Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy Review

Resource gathering in this game is less important thanks to the addition of the school bazaar. The school bazaar will basically allow you to buy all your rare items from the NPCs once a game event and the more items you sell, the more the NPCs will have available. This makes high end alchemy much easier to do which is nice since you need to max out the Ether Level of your items to max out your character abilities. Alchemy is the primary focus of the game. The characters are enrolled in Alchemy/Combat 101 during the game. There are some choices in what classes you can take, but they all revolve around alchemy. Switching items around in existing recipes can create new items although some of them makes unrelated items part of the classes. I had no idea that a Cloth Armor craft would actually want a Steel Tights item for an A in the class.

Even though every Gust game feels like a repackaged version of the previous game. There's enough differences to make it worth it. Granted I wouldn't pay the full retail price for any of the games, its still a good deal if you can find it for under $30. Each game is different enough from its predecessors to make it feel differently from most of the other games in the series. For me, I find most of them likeable with the exception of Atelier Iris 3's stupid time limits in the field before they boot you from the dungeon. That was annoying as hell for me. With all the crappy next gen RPGs out there, some older ones that know what they're doing is good for you. The item was in a completely different category. Once you earn enough class credits, you get free time to do side quests, set up a bazaar, or just do anything else. Side quests rewards better items earlier which might be worth it.