One of GUST's best games to date?
I am a massive fan of the Atelier Iris series as a whole until AI3, in which I was rather dissappointed. So when I saw this in the shop, I bought it mainly on impulse to give the series another chance, and I honestly do not regret it one bit.
The characters are all loveable, the gameplay fun and interesting, the music fantastic, and the voiceacting not TOO bad, although the Japanese voices fit better. overall, an excellent game.
The game is sprite-based, like all the other titles, however they are generally very high-quality, with lots of movement. The battle system has also been vastly improved, with each character having their own SP bar again! yeahhh. The other welcome addition to this game is the use of the "grow book", which has replaced leveling up. Item synthesis is interesting, and you are occasionally rewarded with a little cutscene after you synthesise something new, like Flay telling you to make him "red, heroic armour", or Muppy discussing anime. It beats level-grinding by a mile.
You also use the grow-book to get useful skills for your characters, and the ingenius item-synthesis system allows you to attribute skills to an item, depending on how high, or low, quality the item you make is, which depends on the items you used to make it and how rare they are, the "elemental wheel", and the assistance of other characters. The lessons/assignments system also helps you learn more about synthesising items, and how to use them properly.
The music, as in all GUST games is simply fabulous, there are lots of refreshing little jingles, each character has their own theme tune, ("Defender of Justice has Come" for Flay, "Whistling Girl" for Jess, My Glasses are Addicted for Roxis, and "Ah, Disicplinarian of Youth" for the "Mook Squad", Tony and Renee, the latter being my personal favourite with its up-beat tune and strong rhythm) and there are no "filling in" tracks, the entire album in excellent, and definetly worth listening to.
The Atelier series in-jokes are also all here to reward followers of the series. Hagel is present as the weaponsmith, Pamela is here, the Moderately Attractive Puni Brothers are back, as well as an AI3 cameo in the bonus dungeon. There are also plenty of typical NIA Popular Culture referances, as well as a couple of jokes you will only get if you are a gamer, e.g "Hey look, Its the Mook Squad!" etc, and there are several laugh-out-loud moments, and it does not take itself seriously at all, which is a refreshing break from all-too-common RPG angst.
Overall, Mana-Khemia, like all other GUST games is aimed at a relativley small group of usually dedicated followers, and if you are a fan of Nippon Ichi/Gust games, this is a must-buy. However, even if you have never played their games before, it is definetly worth a try. I am awaiting the sequel eagerly, *****.Read full review
