Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy
Gust Co. / Nippon Ichi Software
Anthony: There’s something wonderful about being pleasantly surprised. It happened when we picked up Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis expecting nothing but a simple fluff RPG to kill time; we ended up with a game in our top five favorite RPGs of all time. Now, having produced a sequel less than a year and a half later, Gust has surprised me by creating what’s now probably one of my top two favorite RPGs of all time. Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy is an awesome RPG indeed.
Mana Khemia 2 is a character driven, episodic RPG that lets you follow the storylines of two separate characters and their workshop partners: Raze, a servant to a rich household who’s skilled in battle, and Ulrika, a poor southern girl hoping to learn alchemy to help raise an infant mana. Each character has his or her own storyline with different accessible characters, a few different dungeons, and different items to access. Some portions of the game directly overlap, with others being completely unique.
I had a few minor complaints with Mana Khemia 1, and I’m happy to say that they’ve been addressed in full. The infamous loading skips in the field and battle are fixed. The Day/Night cycle’s effects on monsters have been muted, while also giving you the option to camp at save points to skip time rather than just sitting around while the game runs. AP/levelling became basically useless in Mana Khemia 1 at endgame, but now levelling increases HP/MP and allows you to purchase stat-increasing items of your choice. And in general, item progression is better, including the introduction of unique minigames to gathering points.
Running two separate storylines to the a game is always a risky venture, in that inevitably not all players will try both, and with one always being arguably “better,” there are bound to be critical players who just picked the “wrong” one. The good news is that both stories have good elements and enjoyable characters, with each bringing bits of the overall plot together. Completing both gives access to an epilogue that’s charming and does a very good job of wrapping up both teams’ storylines.
The bad news is a player new to the series could be very easily misled by choosing Ulrika’s storyline first. While her story is important and perfectly fine overall, Ulrika herself is a less pleasant character through much of the game, and her team’s interactions with each other are generally just for comedic effect. Ulrika’s team spends a lot of time mocking each other, and has numerous scenes that exist just for humor and utter silliness alone... so it might lead someone to believe that the game just isn’t serious. That said, I rather enjoyed how they wrapped up her side of the story, and while Raze’s path has less humor and more drama, Ulrika’s team had us laughing on numerous occasions, and I’d never consider that a bad thing.
Items and recipes from the first playthrough can be immediately ported over to the other character’s storyline, which is a nice way of allowing you to see both storylines with much less time spent overall. It’s to that extent that I strongly recommend playing both storylines... but if you must choose, go with Ulrika for general absurdity and Raze for a more traditional RPG with humorous elements.
Gameplay, you ask? Well, more good news here. While the ever present Gust-brand alchemy system was good in Mana Khemia 1, it’s gotten some useful upgrades this time. For one, there’s no more unnecessary jumping between rooms to synthesize armaments and ingredients. An amazing feature included is that upon selecting a recipe ingredient you’re missing, the game immediately takes you to that item’s synthesis screen to create it. This is an incredibly useful feature that saves a ton of time in trying to remember what you need to make at any given time. Additionally, instead of sliding and choosing different special effects to equipment, all items now have their own intrinsic effects that are brought out by creating them at different ether levels. This gives a person more reason to experiment with the item itself rather than trying to come up with complex “this to make that to make this to make that” schemes.
This is all done with a very slick interface that shows you the stats, ether level bonuses and skills of each item you have available. As with Mana Khemia 1, these synthesized items get loaded into character-specific “Grow Book”s that allow you to augment their stats and abilities with AP earned from battles. The Grow Book’s presentation is simpler this time, no longer requiring items to unlock each other, and being a bit quicker to navigate at the expense of looking a little less pretty. Battles give AP bonuses for speed and taking no damage, which means the game has a basically endless cycle of rewarding the player for proper battling and synthesizing. Battles earn items/AP/recipes, items can be synthesized, synthesized items increase the grow book, AP is spent to power players up and now they fight better to earn AP faster. Players like me who really like to see the fruits of their labor will get it here in spades.
Battles are still a highlight, reminding me that the world of turn-based non-strategy RPGs is not dead. It’s hard to describe it all without getting into exhaustive detail, except to say it’s quite enjoyable. Characters have unique and useful abilities, you can use specific strategies for trying to delay and incapacitate enemies, and the Unite Mode > Intimate Strike/Guard > Finishing Strike system allows for an interesting risk/reward system in balancing when to go all out and when to play it safe. Characters in the back regaining MP and being able to choose how long you Defend for are still lovely features that I wish more games would employ.
Being a character-driven RPG, I’m happy to say that they’ve created another great cast of characters. The characters in the game have very amusing personalities, and we found ourselves really enjoying the special scenes even with characters we weren’t as attached to. The localization and writing really helps this along, with modern references and enough general absurdities to make Monty Python proud. If you prefer your RPGs serious and your characters to be brooding, silent types, this is probably not the game for you. If the idea of red ball calling himself “The Wandering Love Hunter” and possessing a cat doll to pick up women sounds more up your alley, then you’re in luck.
I’ve heard multiple sources complain that the music of the game isn’t as good as the first, which was full of many bouncy and absurdly catchy tunes. Having played through the game top-to-bottom, I wholeheartedly disagree. While it may have taken a little time to grow, several song of the very large soundtrack are either catchy, or just friggin’ cool. The various battle songs are awesome, and multiple character themes/wacky-situation themes are infectiously catchy. If anything, I feel they fleshed out the songs more, making them sound like complete songs rather than just silly interludes.
The voice acting is great once again too. I have little to say about it other than that they got very good quality voice actors again and that they play their roles very well. It’s still a slight bummer that the Japanese get voice-acted character scenes and we don’t, but hey.
Those used to Gust’s M.O. would assume not to expect a major graphical update, and they’d be correct. That said, they didn’t completely phone it in either. Yes, Gust’s games have some notoriety for frequently reusing sprites and monster designs, and that’s still true here. However, they also put a lot more attention into the design of environments in the game, the backgrounds, and have used more shading effects to give life to the various sprites. Battles look very cool, and some environments are just gorgeous in their 2-D detailed splendor. For some reason, they chose to upgrade this into the next-generation HD style graphics, and that means very, very small text for those of us still with antiquated box-TVs. No question, it’s hard to read stat and skill effects for battle. Sure, they’re still reusing sprites, but if it means they can crank out excellent games like this in the course of a year rather than make people wait 5 years at a time for a sequel of questionable appeal... I hope they’ll do it until the end of time.
If there’s anything for me to bemoan, it’s the fact that this style of game is going to remain out of the average gamer’s realm of appeal. The average gamer doesn’t want to play a completely linear J-RPG that focuses on humor and characters, and that even includes the ilk of the masses that have fallen in love with other NIS titles. Though I wouldn’t consider myself a niche-based gamer, Mana Khemia 2 is certainly a niche game, and it just happens to be some of the most enjoyable 80 hours of gameplay I’ve spent.
So, call me surprised again. I didn’t think I’d fall in love with the first game, and as quickly as the second game came out, I didn’t expect to be wowed again. But I got more than that. Mana Khemia 2 is a charming, fun game throughout, and it may be a long, long time before another game captures my heart in the same way.
Lauren: As huge fans of the the original Mana Khemia, Anthony and I were pretty psyched about a sequel being released so quickly. And guess what? Gust nailed it. They combined everything that was great about the first and combined it with some very smart and convenient improvements. The end result is a colourful, fun game with an excellent character progression system.
By today's standards, the graphics are dated, but they're still nice for the PS2 era. They even look more detailed and colourful than the original Mana Khemia, and the character art is very nice. A lot of enemy sprites were recycled, but it doesn't take too much away from the experience.
The music is similar to the original - simple, happy, and catchy. I found it to be a little less catchy than the soundtrack of the first; however, the songs seemed to have a lot more depth to them. Great stuff overall. The voice acting is, once again, fantastic. A lot of well-known voice actors from the game/anime community signed on for this one, and they did a great job. I'm sure a few of them in particular had a lot of fun with their roles (specifically Pepperoni and Goto).
The story is interesting, and the characters are fun. Mana Khemia 2 has a lot of charm and a fantastic localization, much like its predecessor. A few old characters make amusing returns, and the new characters are well-developed and generally amusing. Once again, the hilarious dialogue is what really makes these games great for me.
Without going into too much detail, I'll simply say that the gameplay is great. It's fun, quick, and satisfying. What I love most about these games is how everything seems to tie together - levelling up in a dungeon nets you experience points, money, and new items and recipes, which then result in stat increases, new abilities, and more to do in your Grow Book. Because of this, exploring a new area always results in stronger characters on many different levels. The battle system remains simple with a fun character rotation system and special abilities associated with it. I keep saying the word "fun", but that's really the best way to describe so much about this game. It's rare that I can do that.
Mana Khemia 2 is essentially two games in one - Raze's story and Ulrika's story. Once you finish both, you can complete an epilogue that truly finishes the game. It took us about 80 hours to beat both storylines and the epilogue, so this was definitely a long RPG. Still, it doesn't overstay its welcome - the time flew by for us and it never stopped being entertaining. Playing through the second storyline is also easier and faster since a lot of the progress carries over.
Gust, you've done it again. Mana Khemia 2 is colourful, fun, and downright hilarious. I just hope they keep doing what they're doing, and props to them for keeping the ol' PS2 alive.
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