Visions of Mana (Summer 2024)

[Julius]

Well, the year of JRPGs just got more...JRPGier? Shown at the TGAs, this arrives in 2024:

Surprised this isn't coming to Switch, but then, I guess it's a lock for a Switch 2 announcement.

Edited January 18 by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

Looks lovely. Shame it's a Mana game though. None of them have really wowed me yet.

[drahkon]

Interesting.

I enjoyed the Trials of Mana remake/remaster so this looks good to me!

[Dcubed]

I am SO in!

Quote

• Producer: Masaru Oyamada (Secret of Mana 2018, Trials of Mana 2020, Legend of Mana 2021 and more)
• Sound: Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana 1993, Trials of Mana 1995, Trials of Mana 2020 and more), Tsuyoshi Sekito (Secret of Mana 2018, Trials of Mana 2020, Echoes of Mana and more), Ryo Yamazaki (Trials of Mana 2020, Echoes of Mana)
• Character Design: HACCAN (Adventures of Mana, Secret of Mana 2018, Trials of Mana 2020)
• Monster illustrations: Airi Yoshioka (Dawn of Mana, Children of Mana, Heroes of Mana)
• Series monster design supervision: Koichi Ishii (GREZZO Co., Ltd.)

Hiroki Kikuta back for the soundtrack!? Say no more!
Very interesting that they got Koichi Ishii back as well, if only in a supervisory role.  Grezzo have been awfully quiet since they released the Miitopia HD remake in 2021...

Edited December 8, 2023 by Dcubed

[EEVILMURRAY]

Getting Tales vibes from this, which please me greatly.

Were the previous Mana games real/turn combat? because this looks more real time, and I thought they were turn based

[Dcubed]

2 hours ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Getting Tales vibes from this, which please me greatly.

Were the previous Mana games real/turn combat? because this looks more real time, and I thought they were turn based

The Mana games are all real-time (with a pause when accessing your menu), and are more similar to Zelda than Tales of when it comes to combat and traversal gameplay.

[Julius]

Summer 2024:

 

[EEVILMURRAY]

For a nearly 7 minute video, that had dramatically less "gameplay reveal" than I was expecting. But I loved that dudes leather jacket.

One thing about the music "transition" going from field into battle (the 4.50 mark), maybe it was too subtle for me to register, but from what I could tell, it added a bit of a army marching drum and the violins(?) got a little louder, but the transition was so slow he'd already defeated one monster before the music noticeably changed?

I got vibes of coming close to your first Deku Baba and that sinister music sneaking in, was perfect. Or for a more immediate transition, have both tracks playing at the same time and shift the volume - which I understand is how they smoothly went between land/water moments in Banjo Kazooie

[Hero-of-Time]

 

[Julius]

17 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

 

Wild that this still only has 'Summer 2024' as a release window given that it's just a few months out, I wonder what's up with that? 

Per a Famitsu interview with Masaru Oyamada, this is being developed by NetEase's Sakurai Studio:

Quote

--Which company is in charge of the development of the game?

Oyamada: It is Netease's Sakura Studio

--I didn't know that. What made you decide to work with Sakura Studio this time?

Oyamada: The big deciding factor was the video and technical demo we had when we first did the R&D. We were still considering character designs when we were shown a 3D model of Reese (a character from "Seiken Densetsu 3") that looked just like HACCAN's character illustrations. I felt that we could incorporate new elements into the game, so I asked HACCAN to help us out.

So I guess S-E's plan to focus on more in-house development hasn't quite come into effect just yet 

[Dcubed]

Odd choice of developer.  Would’ve figured it’d be Xeen, considering that they made the Trials of Mana remake (which Visions of Mana appears to be based on).

We’ll see though.