GRAND REUNIONS
Visions of Mana - https://youtu.be/UZwUO1gmXgc
Hey! I beat a game this month!
When I was starting December, I was hoping that I would be able to get through Final Fantasy XIII or Visions of Mana, and then would fill the remainder of the month with the other game irrespective of day of week. And then I actually finished neither. At least I managed to get to the credits of this game.
Do I feel like this was a culmination of the whole series and that it's over now? No. Absolutely not. If anything, I feel like the entire "of Mana" series is the same game, over and over, refined each time. But in a meaningful way, not one that makes me bored. (I would compare it with the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, another one I adore.) Each has all the same story beats as the others, for the most part, and they also share things such as combat mechanics and names of legendary beasts and so forth. Every game has a Tree of Mana and a Sword of Mana. (And the sword is never usable! Just once I'd like to actually get to swing the thing outside of a cutscene.) I'm looking forward to whatever comes next, though hopefully it's at least a few years off. Visions came out this year and I don't want any game to be rushed. Besides, I have enough backlog.
Did I see the ending coming? Yes. Was it any less fulfilling for it? No. I think it's important that a reader/viewer/player/etc. of a story actually has some idea what's going to happen before it happens. Unexpected twists are great at the middle of a tale, like, well, everything directly involving Eoren. But the ending should feel predictable.
One last surprise for me was that we actually got to see the end of Val's life. Something to note of that cutscene: the only part of Val that we see is his hands, set around that pendant he bought for Hinna so long ago. The children call him "Grandpa" so it's plausible that he did marry someone else at some point (though it could just be an honorific from the village's children), but he clearly never forgot his first love. And the fact that we see those aged hands is probably why the first thing Val does as a spirit is look at his hands. They're young again. It sets the tone for himself about what is going on, before he even looks up to see where he is.
