Trials of Mana leaving PS Plus ahead of Visions of Mana release

Trials of Mana is among five games leaving PlayStation Plus in August, ahead of the release of forthcoming series addition Visions of Mana.

Five games are now in the ‘Last chance to play’ collection on Sony’s PlayStation Plus catalogue: NBA 2K24 Kobe Bryant Edition, Need for Speed Unbound, SpellForce 3 Reforced, Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed, and Trials of Mana.

All five will leave the service on 20th August.

Trials of Mana was released in 2020 for PS4, PC and Switch, and is a remake of the 1995 SNES game of the same name.

Its removal from the subscription service is perhaps partly due to Visions of Mana, the first brand new game in the series for over 15 years, which is due out on 29th August across PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox series X/S, and PC via Windows and Steam.

Square Enix has already confirmed it won’t be coming to Game Pass, however.

I went hands-on with Visions of Mana a few months ago and enjoyed its return to series roots.

“Thematically they both deal with characters trying to resist their fate in many ways,” series producer Masura Oyamada told me of the Mana and Final Fantasy series. “That’s something shared across both franchises but when it comes to Final Fantasy, I’ve always felt they position themselves as more of the cooler, edgier and stylish series, whereas Mana has always paid more attention to depicting the natural warmth and radiating a feeling of kindness from the characters.”

PlayStation Plus has just been updated with new games for July, including Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 – Reunion, The Jackbox Party Pack 9, Remnant II – Standard Edition, and cult-classic PSP tactics game Jeanne d’Arc from Level-5.