Tried out the Visions of Mana demo and it's pretty rough. To state the good first: it's absolutely beautiful in both graphics and design and has large, open zones for tons of exploration. I also really like the character designs, which look very classic Mana, and the music is pleasant, if not a little forgettable. Customization seems like it will get pretty deep and interesting, with a large number of classes to try in the full version.
Now, for the bad, which there's unfortunately more of. Movement and combat are very janky, like there are just way too many frames needing to be loaded to perform basic actions. I played on performance mode and it didn't seem like it got anywhere near 60fps at any point, which is super disappointing. This doesn't seem like a very graphically demanding game, so when I started the demo and was greeted with a performance/graphics mode choice, I was pretty frustrated and honestly insulted, especially when performance mode ran like ass.
The battle camera is atrocious, sticking itself wherever it feels like when you lock onto a target. It doesn't try to follow you or the enemy or center itself at all, and when you swap to a character who's a mile away from the targeted enemy, it wildly spins in a desperate attempt to find something to focus on. Speaking of enemies being far away, running to them is a chore due to your movement speed being a little slow, and while you can click the left stick to dash, you'll be doing that a whole lot and it gets annoying. The settings have an auto run option, but that seems to do nothing since I had it toggled on and my characters never auto ran.
Voice acting is pretty bad and flat at times, and while I stated I liked the character designs, I don't like their models and movements in cutscenes, which look like a Robot Chicken sketch. There's this one character you meet whose pupils are set just too high so it looks like he's staring above who he's talking to. It was very distracting. One of the playable characters has a southern accent that seems to come and go a little bit, and the nonplayable escort character (let's call her Yuna, because it's that kind of story) delivers her narration bits like she's reading from a textbook. Lifeless is a good word for all this.
Finally, the combat itself is just boring. Triangle strong attacks have been removed, meaning it's just a mash square fest (a worrying trend I've seen in a lot of newer action games) and the aforementioned jank makes battling more laborious than it needs to be. It can often be difficult to spot which enemies are selected when using magic and the ring menu's text is too tiny to easily read (side note: all the UI text is way too small and navigating menus feels delayed). Overall, it's just not that fun to play.
I actually have two pre-orders for this game, since I have good reason to keep either one and am deciding which to cancel: one at Target for $45 (got it during a BOGO 50% sale) and one at Gamestop at full price (for the steelbook), and I'm seriously considering canceling both. I don't know if I'd pay more than $40 for what feels like a serious budget title and my hype has cratered. I read this isn't the team who made the Trials of Mana remake and Squeenix outsourced Visions to another studio, and that was a serious mistake. Really disappointing.
