After around fifteen years of absence, the Mana license returns with Visions of Mana, to the delight of its community. Because yes, Square Enix is not just Final Fantasy…
Vision of Mana marks the return of one of Square Enix's cult licenses, after 15 years without a real major episode. Remember, it's with Mystic Quest (1991) that the Mana series began, a spin-off of Final Fantasy before being somewhat shelved with Dawn of Mana in 2006. So yes, players were still entitled to several spin-offs, remasters or even remakes, but never a new full-fledged opus. So, when Visions of Mana was announced, he immediately had the difficult task of relaunching the license.
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For the moment, the first opinions are rather positive. The only negative point is that you will have to wait a bit to discover the software, on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series and PC. If it is announced for during the year 2024, it does not have a specific release date. Unfortunately, it is possible that another defect will mar this long-awaited return: the absence of a particularly appreciated functionality.
Visions of Mana will be a purely single-player game
If you're a Mana fan, you may have spent hours playing Secret of Mana with a friend. In 1993, the second license opus chose to incorporate co-op, a feature which was then taken up in several subsequent games. Unfortunately, this feature will be largely absent from Visions of Mana. As producer Masaru Oyamada explains, integrating a multiplayer mode is never an easy decision, even if it is a particularly appreciated feature. “Having multiple players can change the overall design of a video game and influence the pacing of the game experience.e game,” he explains via PC Gaming.
However, even he admits, as a player, that a multiplayer game offers a very different adventure than the single player one. So, he promises that she will come back one day. “I know what this multiplayer experience is like and would like to implement such features in the future. Once we have resolved some technical issues, people will also be able to discover this element from the Mana series», Adds the producer of Visions of Mana.
Not for much longer?
For now, we will have to make do with this little information, but at least multiplayer isn't officially dead. However, this functionality has clearly taken a back seat. In the same interview, Oyamada explained that the entirely single-player Trials of Mana remake had a lot of influence on the development of Visions of Mana. However, given the producer's comments, this does not mean that the studio will not backtrack. He did not specify how cooperation could return, or in what form. However, we can guess that Oyomada does not want to wait for the “sequel” to Visions of Mana, which is certainly not yet planned by Square Enix anyway. On the other hand, a DLC could bode well for fans.
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