The time between this being announced and this being out felt pretty quick, but no doubt even quicker to the devs, whose studio was shuttered pretty much immediately on it being out the door. Industry situation remains gross, film at 11.
Plot is pretty much Mana by numbers - travel the world and ally with elemental spirits on a pilgrimage to the mana tree - the new factor being that your purpose is to gather "alms" en route. These are select representatives from each village, who by sacrificing themselves to the Goddess, allow for the region to continue to prosper for another 4 year cycle that most everyone is fine with perpetuating. Generally, neither the plot nor its delivery are particularly strong; it's far too often that there's a rhythm of walk ten paces -> cutscene -> walk ten paces -> next cutscene, which I don't think anyone is a big fan of.
Each element has a corresponding vessel, which serves two purposes - allowing you to traverse the environment in a new way and reach new areas, and then assigning them to characters to unlock new classes, room-clearing class skills, and abilities that you can then buy with elemental currency. This adds up to a decent number of ways that you can configure your party, whereas in practise I've found myself taking the role of the default character with the first class I unlocked for almost the entire game, doing plenty of damage with basic attacks, doubling up via elemental buffs as appropriate, and falling back on use of cooldown vessel attacks and class skills in a pinch.
There's a small amount of platforming in dungeons, but the outside environments are typically vast and full of collectable stuff (coins, "grizzly syrup" (ew), elemental points, chests...) that is marked out on the map. The map is itself is a little buggy - markers often being frustratingly off by a little, and sometimes when using fast travel, it'll tell you there's a number of missed things that turns out to be an entirely incorrect when you get there. Side quests are plentiful but often very dry, MMO-like "kill 5 of this monster" dressed up with lines of inane dialogue.
Other gripes with speaker audio aside, I'm generally finding it a bit... middling? That the first two bosses are the first ones from Secret and Trials really set the scene which then carries on as almost every other boss is a recycle - while it's built on a fairly competent ARPG base, this feels like a "Mana Greatest Hits" skin rather than anything new or fresh. I've seen the credits at this point and am now just mopping up the last few trophies, and while I haven't hated it, I don't know if I'd recommend anyone to rush to it - certainly not over the recent Trials of Mana remake, which I found to be a stronger entry.
Plot is pretty much Mana by numbers - travel the world and ally with elemental spirits on a pilgrimage to the mana tree - the new factor being that your purpose is to gather "alms" en route. These are select representatives from each village, who by sacrificing themselves to the Goddess, allow for the region to continue to prosper for another 4 year cycle that most everyone is fine with perpetuating. Generally, neither the plot nor its delivery are particularly strong; it's far too often that there's a rhythm of walk ten paces -> cutscene -> walk ten paces -> next cutscene, which I don't think anyone is a big fan of.
Each element has a corresponding vessel, which serves two purposes - allowing you to traverse the environment in a new way and reach new areas, and then assigning them to characters to unlock new classes, room-clearing class skills, and abilities that you can then buy with elemental currency. This adds up to a decent number of ways that you can configure your party, whereas in practise I've found myself taking the role of the default character with the first class I unlocked for almost the entire game, doing plenty of damage with basic attacks, doubling up via elemental buffs as appropriate, and falling back on use of cooldown vessel attacks and class skills in a pinch.
There's a small amount of platforming in dungeons, but the outside environments are typically vast and full of collectable stuff (coins, "grizzly syrup" (ew), elemental points, chests...) that is marked out on the map. The map is itself is a little buggy - markers often being frustratingly off by a little, and sometimes when using fast travel, it'll tell you there's a number of missed things that turns out to be an entirely incorrect when you get there. Side quests are plentiful but often very dry, MMO-like "kill 5 of this monster" dressed up with lines of inane dialogue.
Other gripes with speaker audio aside, I'm generally finding it a bit... middling? That the first two bosses are the first ones from Secret and Trials really set the scene which then carries on as almost every other boss is a recycle - while it's built on a fairly competent ARPG base, this feels like a "Mana Greatest Hits" skin rather than anything new or fresh. I've seen the credits at this point and am now just mopping up the last few trophies, and while I haven't hated it, I don't know if I'd recommend anyone to rush to it - certainly not over the recent Trials of Mana remake, which I found to be a stronger entry.