In 1997, the Gust Corporation began releasing a series of RPGs for the Playstation and Playstation 2 collectively known as the Atelier series. The first five games never made it out of Japan, but starting with the sixth game, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, NIS America began releasing them in the United States. In early 2008, they released Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, the ninth game of the series.
Unlike the earlier games, which feature typical RPG quest type adventures/plots, Mana Khemia is set in the Al-Revis Academy, a school for budding alchemists. Much like a typical Harry Potter novel, the plot is interwoven with the need to go to class, do assignments, and eventually graduate. And actually, it is the lengthy series of side quests that players will generally spend most of their time on. With such a setup, the game tends towards a lighthearted atmosphere, and it has a wonderful cast of characters.
Mana Khemia follows the story of Vayne Aurelius, a child living with only his cat in the woods who has no knowledge of his past. One day, he is approached by Zeppel, an instructor at the Al-Revis Academy who informs Vayne that he has been accepted into the school. With little else to do, Vayne takes Zeppel up on the offer and enrolls.
Once in school, Vayne’s life would be full enough with just having to complete his assignments. Most other incoming students have at least a passing familiarity with alchemy, but he is coming in blind. Add in the fact that he also embarks on a journey to discover who he really is, and he rarely gets any downtime.
In the world of Mana Khemia, everything revolves around alchemy—the syntheses of new items. While there are student shops all around campus that allow you to purchase materials, the better materials must either be found or created. And with this, the majority of the time playing Mana Khemia involves expanding your Grow Books. According to the storyline, the Grow Books are essentially the notebooks that students use to take notes on the creation of items and medicines. For the purposes of the player, the Grow Book acts as the method to advance your characters abilities.
In some ways, it reminds me of the Sphere Grid system used in Final Fantasy X. Instead of just achieving experience from battles to raise levels, characters get AP to spend on new stats and abilities. Unlocking these stats requires synthesis; as you make new items, they appear in a character’s Grow Book as a completed synthesis, and attached to each item are abilities and attributes that you can use your accumulated AP to unlock. So for example, once you have created a Ragged Collar, you can use AP to purchase a +20 SP bonus, +10 to attack, and +5 to defense for Vayne. In a lot of ways, much of this game is spent grinding for “levels,” but because the method of doing it is so interesting, it never got boring for me. However, it is also interesting to note that because of this method, the game is very controlling as to how powerful you can make your characters at any particular time. There is no over-leveling allowed here.
As I mentioned before, playing through Mana Khemia centers around achieving the grades to pass your classes. The game is separated into chapters, with each chapter broken down into a number of weeks. Each week has a specific theme, whether it be class time, an event, or even free time. Classes can have a multitude of purposes, whether they are searching for a certain rare material, synthesizing specific items, or even learning battle strategy by defeating a monster in a certain way.
Being successful in a class nets you an A, B, or C depending on how well you did along with an appropriate number of credits—4 for an A, 3 for a B, 2 for a C. If you fail a course, you get no credits. For each semester, you need to achieve a required number of credits to pass and move on with the game. If you achieve them, you are rewarded with free time at the end of the semester, and possibly bonus free time if you get the required credits early (i.e. the game gives you three class periods to achieve eight credits, and you get two A’s on the first two, there is no reason to take the third). If you do not get the credits, though, you lose your free time in order to take extra courses.
And that would be a shame, because it is during free time that you get to take on jobs and do the character side quests. Much like classes, Jobs ask you to do a certain task, but instead of getting class credit for it, you will instead garner rewards such as money and/or new recipes for your Grow Book. The character side quests are seemingly little snippets that help flesh out the various characters in your party. Like for example, you might be wondering what Jess does in her spare time, only to find out that she has blown up the workshop and needs your help covering it up.
Assuming you manage to get straight A’s, you will get enough free time throughout the game to almost complete each person’s side quest. I say almost, because the game will only ultimately allow you to fully complete one. Full completion of a character quest is necessary to get the good ending of the game, along with a subending that will conclude the quest you completed. So, in essence, you need to complete the game eight times to see the bad ending, plus all seven versions of the good ending.
Thankfully, this is made easier by the handy addition of New Game +. Since first seeing it on Chrono Trigger many years ago, I have long held that New Game + should be a mandatory part of any RPG. In Mana Khemia, New Game + allows you to keep any money and AP you have earned, along with the status of your Grow Books. So if you complete the Grow Books to 100% by the end of your first play- through, then your characters will be pretty strong at the start of the second game. All you lose is your items, but without the need to synthesize absolutely everything for your Grow Books, getting what you need is a bit easier. And without having to worry about expanding your Grow Books, additional runs are significantly quicker.
Mana Khemia is the first RPG in a good long while that I have been able to completely immerse myself in. Its irreverent humor (seriously, there is an armor for females known as “Bad Girl,” I found myself hating games that don’t update character appearances depending on equipment; and I’m not even going to mention the Devil’s Panties) mixed with some fun exploration and a different approach to plot pacing made it a lot of fun.
And for the most part, the plot was pretty light on gravity, a nice change from the standard “everybody is going to die in horrible ways if we don’t complete our quest in the next five minutes!” attitude that most modern RPGs try to hit you over the head with (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy). Vayne acts as the prototypical sullen, emo guy that Japan loves for their RPGs (again, I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy), but he gets nowhere near as annoying just because of the happy-go-lucky attitude of the rest of the game. Granted, it gets a bit dark near the end, but even that is tempered by the surrounding atmosphere.
>But I think the thing that got me interested the most was its simplicity. The battle and growth systems seem complex at first but are pretty easy to manipulate once you figure them out. I keep comparing to Final Fantasy, but it was nice for once to be able to jump right into a game and have an idea of what I was doing. I’m a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series, and I love the fact that they keep trying new things with their systems, but it seems that with each incarnation I get roughly 3/4ths of the way through before I feel completely comfortable with how I am doing things. Complexity is nice, but simplicity can be just as nice too.
We also cannot forget about the fantastic cast of characters. I’ve already mentioned Vayne, but his partners are all wonderfully done too. There’s Jess, who is a bit over-enthusiastic about alchemy to the point that she screws up constantly; then Nikki, the violent Beastgirl looking for a husband; and of course, Flay, the upperclassman who keeps repeating years because he is more interested in dispensing justice then he is with silly things like exams. Add in the brilliant, but anti-social, Roxis; the ghost, Pamela; the Samurai-in-Training, Anna; and the alien, Muppy, who is bent on world domination, and Vayne has a fairly eclectic circle of friends in his workshop/party. In general, there is not a whole lot of character growth among anybody in Mana Khemia, but that just speaks back to the simplicity of the whole thing. Each person has a completely different personality, but they all mesh well into a great cast.
In the end, Mana Khemia has allowed me to rediscover my love of the RPG genre. As games continue to get longer and more complex, I find myself less inclined to give myself over to them. Mana Khemia felt very old school to me, and for the first time in a long time, I had nothing but joy in playing it. It also helped that a full completion clocked in at about 45 hours, so I didn’t have to give up a few months of my time to play it. It may be a bit too simplistic for some, but I would think that the wonderful cast of characters and the (mostly) cheery story would suck in any RPG fan, and might even convert some non-RPG-fans. I know that I am now interested in checking out the rest of the Atelier series, not to mention the Mana Khemia sequel which comes out later this year.
