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Visions of Mana demo now available or PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, and PC
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
What do you mean by “fixed”? As in, you will be able to change those things in the settings menu?
Trials of Mana (also Unreal) requires mods/hex editing to adjust FOV and get ultrawide resolutions. Smells like a shitty console port and I’m not counting on that getting fixed in the next 4 weeks.
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nikos
Member
"Fixed" by the community. The devs will likely never address the issues.
Jooxed
Gold Member
How did you get it to run on SD? It looked stretched and i couldnt get inputs to work
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Not really sure - just hit "Install" and once it downloaded I just pressed "play" and it ran fine (except for the small text and 30fps).How did you get it to run on SD? It looked stretched and i couldnt get inputs to work
SkylineRKR
Member
I think its really good. I like Mana games in general, and this game nails the atmosphere. Its a light hearted action RPG. I like what I played. Its colorful and I guess its what you would expect from a new Mana game.
I'll buy it, Visions of Mana is a breath of fresh air at the very least.
I'll buy it, Visions of Mana is a breath of fresh air at the very least.
Jooxed
Gold Member
I feel like you are indirectly calling me a fool.. lol jk. i love my steam deck man I haven't even touched my switch besides TOTK lately. I've even rebought some multiplat games for steam deck haha.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I agree on the combat. I think it's because you can't cancel out of attacks, and when you're hit you go flying in the air without the ability to counter from that like some action RPGs have. You just have to sit and wait for the sword swing animations or for your character to land on the ground and get back up.
I did find the combat with the cat guy / daggers to be a lot more enjoyable, mostly because attacking was quick, and you don't have to commit to lengthy attack animations.
Not at all my dude - wasn't being condescending at all, just wanted to say that for me it was a total "out of the box" experience. Sorry I can't be any more help regarding your stretching and input issues.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
I played the demo for around 20 minutes on my PS5, and it kind of put me off due to the clunky combat. Will wait for the reviews to drop before deciding, but it went from day one to wait for a sale, tbh.
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
I went from wait for a sale to wait for a sign from God.
cireza
Member
Tried it. Everything was bland, uninspired or bad.
Large areas where you can skip everything, nothing is interesting. Enemies don't attack you when you are on the strange cat thing, they just sit there and wait. Useless pick-ups and stupid shit to click every two steps. Map is bland, lacks verticality, feels bloated with stuff.
Combat lacks impact, monsters are tiny, the action is not well presented, to many effects, you don't clearly see everything.
Amazing size for the text, good luck reading the menus and the smaller elements of the hud from your couch.
Characters never shut up, but never say anything interesting either. At least you can put the volume at 0.
Not buying, thank you for putting out a demo, I won't have to ask for a refund this time.
Large areas where you can skip everything, nothing is interesting. Enemies don't attack you when you are on the strange cat thing, they just sit there and wait. Useless pick-ups and stupid shit to click every two steps. Map is bland, lacks verticality, feels bloated with stuff.
Combat lacks impact, monsters are tiny, the action is not well presented, to many effects, you don't clearly see everything.
Amazing size for the text, good luck reading the menus and the smaller elements of the hud from your couch.
Characters never shut up, but never say anything interesting either. At least you can put the volume at 0.
Not buying, thank you for putting out a demo, I won't have to ask for a refund this time.
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KimDongHwan
Member
Played on PC and there was some weird stuttering for me, very jumpy. After the first big battle got a crash message from Unreal Engine. Hopefully this is fixed for release.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
If y'all think this game is clunky, never try Monster Hunter, ever.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
Can't you still dodge after being knocked back? It's kind of like MHR where you can wirebug out of a tumble.
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Skifi28
Member
Not even remotely close as far as comparisons go.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
How so? Parts of movements and mechanics reminded me of MHR.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Yeah, that's me as well. I went in with good expectations, but the pacing and combat kind of threw me off. I'm still probably renting this via GameFly.
Skifi28
Member
There's nothing clunky about MH. You have slow but deliberate attacks and a very complex moveset per weapon to master. Here you spam light and heavy attacks with the occasional spell mixed in without much concern about the enemy's moveset. The games are not even the same genre in my book.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
They're not the same genre, and MH isn't clunky, but a lot of people claim it is, so if they think this game is...
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
MH is overall IMO a methodical rigid and stiff kind of gameplay loop set in a Arcade Arena Battler setup.
The older MH's definitely fit the clunky metric.
Mana games don't have much depth when it comes to the combat system. What I'm seeing here is more Class and Party setup.
MH is a different beast. MH rewards players with a Fighting Game Muscle Memory mindset.
Although I think the MH advocates are overselling it a bit. Outside of the Ranged weapons I don't find MH complex.
The older MH's definitely fit the clunky metric.
Mana games don't have much depth when it comes to the combat system. What I'm seeing here is more Class and Party setup.
MH is a different beast. MH rewards players with a Fighting Game Muscle Memory mindset.
Although I think the MH advocates are overselling it a bit. Outside of the Ranged weapons I don't find MH complex.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
Actually you do normal attack with square and special attack with triangle. You hold square for different attack and hold triangle with different attack depending on the class.
There is no light and heavy attack you combo in to. For example the dancing class on Dragon girl, her normal attacks she uses her fan but her special attack she rides that white dragon to attack.
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Pejo
Member
Played the demo. I like the job/class system and the various skills, very much a Mana staple, but I like the implementation and the ability to switch ad hoc whenever you want to. I played on PC and the only issues I had were that the cutscenes seem to be rendered at 30FPS regardless of your FPS settings, and lots of little bugs. I had the camera glitch out during the Kraken fight and couldn't see shit but the inside of his skull for like 30 seconds.
Visually it's vibrant and gorgeous. Story wise, after seeing the 30 FPS cutscenes I started skipping the story to experience it in the full game, so I can't really give an opinion on that. I think they picked an extraordinarily bad slice of the game to put into the demo though, for what it's worth. The wolves trivialized traversal and the enemy layout was way too sparse/easy. Those glowing purple "notorious monster" fights were the only good ones presented in the entire demo. I found 3 of them in the demo, the hedgehog, the flower, and the bee girl. Best parts of the combat, IMO. Kraken was kinda shitty with the stubby attacks and poor targeting. The "ultimates" or whatever they're called were fun to watch, nicely animated. I really like the character models and general art style.
Also it was weird that they were so aggressive with the transparency filter. I wasn't even playing the girl character, but if I moved the camera slightly below parallel to the ground, all characters except the mini-flammie disappeared completely. I get that modern day audiences cry and shit their pants over seeing upskirt stuff, but they went a little overboard in my opinion.
Anyways, this didn't influence my decision, I'm still buying the game day 1, but I think it was a pretty poor demo for people asking "what's this game like?"
Visually it's vibrant and gorgeous. Story wise, after seeing the 30 FPS cutscenes I started skipping the story to experience it in the full game, so I can't really give an opinion on that. I think they picked an extraordinarily bad slice of the game to put into the demo though, for what it's worth. The wolves trivialized traversal and the enemy layout was way too sparse/easy. Those glowing purple "notorious monster" fights were the only good ones presented in the entire demo. I found 3 of them in the demo, the hedgehog, the flower, and the bee girl. Best parts of the combat, IMO. Kraken was kinda shitty with the stubby attacks and poor targeting. The "ultimates" or whatever they're called were fun to watch, nicely animated. I really like the character models and general art style.
Also it was weird that they were so aggressive with the transparency filter. I wasn't even playing the girl character, but if I moved the camera slightly below parallel to the ground, all characters except the mini-flammie disappeared completely. I get that modern day audiences cry and shit their pants over seeing upskirt stuff, but they went a little overboard in my opinion.
Anyways, this didn't influence my decision, I'm still buying the game day 1, but I think it was a pretty poor demo for people asking "what's this game like?"
KXVXII9X
Member
This was basically my impressions. It is unfortunate since I was genuinely interested in it before. It feels like something I would be all over maybe 15 years ago.
I went in very hyped, but left slightly disappointed. It's still a game I can see me play when it goes down in price, but there are some things that didn't click with me. Main character is too slow. Cat guy, and red hair girl felt much better to play. Open areas are boring. Too much chatter, and the tiny text should probably get a Guinness World Record for being unreadable.
Combat should have just been like Trials of Mana. but FASTER, not SLOWER.
Combat should have just been like Trials of Mana. but FASTER, not SLOWER.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
In the demo the MC is using class which has two handed great sword which kind of plays like GS in MH..
I give his spirit vessel to dragon girl and he went back to its starter class that has one hand sword which is faster.
Each character’s attack speed entirely depends on which class you have equipped.
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Northeastmonk
Gold Member
Have you played a Mana game before? Just wondering lol
Can’t be worse than Dawn of Mana. Best part of that game was twirling things and then firing them off. I haven’t played the demo yet. I figured it’s a typical mana game.
cireza
Member
The atmosphere was certainly the same in Mana and Trials on SNES, however the experience was much less irritating as it didn't drag on with uninteresting things. You would go from point A to B, maps were interesting to navigate, you would dispatch enemies quickly and it was fun, no stupid conversations all the time, events weren't overly long, music was fantastic etc... It was a focused experience with quality areas and combat.
Maybe you have the same quality here, except that it is diluted, as with every modern game, and the core that is of good enough quality doesn't carry all the bloat that was put on top of it. At least for some people.
ssringo
Gold Member
The thing I'm interested in hearing from people once the game is released is if the demo was just bad (or a bad section) and the full game is much tighter than what they decided to show.
As an aside, after playing Elden Ring for nearly 700 hours the mounting and dismounting in Visions of Mana is laughable. Hold button for several seconds to dismount is especially egregious. Like how did they think that shit was okay?
sloppyjoe_gamer
Gold Member
Overall it was cool. PS5 version, i don't know what it was, but the running, walking and camera turning felt like i was in molasses. Maybe there was a setting i could've tweaked but i didn't really look. Anyone else notice this, and/or fix it? Tried both quality and performance graphics, same issue in both.
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RoboFu
One of the green rats
It's slow but you can thumb stick click to run everywhere.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
One small thing I really didn’t like was when you sprint and jump, it seems like your jump speed is slower than your sprint speed. It creates the feeling like your jumps are killing your momentum.
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
Yea I dislike that in a lot of games to the point where I’ll skip the dialogue. If it doesn’t add something to the experience, it’s taking away from the experience. It might be cool to animate in-house, but it’s dragging things down for the player.
Miyazaki’s Slave
Gold Member
Looking forward to the game but to echo a few other folks here, don't play in English. The choices they made for the character voices are rough around the edges to say the least.
The "Southern/Hillbilly" voiced spear character and the cat faced swordsman turned me off really quickly. Didn't mind the combat (even with the floaty hit stun) and it looks and runs great on PS5.
The "Southern/Hillbilly" voiced spear character and the cat faced swordsman turned me off really quickly. Didn't mind the combat (even with the floaty hit stun) and it looks and runs great on PS5.
Tarnpanzer
Member
Runs like ass on PC. My 4090 sometimes draws 300W @ 120fps(i.e. it is completely unoptimized on PC) and it stutters a lot.
Combat is boring too. Hard pass.
Combat is boring too. Hard pass.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
How old are you? I've noticed that it's overwhelmingly people in their tweens who say this kind of stuff. When people reach their thirties they tend to stop screaming "teh childishnezz!" and just enjoy things they like without caring what others think about it.
Mossybrew
Member
In other words it's a JRPG.
Mossybrew
Member
Yeah what the fuck was that all about. I played for just a few minutes and decided I was not in the mood for this nonsense. I'll give it another go at some point with Japanese va.
sloppyjoe_gamer
Gold Member
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
One thing I do agree is that this game didn't really need mount, your character traversal movement is already pretty fast with double jump, dashing and no fall damage.
Its similar how Nier Automata had mount but you never really need to use it.
Its similar how Nier Automata had mount but you never really need to use it.
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Northeastmonk
Gold Member
Tried the demo. I almost wish they’d take a different approach to the character’s dialogue. I’d much rather read what they’re saying versus listening to it. Combat isn’t bad and exploration is there. The whole art style to the game is one of the reasons I like it. A lot of things get a pass based off that. Morley is a weird looking character. Again, it’s the dialogue that isn’t so great. Whatever they said at the beginning of the game could be skipped and nothing would be lost.
What’s weird is hitting an enemy on the map while on the mount and it heals itself as soon as you turn around to hit it again.
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Mister Wolf
Gold Member
I've already purchased the game but they desperately need to add a shader compilation. Star Ocean: The Divine Force had one.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
Yeah, the mount just feels very unnecessary but other than that I like everything else about the game.
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
To say something positive, I liked the environmental art. They managed that interesting illusion where 3D models look like 2D illustrations when you stop moving. Then pan the camera around and you see it's 3D. A little reminiscent of Granblue Fantasy. They managed to capture the look of the PS1 game well, while being updated.