifices and Alms.

Visions of Mana's story did not work for me. The characters are fun and likable, and that helps a lot, but the story feels half-baked. The premise is something we've seen in multiple popular JRPGs, and Mana doesn't bring a lot of new developments to the equation. At a certain point, it tries to subvert your expectations, but the path feels awkward and half-baked. The main villain feels like a genuine void of personality, and I had very little investment in him. The ending left me feeling that several plot beats were ill-earned. The character interactions are fun and charming, so it just means that the core adventure doesn't hit as well as it should.

Like the rest of the franchise, Visions of Mana is an action RPG. You have a party of three characters who you can swap between at will. Each character has basic controls: a regular attack, a special attack, and jumping/dodging. You also have a tremendous variety of skills, weapons and abilities, four of which can be tied to "quick use" buttons; the rest can be activated via a menu that temporarily pauses the game, and that's when you can select options. The game is going for more of a action style, including several direct references to Devil May Cry, but it's much more slowly paced.

One of the things that Visions of Mana excels at is character variety. There are five playable characters, and each has three different weapon types. Each weapon type is assigned to one of nine different elemental vessels, which place that character in a specific class. This means you technically have nine different playable play styles for each of the five characters. At a certain point in the game, you can start mixing and matching skills from any job you've fully mastered, and you can create insanely powerful combinations.

For example, Morley, my favorite character, has three weapon types: katana, staffand triblade. The katana effectively makes him Vergil from Devil May Cry, complete with several of his trademark moves. Depending on the selected class, he can focus on traps, which are special skills that give him magical elemental damage or hyper-boost regular attacks. Protagonist Val can use either a regular sword, a giant beefy claymore, or a spear and shield combo; each can be optimized in various ways. Do you want a claymore that you can enchant with different elemental damage types, or would you prefer a high-risk, high-reward style where you perform more damage as your health decreases?

As mentioned, each job is also tied to an elemental vessel, which reminds me a bit of Devil May Cry-style options. Each elemental vessel has a cooldown and a very potent and powerful effect. The luna vessel can create a frozen bubble of time. The fire vessel is a low-cooldown, flaming rush attack. The wood vessel creates a healing zone, and so on. Each vessel can also be charged up to unleash incredibly potent super versions of their abilities, but this requires players to charge up a mana bar first.

In addition, each character can also be further optimized via ability seeds. These seeds contain both active and passive skills, and they can be found in chests, rewards from side-quests, or by defeating monsters. You can only equip a certain number of them (from two all the way up to 10 after you get upgrades), but you can freely swap them and use them to shore up weak points in your character's build. A powerful mage might benefit from defensive options or healing spells, a close-range fighter could use some distance options, or you might want to focus on certain skills, such as massively boosting the critical hit potential of a character.

Overall, the combat system is simple but fun. It could use a tad more variety, but it largely does its job and does it well. The huge amount of customization and variety in the cast makes it the best combat system in a Mana title. The boss fights are engaging and fun, but it's a bit too easy on the default difficulty. I strongly recommend pumping it up to Hard if you're experienced with action RPGs. Otherwise, it's too easy to build such a powerful character that enemies melt like butter.

Outside of combat, there isn't a tremendous amount to do in Visions of Mana. You'll go through field areas full of hidden challenges and items, straightforward dungeons that contain gimmicks to use elemental vessels, and towns where you can buy items and take on side-quests to get more money and ability seeds. The adventure is uncomplicated, but once you get more elemental vessels, you can return to earlier areas and find some items and secrets that you couldn't previously access.

Visions of Mana's structure feels like it ran out of steam after a certain point. The earlier levels of the game are huge, with wide-open areas to explore that are full of side-quests, but once you hit a certain plot beat, it becomes a lot more linear. Even when you visit new continents, they are just one town connected directly to the dungeon or dungeons you'll need to explore, and the side-quests devolve into "kill (x) of an enemy." It doesn't ruin the game, but it makes the second half of the game feel more rushed. There's even one character who feels like they should have been a party member but aren't, so they follow you around and act as an AI in battle.

Visually, Visions of Mana is a mixed bag. There are times it looks absolutely jaw-dropping, with incredibly gorgeous environmental design. Other times, especially on cut scenes where characters are talking, the faces seem to barely emote, and lip flaps are drastically off. There's also a noticeable amount of jerkiness and micro-loading, even in Performance mode. It crashed a couple of times, including once during the ending cut scene, which forced me to redo the entire final boss fight. The music is top-notch, but the voice acting is less consistent. The main characters are good at their roles. The side NPCs can vary wildly from excellent to shockingly awful, and it can be distracting.

Visions of Mana is extremely close to greatness. The core combat system is a lot of fun, and I'd adore seeing it come back in a more polished form in a future game. The graphics tend to look amazing, and it captures the tone and feel of a Mana title well. A lackluster main plot and a seriously rushed second half tend to drag down the experience, and some of the technical hitches are disruptive. Despite this, I'd argue that Visions of Mana is probably one of the best titles in the franchise and should be a fun time for Mana fans.

Score: 8.0/10