As someone who didn’t play any Mana/Seiken Densetsu titles until the Trials of Mana remake, that I really enjoyed, I don’t really have any specific expectations from the series. All I want these games to be is fun jRPG/action RPG adventure titles with simple but exciting plots and some curious, if not necessarily revolutionary ideas. And while I didn’t enjoy my time with the Secret of Mana remake (and doubt I would’ve liked the original either), I still admired what it was trying to achieve as a SNES game from 1993. Plus, its story, while basic, was still curious and the world had lots of interesting and unexpected elements to it.
Which isn’t entirely lacking from Visions of Mana either – it does have its moments, its visual style is like concept art come to life and there is an adventurous spark to it. But unfortunately, it is also tedious, way too long for what it actually has to say and the cause for it all might not be some series of bad calls from the development team. No, the real issue here is that Visions of Mana feels like a game made by several teams, none of which knew what they were doing and why.
