Way back in the early ’90s, Squaresoft released an action-RPG that would go on to be one of the Super Nintendo’s classic games. Secret of Mana was the first of three titles that made fans sit up and take notice, followed by Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger, and those paved the way for Final Fantasy VII to blow the doors off the RPG market in the US. Granted, Secret of Mana wasn’t the first in the series, but it was the one that defined its identity through all the games that followed. The problem with following up a classic, though, is that it’s difficult to hit those heights again, but even so there have been several notable entries and remakes in the following decades.
Long time no new Mana
The last new Mana game in the core series, though, was for the PS2, with the rest either being spin-offs in different genres or free-to-play mobile titles that have all since shut down. It’s been a long time waiting for a proper new entry, but that’s finally coming to an end with the upcoming Visions of Mana. Visions is an action-RPG that takes the series back to its SNES roots (Final Fantasy Adventure is more Mana-prototype, even though it’s the first) with a three-member fighting team you can switch between at will wielding elemental abilities in service of the Mana Tree.
Visions of Mana: the Highly Anticipated Return of a Legendary Series in 2024
Developed by Square Enix, this action-packed RPG marks the series' triumphant return after over 15 years, promising an expansive and vibrant adventure
The basic plot is that Val’s childhood friend Hinna is chosen as the Alm from the village of fire, one of many people from around the world who journey to the Mana Tree every four years to ensure the flow of mana. Val heads out with her on the journey, and along the way they meet Careena from the wind valley and cat-noble Morley from the lunar parish. Val, Careena and Morley make up the fighting crew, and while they all come from an elemental-aligned area, they can switch out different elemental vessels to change into unique character classes. Sylphid on Val, for example, makes him a Rune Knight while Careena becomes a Dancer.
They tend to stay true to their base abilities, though, with Val being slower but powerful, Morley fast but weaker, and Careena on magic and support, and the classes expand those simple traits in interesting ways. The character you’re playing at the moment takes the lead in combat, but the other two are active as well, and in the very early demo I got to play, it wasn’t unusual for a fight to end with the backup characters taking out their fair share of monsters with no additional input needed.
After the demo I got a chance to talk to Mana producer Masaru Oyamada, who was kind enough to answer a few questions on his history with the series.
[Hardcore Gamer] You’ve been with the Mana series for a while. What was the first mana game you worked with? When did you start with the series?
[Masaru Oyamada] So this might be something that a lot of overseas people might not be familiar with, but there was originally a mobile game for Final Fantasy Adventure, a mobile port on the really old school phones. So that was actually the first project that I was involved in.
Was that around the PlayStation One era or was that later on?
In terms of generation, it would be around when the PlayStation 2 was out.
One of the features of Mana is that basically from the Super Nintendo and even the Game Boy days, it always felt kind of like it has slowly been edging towards an open world experience, but over the history of the series it’s always stuck with being more level based, even as the levels get bigger and more open, instead of a more true open world experience. Is that something that you’ve thought of experimenting with or is the formula of area to level to area something the series seems more comfortable with?
So when we were originally thinking about how to develop this game, but from the very early proposal stages we did want to make it so that the areas would be much more expanded. And when we’re considering trying to make this an open world game, there was of course a lot of good that would come out of that in terms of the freedom of the player experience. But we’re also thinking about whether or not we would be able to make a game that feels like Mana, that’s part of the Mana series with that format and we were considering the technical requirements to do that. We did feel that would sort of be a little bit challenging.
And when we think about the fact that it has been fifteen years since the previous installment launched and also the fact that this is just my personal selfish desire, if you will. But as I was sort of thinking about what I enjoyed really as a fan, playing the series, growing up, I really love the fact that you could go on a journey that’s almost planetary where you’re exploring the entire world. So that was something that we really wanted to achieve with this game. And that’s kind of how we landed on ultimately what we now refer to as the semi-open fields with this game where there are expansive areas. There’s also areas where you would kind of move more in a sort of predetermined fashion. And they both sort of coexist.
That does also lead into questions of what do you feel are the essential Mana elements? What separates a Mana game from another fantasy action adventure type of title?
I think the biggest thing when it comes to the defining feature of the Mana series, starting with the Mana Tree of course, is really just the world that the original creator Koichi created, which is filled with so many different wonderful and curious creatures and monsters, as well as a world that is really rich and colorful and vibrant, and I feel those are some of the defining characteristics.
And when it comes to the world, I’ve always felt that the core thematic elements of the Mana series are sort of like the themes of meeting new people, but also bidding them farewell. And so there’s definitely elements in the story where you’ll feel something that tugs at your heart in some ways, but while also sort of seeing how the characters continue to live on with their life despite that. So I’ve always felt that sort of depiction of the life of the characters is something that is a real core appeal of the series.
Mana has always been kind of like a secondary Square-Enix series compared to something like Final Fantasy. I mean, it definitely has a fan base and kept chugging along for all these years. How do you know when it’s time for a new game in the Mana series?
So what’s actually interesting was that the Mana series originally started as kind of a spin off of Final Fantasy, and so when you say it’s sort of almost a secondary series, if you will, that’s actually a very spot on way to describe the series.
So originally when I took on the role as senior producer in 2014 from Koichi Ishii, that was sort of…at that point it’s already been seven years since the previous game have launched. This in 2014. At that point there have been so many advances made in the hardware space and the platform and console space, and what had essentially happened was that some of these previous games were no longer playable because they weren’t available on the modern consoles. And so one sort of thing that I sort of focused on when I first took on this role was remakes, remasters of these games, so they could be accessible for the modern audience.
So as we were creating those remakes, we’re of course also thinking about what would be a good way to have a new installment into the series overall, but a big pivotal moment was the release of the Trials of Mana remake in 2020. This was, of course, an ambitious project in and of itself, but ultimately it was a game that was received well by fans, and so that was sort of a big turning point in terms of actually making that decision of exploring a new title. And another thing is that, we were thankful for this, was that we sort of conducted a survey with fans after the release of trials of Mana and many fans sort of expressed deep interest in a new installment. And so that also led to that decision as well.
Trials of Mana basically had a number of characters and you could play the story with any mix, while visions of Mana looks to be more of a set cast of three. Is it too early to talk about whether it’s going to be like in Trials in that where you’ve got multiple different characters to complete the story with?
When it comes to Visions of Mana, today in the demo you were able to play as three labeled characters, but whether or not there’s additional characters or not, you know, maybe we have released a key visual. So that might be something that you could refer to.
Figure it out, got it!
And that wrapped up the interview, aside from a few questions sent my way about the demo. My only regret is not having more time to dive in properly and get a treasure chest I didn’t have the time to figure out how to access, plus dig more deeply into the menus and character classes, and maybe explore the world a bit more, find some story beats and possibly play the entire game from start to finish. It’s been a long time since a brand-new Mana game has been released, and getting to explore its beautiful world with upbeat characters and wide open fields filled with monsters to unleash their combat abilities on should feel like a welcome return of an old friend.
