Visions of Mana, an upcoming action-RPG from Square Enix releases August 29 on PS5 and PS4. It features a thrilling action combat system, where you take on hordes of monsters with weapons, spells and a host of awesome abilities. It’s fast-paced and tests both your reflexes and strategy.

At the heart of the experience are the Elemental Vessels. These tools, imbued with elemental power, allow you to perform incredible actions in combat – from freezing time to dishing out damage with style. What’s more, equipping them to one of the five playable characters will change the character’s class, opening up all new options in the heat of battle. See some of them in action here.

In that presentation, we revealed three of these Elemental Vessels, representing Earth, Light and Darkness. For this accompanying blog, we asked Visions of Mana’s producer Masaru Oyamada and director Ryosuke Yoshida to reveal a little more about each – and the combat system as a whole!

Capturing the (elemental) spirit of the Mana series

While Visions of Mana is intended to be a fresh start for the series, with no prior experience needed, the team still wanted to capture the series’ very distinct identity through the combat. But what defines the combat of a Mana game?

Masaru Oyamada (producer)

From the start of the series, the Mana games have featured multiple weapons and magic spells for the player to wield – as well as enjoyable RPG character growth systems. So, it was important that people feel those elements strongly in Visions of Mana too!

Ryosuke Yoshida (director)

One of the most important elements of Mana games is that feeling that you’re interacting with the elementals (spirits that control elements like wind, fire or darkness).

That’s at the core of the design of Visions of Mana and something that was really important to me. It’s such a vital part of that distinctive Mana series identity, and if the battles didn’t capture it, there would be no point to the game at all!

In Visions of Mana, we focus the flow of battle around the use of the Elemental Vessels – potent weapons infused with elemental magic. These artifacts use the Elemental’s powers to manifest mysterious primal forces, such as trapping the foe in water bubbles or pinning them in the air with wind blasts. 

The effects they create can also be changed in various ways through the player’s actions, which creates a fun dynamic where it feels like you are interacting with the Elementals as you fight. 

Getting to the core of combat

The combat in Visions of Mana is very fast and fluid. You’ll have consider lots of different aspects, from positioning to the abilities you unleash, but you’ll soon be able to take down foes in spectacular style. 

There’s a lot of amazing powers to use in combat, especially when you start using Elemental Vessels, but before they could get into that, the developers had to make sure the basics of battle were rock solid.

Ryosuke Yoshida

When we were thinking about how to design the battle system, we didn’t just look at the combat in isolation. Instead we tried to make it something that tied closely into the overall concept that was decided for the game.

Central mechanics like switching between three party members in battle, using ring menu and shortcut bindings are inspired by elements from past Mana games. However, I had a strong desire to put more weight on switching between different characters during combat. 

One way we did this, for example, was through the Elemental Vessels and the gameplay options they offer. You have a party of three characters and can equip each one with a different Elemental Vessel that manifests different effects. It’s possible to follow up after you use one of these effects by switching and using a different elemental power to create an even more potent compound ability. 

In this way we create motivation and benefits for the player to switch between different characters in battle.

That said, we took care not to make it so important that switching became compulsory. To that end, we avoided creating enemies that can’t be defeated unless you jump between characters.

Elemental Vessels

As mentioned, the Elemental Vessels are central to both combat and traversal in the game. These artifacts, bestowed on the player by the eight elementals over the course of the game, offer you new ways to get around the world, and special powers to use during battles.

This was a core focus for the game and sits at the heart of the experience. Naturally, that meant it was something the team were very careful to make as satisfying and exciting to use as possible.

Ryosuke Yoshida

I felt it was very important to have a consistent feel across the whole game, with a design that tied both the battles and the exploration to the core concept of interacting with the elementals as sentient beings.

The tools that let us realise this concept practically are the Elemental Vessels. 

Masaru Oyamada

The Mana series has always featured eight distinct elementals with each embodying one of the core forces that shape the world. Naturally then, there would be eight vessels that house each of their powers. We came up with lots of interesting ideas for different objects to use, but ultimately aimed to create designs that would best capture the interesting aspects of each elemental.

Vessel of Earth: Gnome Shovel