When I got Mana Khemia about 2 months ago, I had absolutely no clue about the game. The only thing I saw was a cover with Anime art on it, which is always a plus, a bigger box than usual, including the original Soundtrack of the game. And since it looked like a JRPG, and I love JRPG's, I bought it for 30€. So how did that investment turn out?

Well, first of all, I got 45 hours of playtime out of it, which kept me busy for almost two months, so absolutely no complains there. The soundtrack CD is also OK, nothing too good or too bad about it, maybe slightly above average. The problem with the soundtrack is, that you hear the songs very often in the game. Some songs become tedious, because you hear them way too often.



The story seems to take some inspiration in the Harry Potter series, since your protagonist is a student of an Alchemy school... oh yes, and he has amnesia, doesn't know a whole lot about his apparently famous father and seems to have a general lack of confidence, while possessing special powers. The story is very slow paced, almost annoyingly so, but the unique characters of your workshop are really the big positive point. In your free time outside of your working schedule you can (read: have to) invest some time into every characters own side-story. While this brings you no benefit (small edit: It gets you a mana for Roxis, I totally forgot that, thanks to Ckarasu) , you have to complete one of these stories in order to obtain the good ending.



Mana Khemia is not a standard JRPG, since it has a rather interesting Alchemy Synthesis system. This means you have to gather materials from gathering point per mining, fishing, fruit picking etc. You can also get some items by defeating monsters. You get recipes from merchants and sometimes from the Main or Side missions you do, so you can create new Weapons, armor or materials. This may sound very deep, but it really is not, and while this could be a totally optional mechanic, you have to do this in order to make your characters progress. The level-up system can be compared to the sphere system that can be found in Final Fantasy 10, you get points during the battle an by doing synthesis of new objects, you get new slots in you so-called Growth Book. This seems to be interesting, but it still is as linear as a normal level-up System. The class system also seems interesting at the beginning, but let me tell you how the weeks will work out for you in practice:
Chapter starts, week 1: Get to every shop and check for new materials and recipes, then do some synthesis in order to get stronger. After that you do 2-3 Classes in order to get all the required points in order to progress. Then you have some free time which you will spend on getting into the other characters stories. Then comes the ending event, including boss battle. This will be repeated 12 times!



The graphics are nice for a PS2 game, but they really do shine in the combat sequences, where you can actually get a good look at some nice animations and spell effects. The battle system is unique and fresh and keeps battles fast-paced and interesting, while not getting too tedious. Slowdowns are a huge problem in this game, because they appear quite often and they really suck! Don't know if this is a PAL-only problem, maybe somebody could tell me if that is also the case for the NTSC version. Speaking of which, it is really great that you can run the game in 60 HZ and Japanese voices are selectable.

So, to wrap it up, Mana Khemia is a nice experience, even though the Level-Up System is somewhat flawed, the development of the story tedious and slow. Battles and Character Development on the other hand are interesting enough to hold your attention. I give it a 6.5 on a real 10-point-scale.