You will find a lot of things to do in Visions of Mana, especially as there’s a lot of content to be had. The trophies and achievements don’t really ask you to do all of the content, although you will still need to do a good chunk of it. The main story alone will probably take you around 35-40 hours and while there are no restrictions on difficulty for that, there is one trophy/achievement that is related to those settings. Once you finish the main game, there is a postgame story bit that unlocks some more content. Overall, depending on how you do things, you’re probably looking at about 50-60 hours to get all trophies/achievements.
Step 1 - Play the Main Story¶
The first step is to obviously play through the main story, which can be done on any difficulty. If you wish to make things super easy, put it on Beginner, but the game isn’t overly challenging, so playing on Hard isn’t going to make things a huge pain. There are a few things you should keep in mind while playing through the story, which are the following:
- Opening 100 chests (Treasure Seeker trophy/achievement)
- Gathering the Elementite as you unlock the Vessels
- Unlocking all Meridians (the save points)
- Defeating all of the Nemeses (see Step 2)
- Finding all of the Li’l Cacti
It’s also a good idea to collect all of the Grizzly Syrups as you come across them, since you’ll need to purchase a lot of items from the Dudbear. Other than that and the above, you should be pretty fine just going through the main story normally.
Step 2 - Side Quests and Ancient Ruins¶
Normally, you don’t really need to worry about the side quests, since most of the time, they are purely optional. However, there are a few you will want to do, since some of the game’s Nemeses are tied to them. Specifically, there are five side quests that have exclusive Nemeses, so make sure that you do them either as you play, or at the end of the main story. These side quests are as follows:
You will also want to save the Ancient Ruins until towards the end of the main story, since the enemies in them are level 50+. Basically, defeat all of the enemies in the areas outside the ruins, which will allow you access to an inner chamber with a Nemesis. Defeat that Nemesis to get to a chest that has a strong weapon. There is a trophy/achievement for simply finding all eight ruins, plus you’ll need all the Nemeses, too.
Step 3 - Postgame Story (Hard Difficulty) and Black Rabite¶
After you beat the main story and save your clear data after the credits, load it up and you’ll be able to do a postgame story. This is where the difficulty matters, as the last boss of this postgame story bit is Aeve Zalaha. You have to beat this boss on Hard difficulty for The Spawn of Calamity trophy/achievement. If you beat this boss on anything other than Hard difficulty and save over that game file, then you’ll have to do the whole thing over again on New Game+.
In addition to the above boss, there is one more that is only accessible after completing the main story, the Black Rabite. This optional superboss is found in the final story dungeon and can be quite challenging, but there is no set difficulty for it, so you could play it on Beginner if you want. Those are the two main things that can only be done in the postgame, as everything else can be found elsewhere.
Step 4 - Cleaning Up¶
If you’ve done Step 3 and haven’t gotten the platinum/all achievements, then the final step here is for cleaning up anything remaining. The majority of the trophies/achievements will likely unlock as you progress through the rest of the game, but there are a few that might not. As an example, Know Thine Enemy requires a full bestiary, but there are a few enemies that can be tricky to register. The two most common ones are the Lizardon, which comes from reducing the health of a Tonpole in Dura Gorge (they will transform), and Shadow Zero-One, an enemy that can only be found on the Floating Isle of Ulul in the postgame (when the enemies power up there).
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