Debuting all the way back in 1991, the Mana franchise may not be the longest-running JRPG series, but it's certainly one of the most beloved. Beginning life as Final Fantasy Adventure, a Game Boy spin-off that swapped that franchise's usual love for turn-based combat with a more action-oriented approach, the Mana series took full form in 1993 with the release of the SNES classic Secret of Mana.

Since then, the Mana series has enjoyed a fairly lengthy career in both Japanese and Western markets, with a slew of spin-offs and recent remakes keeping the franchise in the public consciousness. Though, it's been a long time since the last mainline Mana release. Launched in 2006, Dawn of Mana was the last mainline franchise entry to release, meaning that the upcoming Visions of Mana will be the first new mainline entry in 18 years. Visions of Mana is going to be a pretty huge deal this year, and if newcomers want to experience the franchise from the start, they might want to start their homework now.

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How Long It Takes to Beat Every Mana Game

The table above is loosely categorized into the three main types of Mana games, main entries, spinoffs, and remakes. The four mainline Mana entries, ranging from Final Fantasy Adventure to Dawn of Mana, vary quite heavily in terms of length, with the first and last game taking around just 10 hours, while the middle two - and arguably the best of the mainline entries - come in at around 20-25 hours to complete their main stories.

The Mana spinoffs are ironically a bit more uniform with their runtime. Legend of Mana is the longest of the spinoffs coming in at around 18.5 hours to complete the main story, though the other spinoffs don't follow too far behind at all, all coming within just two hours of one another. The remakes are an interesting oddity. While Adventures of Mana, the remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, has a very similar runtime to its original counterpart, both Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana's remakes take a good few hours less to complete than their original versions, likely due to modern loading screens and quality-of-life improvements.

There's no official word on how long Visions of Mana is going to be, but right now it seems like a safe bet to assume that it'll come in at around the 20-hour mark to complete the game's main story, with 20 hours being the franchise's general average. But then again, for the first new entry in 18 years, Square Enix might want to go above and beyond with Visions of Mana's story, which could easily end up making it the longest game in the franchise.

Legend of Mana

Platform(s)

PlayStation 4 , Nintendo Switch , iOS , Android , PC , Microsoft Windows

Released

July 15, 1999

Developer(s)

Square Enix , Square

Publisher(s)

Square Enix

Genre(s)

Action RPG , Adventure

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

Engine

unreal engine

ESRB

t

How Long To Beat

28 hours

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