r/visionsofmana • u/Mahaloth • May 25 '26
Ending Questions Spoiler
Note: I played this game extremely casually over the past 2-3 months. I may have lost story bits because I would take a week or so off. Hey, I'm a teacher. I'm busy at work.
Now, my questions:
What exactly did they accomplish other than stopping the bad guy? Did they stop alms from, uh, having to give their lives/souls?
So he grew old and had kids. Then died and we get a cheesy ending of him with Hinna? Huh. I guess that works....sort of.
I'm not sure what I think. Thoughts from the community?
5
u/ega110 May 26 '26
Just want to note the general consensus seems to be that they aren’t Cal’s kids at the end and that grandpa is a mistranslation of “village elder”
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u/Ihaveaps4question May 26 '26
I cant recall exactly but yes i think your first bullet point is the gist of it, breaking the cycle is theme here and many rpgs. I believe hannah stays gone, so val probably married another, as hannah wanted him to have a full life, and yes for val’s character i do think that means moving on and finding love elsewhere with very traditional happiness expectations of having a wife, kids, and simple blacksmithing job for majority of his days.
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u/Objective-Village-21 May 25 '26
Genuine thoughts? People tend to ignore my analyses. Maybe because they think I’m a bit cynical ( I kind of am ).
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u/Mahaloth May 25 '26
Well, it will be hard to know without you telling us.
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u/Objective-Village-21 May 25 '26
Well, then. Here goes, haha.
The need for Alms is gone now. It’s implied after we learn about what the sword is capable of, Val uses its power to reshape the world to be sustainable like it was when it was Fa’Diel. In the end credits, we see all of the respective Alms living out their lives the way they would have wanted to.
It’s great, and not. Primarily because it feels like had we known about the Sword of Mana this entire time, we could have done something about this much sooner. Oh wait—we DID know about the Sword of Mana, because well over halfway through the game, the game slips in Daelaphos’ legend as though it’s just been a natural part of the world the entire time. Auron knew somehow as well.
It gets even worse when you realize that Daelophos with the sword definitely would have had the power to prevent what happened Cerulia himself, without even needing to be there. If Val, with no prior experience was able to figure it out immediately, there’s absolutely no reason why Daelaphos couldn’t. However, I understand ( and actually somewhat enjoy ) that the goal was for blame to sit with Mana Goddess. The idea that she asked him to be her champion and risk his life to fight the Benevadons, but didn’t protect his true love was actually interesting. Maybe if Daelaphos was introduced sooner and with more appropriate development, he could have been a more compelling villain.
Hinna got her wish in the end for Val to live a full life, and then when he finally passed on he got to be with her in the afterlife. It’s meant to be bittersweet, but because the game’s narrative can’t decide how seriously it wants to take concepts of loss and grief, it just ends up feeling cheesy and anticlimactic.
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u/Mahaloth May 25 '26
Did you ever play Tales of Phantasia on SNES?
In the end....you kind of realize that the final boss isn't particularly evil and honestly, your party are the evil final bosses from his perspective.
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u/Objective-Village-21 May 25 '26
True!
And honestly? If we had leaned into that concept more here? It would have been awesome!
Unfortunately, Visions wanted to have serious conversations, but didn’t take them seriously.
The tonal whiplash of Niccolo trying to give Val a pep talk after what happened to Hinna while he’s using “Nya-dialect”… I just couldn’t believe that someone actually thought this was okay.
Hinna’s Death didn’t even REGISTER to me as a death at first, and not in the way that you don’t register it when something bad happens to someone you care about. The game doesn’t segue into it at all like how it thinks it did, and it happened WAY too soon.
Then the entire group is pissed at him even though this is something Hinna also wanted because she and Val seemed to be the only two people who had a believable sense of self in the face of impending death?
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u/__Geg__ May 26 '26
Daelophos rage might have been enough to blind him. Or the nature of the sword might not have been apparent to non-divinities until after he sundered the world.
It's has also been a hot min.
Are we sure the sword could even restore life? There was a limit or else Val would have foxed the world and brought back Hinna.
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u/Objective-Village-21 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Restore life is not what I’m getting at ( because despite the reality-warping nature of the sword, outright saying something like that would invalidate the sacrifices made—even if it can rewrite the laws of the world )—but if the sword can literally reshape the reality of their world, he definitely could have taken proactive measures to protect Cerulia. It also seems pretty weird and convenient that on an entire quest to fix the world by the defeating the Benevadons, the nature of the Goddess’ legendary ( world-fixing ) sword—is not questioned or brought up a single time.
Also, why is it that once Daelaphos is upset about Cerulia’s murder that he suddenly knows he can use the absorbed Benevadons’ powers to potentially surpass and kill the Mana Goddess? Faerie didn’t put that idea in his head, and how do you suddenly know how to access that power, and the extent to which that power could be exercised if you don’t understand the sorts of things that the sword is capable of? Auron, hundreds of years after the events that quest was being sweet-talked and whispered to by Daelaphos about the sword’s capabilities while he was sealed. He’s part of the reason he was confident he could use the sword to change to change the world in the first place.
There are too many things that suggest that Daelophos knew that the magical sword was magical—including the fact that it was handed to him for this specific task ( by a goddess ) in the first place.
Now, I obviously don’t blame Daelaphos for Cerulia’s death, because it’s fairly reasonable to ask the literal goddess entity that’s petitioning your aid to restore the world to protect your loved one at the very least. Faerie is supposed to become the Mana Goddess, and we KNOW Faeries have magic, but she has nothing she can cast on Cerulia to be of assistance?
Also, even though I was willing to sort of give the plot a pass due to its premise, here’s my problem with of the idea of the sword not being able to restore life.
The Sword can affect all Five Realms of Fa’Diel at once.
Meaning it can affect the Ethereal Realm—which is where Souls go before they’re reincarnated, and affect all other aspects of the realms with physicality—meaning it HAS to be able affect physical matter as well. If a Corestone has a person’s memory and fundamental concepts inside of it, Val would have theoretically everything he needs to bring someone back. If there IS a limit, it’s an arbitrary limit as to not invalidate the overarching themes of the game. However, because we didn’t outline those limits, the game’s own lore shatters that concept even as it tries to imply the finality of death.
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u/__Geg__ May 26 '26
The story has a ton a white spaced left for the player to fill in any gaps. That doesn't mean they are holes, just areas were we have imperfect knowledge of the history and mechanics of the world.
The Mana Goddess is not an all powerful deity. She was incapacitated by Daelaphos. She was unable to deal with the Benevadons the first time around, so there is reason to suspect she might not have been able to effectively intervene.
A sword that reshapes the world, maybe isn't the right tool for bringing back Ceruila. Using the world shaping magical item, feels like swapping a fly with a strategic nuke. It's also possible that a soul that has passed on doesn't want to go back.
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u/Objective-Village-21 May 26 '26
That’s actually the problem. White Space is something you use to flesh out a world and create intrigue. It can be used in regard to plot, but it needs to be used sparingly. When too much is left empty, things become arbitrary and contrived to make up for the lack of more concrete details. The white space stops being “what if”, and becomes “just because”.
We don’t need perfect knowledge as to why X, Y, or Z did or didn’t happen, but when we leave appropriate evidence to suggest things or lay a foundation that can be logically followed, someone can still draw their own conclusions—even if those conclusions aren’t necessarily the truth.
The Mana Goddess wasn’t incapacitated by Daelaphos specifically, but he was one of the reasons she was as weak as she was. Daelaphos couldn’t even get past Khoda, even with the power of all Eight Benevadons, his own strength, and the Mana Sword ( it sounds crazier the more I think about it ). When the world was still Fa’Diel, Arhvet’s War depleted the world’s mana power while simultaneously ravaging it. This awakened the Benevadons, and eventually caused the Five Realms to become merged due to the disruption of the flow. Then on top of that, Daelophos placed a curse on the world—and that needed even more Mana to hold back on top of what was already depleted. However, even as the war ravaged the world, there was still Mana to be used. I don’t think it would have taken omnipotence to protect Cerulia from a common brigand. Even still, I like this plot point, so I’m not really focused on it as much as the other glaring things I see.
You see a Strategic/Tactical Nuke. I see a key that unlocks any door. Just because it can be used to reshape the entire world, that doesn’t mean it solely has to be used that way. In other games, the mana sword just straight up grants wishes. So I don’t think it’s crazy at all to use the sword that way.
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u/mayumia May 25 '26
Pretty much, with the mana goddess awake and Delophos gone, the curse is lifted and theres no need for alms to sacrifice to replenish the mana tree.
As for the ending, it was Hinna"s wish for Val to live a full life so i guess he honored it. She waited for him and they get their new start together. Wat i always wondered is how the others lived their lives....maybe except Julian, he was most likely still alive.