Experiencing Visions of Mana: Disjointed story.

The developers seemingly fixed the major bugs that were experienced the first time we tried playing through.  This time we didn't run into the same game-breaking bug as before - and only had one crash.  That, plus some QoL fixing, allowed us to finish the game.

This game is unfortunate.  It's unfortunate because clearly, the brilliant minds that wrote Seiken Densetsu 2 (Secret of Mana) are either no longer around or no longer care.

What I Liked

✅ Always good to see cutscenes.

✅ Though some of it was questionable, we love games with English dub.

✅ Graphically it doesn't look awful - a bit low on the texture side but otherwise a friendly, colorful look.

✅ Really good music in some of the areas.

✅ Sense of scale.  By which we mean: some dungeons give a visual sense of being absolutely massive.  The game uses travel gimmicks to expedite these trips, but it's still visually impressive.

What I Didn't Like

👎 It's almost like five different people wrote for the game.  First, you're witnessing a couple on the run; that couple turns out to be moderately important to the story.  But near the end it's revealed to basically just be a plot device for the final sequence (which is nauseating).  In other words, there are five different threads that all have the same common theme (basically) - the power of love.  That's fine, if done properly.  Not like this.

Then, there are towns with very intriguing side stories that get completely disregarded as the game forces you back to the "power of love" situation.  It's irritating.

👎 The elementals actually matter very little in the grand scheme.  In Secret of Mana, they're a constant presence as you battle.  Here, they're just cutscene fodder.

👎 One of the Benevodons, which are mythical beasts that you must at one point defeat, is absurd simply because it requires a gimmick to fight it; you can't just use your regular attack skills.  This took forever and it wasn't fun, especially since all of the others were just straight up fights.

👎 Way too many repeats of boss battles.  You will fight the regular bosses at least twice, plus the final boss at least five times.  It got old, real fast.

👎 Some of the bosses have way too much HP.  HP sponges are an excuse for not having a good set of enemies for players to defeat with strategy.

👎 All of the areas are basically tunnels, similar to Final Fantasy XIII.  There's no real freedom, only the illusion of it.

👎 Some characters are completely pointless.  The alm of Dark doesn't join as a fighter and just shows up randomly as a cutscene plot device.

👎 Flammie has absolutely no freedom of flight.

👎 One of the worst endings in the history of RPGs.

Summary

If you can get it on discount and just are bored for a throwback RPG, this one's fine.  It's just not fun or compelling overall.  The side stories are more entertaining than the mainline story which usually means the developers didn't really know where to take things.  The lack of freedom (even with Flammie) is insulting, and while it's a beefy, long game, a lot of that is artificial padding due to HP sponges, not actual fun.