Heading to PAX East 2024, I was invited to go hands-on with Visions of Mana, the first mainline game in 15 years in the Mana series. As a long-time fan of the series, I couldn’t pass up the chance to see what the world and characters would be like.

Jumping right into the demo, it had us taking control of our party members: Val, Hinna, Careena, and Morely. While we needed more time to know these characters, they seem like a great motley crew of strangers banding together to save the world. The main focus of this demo was to showcase the open areas and combat mechanics.

Running around the open world of Visions of Mana felt good, as did being able to speed up by calling your mount a Pikul, a bird-like creature that acts as a speedy way to get around the map. Dotted around the map are several interesting points like side quests, treasures, and points where you can focus your elemental. While I am not sure what focusing your elemental did, it will be more fleshed out in the full release.

While everything looked very colourful in the same way the recent remake of Trials of Mana did, Visions of Mana was just a lot more open. When it gets to combat, that’s where things get interesting. Each team member has a base class, but by infusing them with an elemental, you gain specific abilities while remaining unique to each character. For example, the wind elemental can change one person into an archer while another into a rogue, making them extremely fast on their feet.

Being an action RPG, you’ll run around the encounter circle doing light and heavy attacks while being able to pull a trigger to map a face button to a skill. I wish these skills were better laid out in telling you what they did, as, for the most part, I just guessed, but even then, I was able to lay the beat down. Finally, each character within their class has an ultimate move that deals a ton of damage.

“While everything looked very colourful in the same way the recent remake of Trials of Mana did, Visions of Mana was just a lot more open.”

It’s hard to say how this will all feel in the full release, but for now, it felt good and fine-tuned, with only minor complaints of things not being labelled. Moving around the map and having to take verticality into mind is the first in a Mana game, and I am really looking forward to it.

But, after our brief demo, I sat down with Visions of Mana producer Masaru Oyamada and his translator and Communication support manager, Kenichi Morita, to talk about the Mana series as a whole.

What is it like creating a new entry in the series for the first time in fifteen years?

Masaru Oyamada: When it was first decided that we’d be making this game, there was a feeling of half joy and half pressure. Now that we’ve had people actually play the game, and people have actually voiced very positive and warm comments with us, I’m just at this point very, very excited for the game to finally launch.

As a fan of Secret of Mana and Legends of Mana, I definitely feel like the game is going back to its roots. Was that always the intention?

Masaru Oyamada: I’m very happy that you felt that way about both of those games! So, with Visions of Mana, as we were thinking about bringing this latest installment into the series, we really wanted to make sure that anyone who has extra experience with some of the previous games will be able to feel some nostalgia. And that’s something that was really important for us as we sort of explored the idea of making a new installment of the series.

With more recent remakes of Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana, were there any lessons learned from remaking those for modern consoles that have gone into creating Visions of Mana?

Masaru Oyamada: Yes, absolutely. The remakes originally began with Secrets of Mana. But even as we were making Trials of Mana, we were really thinking about already exploring some ideas about what we could do for this latest installment. And actually, with the release of the Trials of Mana remake, that was a game that was definitely ambitious in its own right. However, it was also a game that was thankfully well-received by many of our fans. And so once we saw that reception for our fans, I believe that was sort of when we were also able to finalize the overall direction for this latest installment, Visions of Mana.

In the first part of the demo, you get a real sense of how the scale has changed. It’s very wide and very open. What was the decision to lean into that?

Masaru Oyamada: So actually, the first thing that we really wanted to realize when we were initially thinking about creating this latest installment was that we wanted to create a world where you can really feel the life and the breadth of the spirits that reside in this world and really capture the feeling of abundance of nature too. Once we formed that basic idea of how we wanted to make the world, that was really where the sort of the design of the world came about.

This is the game that boasts the largest world within the past titles as well. And so when we thought about what was really necessary for us to achieve, that was when, you know, these ideas about utilizing a verticality within the gameplay came about, and this idea of incorporating much more three-dimensionality into the action and the movement also came to be as well.

With some, if not all, of the older Mana games, there’s always been themes of kind of the odd one out, if you will, is that theming still taking place in Visions of Mana?

Masaru Oyamada: Yes, when it comes to the story, one sort of common thematic element that’s been shared with all the past games is this theme of actually meeting new people and encountering new people but also bidding farewell and parting ways with others to and in this game, as well, we definitely wanted to incorporate some of those themes as I do hope you look forward to experiencing that.

Oyamada-san, I have to ask: what is your favourite monster or creature that lives in the Mana series?

Masaru Oyamada: I’m not sure if it will ring a bell for you, but it’s actually a monster called Poto.

Kenichi Morita: He’s trying to draw it accurately…

The Mana games share many monsters and creatures besides the fan-favourite Rabite. Will there be any other returning fan-favourite creatures?

Masaru Oyamada: Yes, absolutely. There’ll be recurring monsters. This is something that the original creator of the Mana series, Koichi Ishii, had been involved with creating monster designs for itself and on my end as well when I thought about what I could do to kind of retain and capture that feeling of a Mana game. I felt it was important to be able to bring back some of those old monster designs possibly incorporating new ones as well as introducing new monsters.

In the demo you played, you got to ride the Pikul, which is another monster design that Koichi Ishii designed for this game. I wanted to ask how you felt riding that creature.

There’s always this sweet side to all the monsters that really resonates with me a little bit. But I always find them dangerously cute, if that makes sense. Being able to ride a giant cute monster is always fun.

Masaru Oyamada: It makes me very happy that we share the same opinions on the Mana series. My hope is a game that, of course, longtime fans will definitely be able to enjoy. But even for newcomers, I believe this is a game where once you pick it up, you’ll be able to kind of understand right away what the magic is all about and what makes the Mana series so unique. I hope they’ll be able to find something that sparks joy in them when they play the game.