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Visions of Mana |OT| This Game Runs on Alm My Consoles

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.
Darn, man. Chapter 3. :(
Just finished this chapter

cry.gif
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
And finished. Finished the post-game chapter as well. Kinda bummed that there's no major changes in the finale narrative if you do all that extra content but ah well. At least it puts a nice bow on everything.

I am really surprised how much I enjoyed my time with the game. Wasn't expecting it to be this fun. Probably the best JRPG I've played this year, or very close behind P3 Reload, and one of the best Square games through this generation as a whole.

NGL the ending-ending got me a bit misty eyed.

fGfsZYj.jpeg


dtVn3so.jpeg


ibuR5cs.jpeg


Ending context for those who won't play but might be curious:

The primary 'magic girl love interest' who the hero swears to protect through their journey, where she is supposed to sacrifice herself at the end ala Yuna in FFX anyway, dies about 30% of the way through the game. The game does a pretty ballsy thing by keeping her dead through the rest of the game, no magical resurrections. After you beat the game, there's a flash cut to xyz number of years and your hero is dying as an old man, after he dies, he 'wakes up' in the sanctuary of mana location, a key location in the story, where he sees the magic girl love interest waiting for him, they run and hug each other, and that's how the game ends.
 
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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.
And finished. Finished the post-game chapter as well. Kinda bummed that there's no major changes in the finale narrative if you do all that extra content but ah well. At least it puts a nice bow on everything.

I am really surprised how much I enjoyed my time with the game. Wasn't expecting it to be this fun. Probably the best JRPG I've played this year, or very close behind P3 Reload, and one of the best Square games through this generation as a whole.

NGL the ending-ending got me a bit misty eyed.

fGfsZYj.jpeg


dtVn3so.jpeg


ibuR5cs.jpeg


Ending context for those who won't play but might be curious:

The primary 'magic girl love interest' who the hero swears to protect through their journey, where she is supposed to sacrifice herself at the end ala Yuna in FFX anyway, dies about 30% of the way through the game. The game does a pretty ballsy thing by keeping her dead through the rest of the game, no magical resurrections. After you beat the game, there's a flash cut to xyz number of years and your hero is dying as an old man, after he dies, he 'wakes up' in the sanctuary of mana location, a key location in the story, where he sees the magic girl love interest waiting for him, they run and hug each other, and that's how the game ends.
What was your total playtime?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
What was your total playtime?
28~ hours give or take. I stopped doing the random NPC quests in the 2nd half cause 99% of them just give you small amounts of money and I was rolling in it before the end. Same for hunting after each blue circle treasure icon on the map, stopped after a while cause they were all giving minor healing items etc that I didn't really need.
 
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NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Game does not feel like a believable world where people actually live, can't enter houses, treasure loot is garbage.
Another mediocre JRPG.
I want to live in your world, where you can enter and loot anyone’s house without people caring and you find $100 bills lying around instead of pennies caked into the pavement.

Thank god there’s still games where most of the scenery is just that, inaccessible props. I want to play a fantasy game, not a tour of virtual houses I could never own anyway.
 

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.
PC players... I found out that during cutscenes, if you press F11 (exit full screen) then F11 again (enter full screen) - the cutscenes now run at the proper FPS (in my case 140fps to match my monitor). I thought at first it was just Steam's overlay reporting incorrectly, but it does indeed seem to smooth out the video more than the default 30fps.

Can anyone else confirm this?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I want to live in your world, where you can enter and loot anyone’s house without people caring and you find $100 bills lying around instead of pennies caked into the pavement.

Thank god there’s still games where most of the scenery is just that, inaccessible props. I want to play a fantasy game, not a tour of virtual houses I could never own anyway.

Is it even a game if you can't enter every NPC house and go through their dirty laundry?
 

sigmaZ

Member
PC players... I found out that during cutscenes, if you press F11 (exit full screen) then F11 again (enter full screen) - the cutscenes now run at the proper FPS (in my case 140fps to match my monitor). I thought at first it was just Steam's overlay reporting incorrectly, but it does indeed seem to smooth out the video more than the default 30fps.

Can anyone else confirm this?
Yeah, it works. I've been doing the same.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Playing on hard mode, seems like there was a pretty big difficulty spike. The water benevodon just whupped my ass big time.


One big pet peeve about this game: you’re constantly getting sidequests AFTER you just passed through the area where the objective was. And none of the “kill X of this enemy” count until after you accept the quest. Also lots of “collect X of this item dropped by this enemy” but they won’t even start dropping that item until after you accept the quest. WTF?
 

The Saint

Member
I want to live in your world, where you can enter and loot anyone’s house without people caring and you find $100 bills lying around instead of pennies caked into the pavement.

Thank god there’s still games where most of the scenery is just that, inaccessible props. I want to play a fantasy game, not a tour of virtual houses I could never own anyway.



.
 
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Shake Your Rump

Gold Member
One big pet peeve about this game: you’re constantly getting sidequests AFTER you just passed through the area where the objective was. And none of the “kill X of this enemy” count until after you accept the quest. Also lots of “collect X of this item dropped by this enemy” but they won’t even start dropping that item until after you accept the quest. WTF?
I just had this at the port town. I rode through this huge area, passing by a few quest givers, arrive at town, receive another handful of quests, a story scene triggers, talk to some NPCs to progress that, and suddenly it's "let's hurry and get on the ship".

I went back and did all the side quests, but I think I may just skip them unless they are convenient from this point on.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I just had this at the port town. I rode through this huge area, passing by a few quest givers, arrive at town, receive another handful of quests, a story scene triggers, talk to some NPCs to progress that, and suddenly it's "let's hurry and get on the ship".

I went back and did all the side quests, but I think I may just skip them unless they are convenient from this point on.
Yeah thankfully you can see the rewards so you can decide which ones are worth doing. Most of them just give you money.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I know, right? I mean, rpgs totally never let us do that in the 80's and 90's. Oh...wait.
Yes, and it was as useless as it would be today.
If entering a house is only worth it for useless banter from a random NPC and/or an apple hidden in a jar, then the devs can surely spare me the hassle of entering a house to give me the same content.
Nobody needs the 100 houses in any country village to be fully accessible and explorable. A dozen was always too many already. I don’t need to enter a house to know it has tables, chairs, beds, and a host of trinkets that only 1% of players would ever take a closer look at - and shouldn’t anyway.
 

Mister Wolf

Gold Member
PC players... I found out that during cutscenes, if you press F11 (exit full screen) then F11 again (enter full screen) - the cutscenes now run at the proper FPS (in my case 140fps to match my monitor). I thought at first it was just Steam's overlay reporting incorrectly, but it does indeed seem to smooth out the video more than the default 30fps.

Can anyone else confirm this?


Use this mod to unlock cutscenes to the framerate of your choice.

Extract it. Pick the folder with the new frame cap you want for the cutscenes. Copy contents from that folder and put in this location:

SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\VisionsofMana\VisionsofMana\Content

At this location create a new folder named ~mods and place those files within it.

I'm using this mod amongst others.
 
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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.

Use this mod to unlock cutscenes to the framerate of your choice.

Extract it. Pick the folder with the new frame cap you want for the cutscenes. Copy contents from that folder and put in this location:

SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\VisionsofMana\VisionsofMana\Content

At this location create a new folder named ~mods and place those files within it.

I'm using this mod amongst others.
I have the same mod, but it doesn't work for every cutscene (whereas the trick of exiting and entering full screen does). It'll get there, the PC version with mods is already running circles around the console versions.
 

Mister Wolf

Gold Member
I have the same mod, but it doesn't work for every cutscene (whereas the trick of exiting and entering full screen does). It'll get there, the PC version with mods is already running circles around the console versions.

I saw that this one is version 3 of the mod. Hopefully this one addresses more of the cutscenes.
 

The Saint

Member
Yes, and it was as useless as it would be today.
If entering a house is only worth it for useless banter from a random NPC and/or an apple hidden in a jar, then the devs can surely spare me the hassle of entering a house to give me the same content.
Nobody needs the 100 houses in any country village to be fully accessible and explorable. A dozen was always too many already. I don’t need to enter a house to know it has tables, chairs, beds, and a host of trinkets that only 1% of players would ever take a closer look at - and shouldn’t anyway.

.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I am surprised for good and bad that they went with some pretty tragic scenes in this game. It's not on the level of a Yoko Taro game, or even Chapter 5 of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (that one hurts all this time later) But it definitely stepped up its game from Trials of Mana.
Yeah I’m pleasantly surprised how much I like the story.

I liked Trials of Mana but it’s story is pretty much very simple and straight forward, it’s product of it’s time.
 
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kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
The game is OK but it could have been much better

- I hate the fast travel system, there are like 2 systems in place (one with the map, one with the meridians) but neither do what I wish they'd do
- The endless quests could be fun, but there's this weird thing where your collecting or discovering only starts when you accept the quest. I like it when you accept a quest and already have the materials or whatever. Not so here. I even got the achievement for discovering all eight dungeons and then the quest to discover them says 3/8 because I only accepted the quest after already having discovered some...
- The combat hasn't clicked, there is nothing meaningful to do, no blocking, parrying, and there is a dodge but it doesn't feel satisfying. I want to dodge last minute and then do crits or slow time or whatever, this makes fighting addictive.
- Equipment and weapons are very standard and a bit lacklustre, no upgrading, nothing.
- A lot of chests but man, there is really nothing worthwile in 99% of them
- It's kinda buggy, had a crash, had a party member just lock up in a battle, some weird framerate issues and flickering of the UI too.

I'm only in chapter 6 fighting these Benevodons so maybe it'll get better... I tried to do all content up to this point but honestly I feel like beelining for the ending as it stands now.
 
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DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
is it just me, or is the game a snoozefest?

Beautiful to look at but not much more.
The dialog scenes are definitely a snooze fest at times. Just way, way too much talking for this style of story/characters.

I’m in chapter 7 now and I’ve started skimming most of the dialog snd skipping the VA. They’ve reached the part of the game where they need to wrap up all the character arcs and some of these scenes are so corny and long-winded.

Still enjoying the combat and exploration but I’m pretty much ready to wrap it up and move on to something else.
 
Just got my last achievement, loved the game from start to finish.

The secret boss was definitely at its strongest in this game, holy... Granted, I was playing in Hard, but it's been the hardest and longest fight I've had in a JRPG in a long while.
Careena still best girl, Ash best overall, Julei was great too.
 

Shake Your Rump

Gold Member
Tried to get back into the game tonight and just wasn't having fun. I finally took the ship and had a fight with a Kraken. Of course the AI just gets slapped around as they don't even try to avoid the obvious red danger marks. Combat in general is too busy for me. There is too much going on to keep track of everyone's status effects, buffs, elements, etc. It reminds me of Xenoblade 2 where combat has all these nifty systems, but ultimately it is just chaos.

Towns are boring. Tons of NPCs that say nothing even remotely interesting. I reached the water town and was filled with dread. I think I burned myself out by doing everything in the prior towns and areas.

The music and art is great, but the rest pales in comparison to my other JRPGs I have going (Octopath and Daybreak). If the combat was more simple or slower, and the game had fewer systems... this just makes me want to play Trials of Mana again.
 

sigmaZ

Member
Finally getting back into it myself. I think the biggest issue is the way everything is spaced out. Looks nice and all, but the OG games were nice in how they were content dense.

The Luka Ruins track is the best in the game I've heard so far. This sounds like a proper SNES-era Mana track.
 

Poppyseed

Member
Just finished this game. What an absolutely mediocre RPG. Honestly, I've no idea why I kept playing to be honest. I guess the thought of wasting money was weighing on me, and instead I wasted 30 hours of my time on top of the money already spent.

It's just so unbelievably generic. The characters aren't interesting, the world isn't interesting, the story is not a PATCH on Xenoblade 2 or 3 (despite borrowing heavily in some themes), the combat is horrific, and just annoying. Most of the combat you just spend running toward baddies that have been knocked back. It's infuriating, and a mess.

The loot is boring, the menus are all over the place - a complete mess, the music is annoyingly repetitive, the dialogue is HILARIOUSLY bad, and the story is idiotic, trying SO hard to manufacture emotion where there is none. The side quests are 99% pointless, and even leveling is pointless as enemies just level with you, so you can just make a beeline for chests and then leave the area. Oh, and the game has cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, and they're 99% trite. Walk forward, cutscene. Walk forward 10ft. Another cutscene. It's mind boggling. And if I have to hear Val yell "GRIZZLY!" one more time... well - I won't, as this is getting deleted. Please don't waste your time on mediocre games like this, when there are far, far better ones out there. Play DQXI instead, which is a masterclass.
 
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Shake Your Rump

Gold Member
Your post was kinda OK until I read this. DQ XI is unplayable because of the shit music alone. It is as bland and generic as RPGs get.
It seems like a joke, but you are absolutely correct. I never did finish XI. I think I was halfway through. A few months ago, I thought I would give it another try. As soon as I heard the overworld music, I just shut the game off. I can't fathom going through another few dozen hours of that.
 

Poppyseed

Member
Your post was kinda OK until I read this. DQ XI is unplayable because of the shit music alone. It is as bland and generic as RPGs get.
It seems like a joke, but you are absolutely correct. I never did finish XI. I think I was halfway through. A few months ago, I thought I would give it another try. As soon as I heard the overworld music, I just shut the game off. I can't fathom going through another few dozen hours of that.
I hear and have heard the argument about the DQ XI music, and of course that's subjective, but I really liked it. Even aside from the music in EITHER game then, DQXI's story and character arcs and voice acting and dialogue and the way it actually RESPECTS your time is in another league. It's rare a game leaves me angry for spending 30 hours on it, but Vision of Mana accomplished it. It's a by-the-numbers generic RPG. Literally just landscapes with some random monsters dotted around, with annoying load times, and a complete disrespect for the player when it comes to side quests and idiotic/pointless cutscenes that break in the middle, have you walk forward a few feet, just to bash you over the head with another cutscene.

ALSO, the number of let's-blind-the-player fade to pure white backgrounds is just on another level. Perhaps the worst I've seen. And did anyone even use the mount? What a waste of time.

Anyway, this game sucks. I'd describe it as... GRIZZLY!
 

cireza

Member
I hear and have heard the argument about the DQ XI music, and of course that's subjective, but I really liked it. Even aside from the music in EITHER game then, DQXI's story and character arcs and voice acting and dialogue and the way it actually RESPECTS your time is in another league. It's rare a game leaves me angry for spending 30 hours on it, but Vision of Mana accomplished it. It's a by-the-numbers generic RPG. Literally just landscapes with some random monsters dotted around, with annoying load times, and a complete disrespect for the player when it comes to side quests and idiotic/pointless cutscenes that break in the middle, have you walk forward a few feet, just to bash you over the head with another cutscene.

ALSO, the number of let's-blind-the-player fade to pure white backgrounds is just on another level. Perhaps the worst I've seen. And did anyone even use the mount? What a waste of time.

Anyway, this game sucks. I'd describe it as... GRIZZLY!
You could have easily seen this with the demo. I did, and decided to skip the game. I am currently playing Trials of Mana and it is the far superior game.
 
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