Visions of Mana is the first new mainline entry in the series since Dawn of Mana in 2006, and it arrives with a staff built to honor that gap. Series creator Koichi Ishii supervised monster designs. Producer Masaru Oyamada ran the project. Artist Haccan handled the look, and Hiroki Kikuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito and Ryo Yamazaki composed. Development began in 2020 at Ouka Studio, which Square Enix set loose on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S.
The result is a game that knows exactly what it is and mostly delivers it. Visions of Mana earns a 7.6 of 10.
Trailer, via Square Enix.
Val and Hinna leave Tianeea
The story opens in Tianeea, the Fire Village, where every four years the Faerie descends to name an “alm” — a villager chosen to walk to the Tree of Mana and renew the flow of mana through sacrifice. A Soul Guard is named to protect that pilgrimage. Val, a young swordsman, brings his childhood friend Hinna to the festival. The Faerie chooses her as the Alm of Fire. Val becomes her Soul Guard.
That setup is the game’s best idea. Visions of Mana takes the structure of a sacrificial journey and asks what it costs the people walking it. Val is not a chosen hero. He is a bodyguard escorting a friend to her death, and the game lets that weight sit.
The world is Qi’Diel, sustained by the Mana Tree, an incarnation of the Goddess of Mana. Eight Elementals tie to eight villages. The pilgrimage runs through semi-open 3D fields, towns and dungeon areas, and the tone stays bright even when the plot turns.
A party of six and a cat demi-human
Hinna and Val pick up companions fast. Morley is a cat demi-human from Etaern carrying a traumatic past. Careena is a dragon demi-human from Longren, and the game’s most spirited presence. Palamena rules the water capital Illystana. Julei is a sproutling. Eoren, a traveler from the Earth Village Gudju, drifts in and out before the story hands him its darkest turn.
The plot’s pivot lands hard. Eoren tricks Val and Hinna into traveling with him, then kills Hinna to take her corestone — a crystallization of life essence — so he can awaken the Mana Sword and free his lover Lyza from petrification. Val, in shock, keeps guarding the other alms and hopes to restore Hinna.
That is a real swing. It reframes the pilgrimage as something a person would kill to undo, and it gives Val a motive beyond duty.
Combat, classes and the Elemental Plot
Visions of Mana plays as an action RPG. Players control Val and can switch to any member of a three-person party, each with unique skills and weapons. The other two follow pre-set behavior patterns. Battles trigger when enemies wander into range, as in earlier Mana games.
Standard combat runs on light and heavy attacks, with items and abilities on a ring menu. The controlled character can dodge and air dash. Element Points earned in fights feed the Elemental Plot, which unlocks new moves and element-specific classes. Each Elemental can be assigned to different characters, and the class changes depending on who gets it. Some enemies carry weaknesses to exploit.
Exploration is generous. Save points allow fast travel. Outdoor areas hold collectables and treasure chests, some locked behind platforming puzzles that open only after you claim the power of the eight Elementals. Side quests come from villagers and other characters and ask for an item, a person or a specific kill. Travel runs on foot, on an animal mount, on a seafaring turtle or on a flying dragon.
What the game gets right
The combat and the world design carry Visions of Mana. The class system gives the party real texture — assigning an Elemental is a decision, not a menu chore — and the semi-open fields keep exploration loose without turning it into a checklist. The mount options are a small pleasure. Riding a flying dragon over a field you crossed on foot an hour earlier is the kind of thing this series should do.
The characters land too. Careena, Morley and Palamena each get an arc and a reason to be on the road, and the game treats the alms as people rather than plot devices. Haccan’s art and the monster designs under Ishii’s supervision give the world a consistent, warm look that holds up across four platforms.
Where the pilgrimage stalls
The story is the weak point. Visions of Mana builds a genuinely bleak premise and then resolves it in familiar beats. The Benevodons — eight elemental monsters from the distant past — arrive as antagonists without much to them. Daelophos, a legendary champion of the Goddess, gets released from a stone prison when Eoren awakens the Mana Sword, takes the blade and unleashes the Benevodons to reclaim his old power. He is a final-act problem rather than a character.
Eoren is the more interesting figure, and the game knows it. A man who kills to undo a petrification is doing something the rest of the cast cannot answer, and the story does not sit with that long enough.
Pacing has the same issue. The middle stretch — protecting Illystana from magistrate Passar’s attempted coup, gathering the Elementals who choose Careena, Morley and Palamena as the Alms of Wind, the Moon and Water — is structurally sound but runs long. The game is in less of a hurry than its best material deserves.
The verdict on Visions of Mana
Visions of Mana is a confident return for a series that had been gone a long time. It plays well, looks right, and understands what made the earlier games work. The class system and the party are worth the time. The story is not.
The unoriginality is the real cost. This is a game whose premise could have carried something sharper, and it settles for a standard elemental-monster finale instead. That gap between the setup and the payoff is what keeps Visions of Mana at 7.6 rather than higher.
Worth playing, especially for anyone who waited through the Dawn of Mana years. Just do not expect the pilgrimage to land as hard as Hinna’s death sets it up to.
Visions of Mana — 7.6 of 10
The numbers behind Visions of Mana
- Score: 7.6 of 10
- Release year: 2024
- Developer: Ouka Studio
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox Series X/S
- Genre: Action role-playing game
- Modes: Single player
- Series position: Fifth mainline Mana title; first since Dawn of Mana (2006)
- Development start: 2020
- Key staff: Koichi Ishii (monster design supervision), Masaru Oyamada (producer), Haccan (artist), Hiroki Kikuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito, Ryo Yamazaki (composers)
- Setting: Qi’Diel
- Protagonists: Val, Hinna
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