Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Gust
Release Date: March 31, 2008
Genre: Role-Playing (traditional turn-based)
ESRB Rating: E10+

Mana Khemia is an offshoot of Gust’s Atelier series of games, and will be very familiar to anyone who’s played one of those games in the past. Perhaps in its own little nod to alchemy, Mana Khemia mixes up ingredients and styles from many other past RPG’s and combines them into a solid package.

You take on the role of the amnesiac alchemist (say that five times fast) Vayne, who’s just accepted an invitation to attend the Al-Revis Academy of Alchemy, kind of like the Hogwarts for young scientists. Similar to Persona 3, Mana Khemia features a structured school system, in which you can attend classes and take tests, fraternize with your fellow students, and spend your free time by partying like all good student at Al-Revis do, by bashing monsters and looting their corpses for alchemy ingredients.

Bashing monsters occurs in turn based style similar to Atelier Iris 3, with cards on the top of the screen representing turn order. In a touch of Grandia, the turn order can be altered by casting spells or knocking enemies back down the order, giving the system a good strategic bent.

The battle system also has touches of Breath of Fire 4, by allowing 6 characters to battle at once, separated into two lines of 3. Only the front line can actually engage in combat, while the backline recharges their power. Effectively switching your party members between the two rows will largely determine how well you do in battle.

One major difference in Mana from other RPG’s is that characters don’t gain EXP to level up and increase stats. Instead you need to create items through the alchemy system that will unlock bonuses on your skill tree.

This system shares similarities with the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X, and is a nice change of pace from standard levelling systems, but is not without its share of difficulties. For those who like to level grind and build their characters up above and beyond what is required, you’ll find that this simply isn’t possible in Mana.

Items and ingredients you’ll need to unlock bonuses won’t become available until certain areas, meaning you’re all but stuck at a specific power level at each point in the game. The benefit to this system is that battles present a decent challenge throughout the game with a balanced difficulty curve.

The graphics are the usual Gust standard of 2-D sprites with 3-D backgrounds. The graphics are underwhelming on the whole, and recycle some artwork from Atelier 3 as well, but the animations in battle are solid and overall the look of the game shouldn’t turn you off.

As usual NIS America includes both English and Japanese audio tracks for the voiced dialogue. The English voice work wasn’t great, and the Japanese was your standard fare, you’ll either dig it or not, depending on your preference.

The soundtrack was decent with some great battle music, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the environment themes. It’s the type of music that fits the setting well, but that you’ll quickly forgot once the game is turned off. There are also some Japanese vocal songs scattered throughout the game which were quite good.

Fans of traditional RPG’s and previous games in the series will find much to enjoy in Mana Khemia. Those looking for a next generation style effort in terms of production values and innovation would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

News: The sequel to Mana Khemia, Mana Khemia 2 – Ochita Gakuen to Renkinjutsushi Tachi is scheduled for a May 29 release in Japan for the PlayStation 2. There has been no official announcement of a North American release yet from NIS America, but don’t be surprised to see one forthcoming in the next couple of months.