Recent reviews by Aspect

I wish I could give this game a better review. And to be clear - There is a lot to like in Visions of Mana. If Steam had a neutral option, I would choose it. It is a decent time, if you have more patience than I do. But after 30 hours, and realizing I had another 20 ahead of me most likely, I realized there are games that respect my time more. The breaking point was finishing a chapter just for 25+ fetch-quests to pop up at once, all of which required me having to slog to different places of the map to collect them, and most of the quests involved going to different areas to complete and then return to. Given how much traveling in this game is a chore, I just turned the game off then and there.

The major issues are...
1. Exploration - I can see what they were going for, but failed to do. From the very first explorable area, there are "elemental crystals" and treasure chests you can only get by getting all of the elemental vessels. They obviously wanted to give you a reason to come back to previous areas, but since the monsters do not improve/change it just means you have two choices: Deny yourself Elemental Points, Items, and money for a bit to get all vessels (around the halfway point of the game, by my estimate) before coming back to get everything; or constantly come back to these maps each and every time you get a new vessel. The maps are also big for the sake of being big, with tons of empty space.
2. Side quests - Not interesting, not fun. Most are just "go here, kill X, return for money". They pop up sometimes with no warning, and frequently in villages you haven't been at in 10+ hours, so you have to keep checking the maps. Later side-quests, which made my frustrations boil over, wanted me to get the quest, travel to a completely different part of the world (sometimes multiple different parts), do some menial fetch task, and return.
3. Fast Travel - You can only fast travel between points on the same continent/island. And by 30 hours in, with more continents or islands to find, there were already 5 I'd been to. How do you travel BETWEEN continents/islands? Either use an item to summon a mount, which takes 30+ seconds to actually get done with its animation just to board, and then manually navigate over to the other continent/island. It sucks. Add that in with side quests asking you to travel between multiple continents and it just becomes padding and busy work.
4. Combat - Combat is perfectly serviceable... at first. But after 30 hours I was doing the same exact thing I was doing at hour 3. Maybe the later skills in the game really changed things up, but I was not putting in more time to find out. Sure, each character has "nine" classes. But really they each have 3 classes (weapons), and each class has 3 different elements. The only thing that determines their moveset is their weapon (with some special attack exceptions). And even still, most weapons just break down to light-combo, heavy-combo, and one or two mix-ins like launching an enemy. And some classes are just worthless, while some are so overpowered that you are choosing to actively hamper yourself by not using them (like moonblade).
5. Story - There is a decently interesting story in here, somewhere. But it's so slow, many times predictable, and even when it is moving along its not interesting enough to justify the time investment. The characters are just kind of there, existing. I was never really invested in their plight. Val is a Marty-Stu. Hinna is pure. Careena is a country gal with sass. Morley is refined. Palamena is a noble bookworm. Julei is a smarmy child. You have seen these characters 20 times before. And better.

Overall, it's not a terrible game. The story is okay when it is moving, the characters are inoffensive, the combat is serviceable, the locales are beautiful, and the audio is mostly good. But the game simply does not respect your time or evolve in an interesting enough way to keep me invested. It's a shame too, because this game was the unintentional swansong of the developer, so I wanted to love it.

In real life, it is incredibly hard for me to display outward emotions, and often times in life I end up 'masking' in order to appear much more friendly since I do not want to come off as emotionless to others. So when I say this game managed to even break me at moments, that is the highest compliment I believe I can give this story. And it wasn't just sadness, I also felt sheer joy and it emanates through the hard-fought victories and quiet moments the characters experience. Those are some of the most impactful moments the game can offer, on top of the incredibly poignant reflections on life, love, and loss. The less said about this game, the better, and I fully recommend it.

When I am not king this game is 0/10
when I am king this game is 10/10

I feel terrible writing this review, because this game started out very promising. There will be many spoilers, and while I will tag them all, I will try to warn which ones are mechanical spoilers and which are story spoilers.

* The game is short, as many others said. My first play-through, where I crossed every T and dotted every I, came in at just under three hours.
* On a positive note, the graphics are (mostly) well done, the voice work is amazing, and the atmosphere is suitably calm/unnerving at times.
* Mechanical spoiler: Very few of your "choices" matter until the penultimate moment. The game keeps hinting the guests could come back any moment and catch you if you aren't keeping the rooms exactly as they were, but... They never show.
* Story spoiler: The story is just not interesting. It starts out strong in atmosphere, and then kind of ends on a whimper.
* There are four actual characters you interact with in the story. It's incredibly lean, and disappointing. There are also all of 5 or so small hotel rooms, a lobby, and a basement to explore.
* Story spoiler: The plot twist for the true ending is so out of left field, or at least it feels like it at the time, It makes sense in retrospect if you re-contextualize everything. It's supposed to be some dramatic reveal, but it just makes you go 'oh, okay I guess'.
* Story & mechanics spoiler: Being a "good" maid who is truly invisible, leaving everything the way you found it, not interfering with evidence, playing like the guests could come back at any moment nets you the worst ending in the game, even though the game keeps implying you need to be careful about lying or tampering. To get the best, you need to actively destroy evidence because the cops will pin it on the wrong people for... reasons, even though in the true ending you have ample evidence to prove who the real killer is.

I truly hope this team takes another crack at making games, but this one was just a disappoint for me. There are not multiple mysteries and many guest lives to take a peek into; there is one mystery (and in my opinion, a weak one) that ends abruptly and without a finale buildup. I will forget this game tomorrow, and that's a real shame because I can tell genuine work went into it.

Despite the dev's best attempts otherwise this game is actually kind of good, but still completely sucks and I will buy a sequel day 1.

Early Access Review

Great little farming game so far with a lot of potential. While I intend to update my review later as more content rolls around, for now I want to shout out the developer who is using early access properly.

In the discord the developer is constantly responding to people, fixing bugs, and even walking people through workarounds and taking detailed notes. It's great to see when so many EA titles drop and then there is silence.

For that alone, I wanted to give the game a good EA rating, as I am sure it has a bright future.

It's so good. The lack of a map can be frustrating, but after my 5 hours with the game I felt like I knew it by the back of my hand. The movement is incredible, and there are so many ways to solve the jumping puzzles in the game. For the price, it's a steal.

I enjoy the sowing - The reaping, not so much.

This really, honestly breaks my heart. I was so into this game in chapter 1, and then every chapter after that it was like the life got sucked out of me.

Like others have pointed out, there are bugs galore. So, so many bugs. And it's a rather simple game at the end of the day, and the lead programmer made the wonderful "One Step from Eden," so I am not sure where the ball was dropped.

The gameplay is repetitive. Walk and fight, walk and fight, walk and fight.

But a lot of reviews mentioned the above two issues. For me, what really grabbed me at first was the potential of the world and story.

There are so many glimpses of brilliance that someone obviously came up with a really unique and interesting setting. I wanted to know so much more about how this world works, how it came to be, the powers at play, why the world is dying. But nothing is ever expounded upon, and the most worldbuilding you get is a few quips from players and enemies now and again.

This world would make a brilliant Tabletop Roleplaying setting, if actually fully fleshed out.

And spoilers, but the ending just... happens. Like, no explanation, it just happens. And not in an ambiguous way. Any good will I had up until that point just shattered. I don't mind vague stories you have to piece together, but there is no lore here to find. There are no theories to be crafted. It's so upsetting, it was a slap in the face after 10 hours of work.

So no, I cannot currently recommend this game for any reason. And it breaks my heart.

I didn't think this would work as well as it does, but it's actually surprisingly fun. I was worried it would be an RNG fest, and while there is plenty of that, you really need to think through plays and sometimes eat damage to build up a hand.