There is a new Mana, as might have been fairly reliably conjectured leading up to it. While long since a matter of history, the 2000s Square Enix marketing strategies that relied mainly on rapid overexpansion highly affected the fortunes and future of the series: Koichi Ishii burned out and left to establish Grezzo, the games that came out have not been kindly assessed since, and anything new the series could've had to say went to slumber. The return to graces in the public eye seems to have been carefully laid out, then, in a series of increasingly better-than-the-last remakes and collections of existing material--but still, not trying for anything new other than rekindling the past. If Trials of Mana in its remade form was the proof of concept for where the series might go if given the chance, then Visions seems all but ready to realize that possibility.
The team looks star-studded to me, and what's been shown appears to be what the series is known to be and do... but I'm hesitant to commit to overt enthusiasm perhaps for that very reason of familiarity. Someone like HACCAN is a very good artist in their own right, but as someone who's previously only adapted other people's material (and came from a fan art background) there's a bit of whiplash in trying to find an angle on their original work being showcased here that doesn't seem just repeat executions on Series Iconography--you'd be excused if you mistook the protagonist for Randi, for example. The nominal premise of a single boy lead acting as bodyguard to their childhood girl friend also sticks to me as uninteresting, especially after coming out of Trials for allowing you to center whichever protagonist you wanted to act as the lead, and pick out the supporting players too. "Safe" is what the presentation of the game comes down to at this point, and maybe they feel there's little else recourse in the first step out of the series's past, and I hope they make the best of the superficially anodyne material involved.
The team looks star-studded to me, and what's been shown appears to be what the series is known to be and do... but I'm hesitant to commit to overt enthusiasm perhaps for that very reason of familiarity. Someone like HACCAN is a very good artist in their own right, but as someone who's previously only adapted other people's material (and came from a fan art background) there's a bit of whiplash in trying to find an angle on their original work being showcased here that doesn't seem just repeat executions on Series Iconography--you'd be excused if you mistook the protagonist for Randi, for example. The nominal premise of a single boy lead acting as bodyguard to their childhood girl friend also sticks to me as uninteresting, especially after coming out of Trials for allowing you to center whichever protagonist you wanted to act as the lead, and pick out the supporting players too. "Safe" is what the presentation of the game comes down to at this point, and maybe they feel there's little else recourse in the first step out of the series's past, and I hope they make the best of the superficially anodyne material involved.
