Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Yup, just what the title says. This game has some of the best characters, plot, and combat systems I've seen as of late in JRPGs ... but the whole thing very poorly executed. HOWEVER, if you're willing to look past the flaws it still manages to be enjoyable.

Story: Good things first, the story rocks. It's somewhat comparable to the first Harry Potter book in that it mostly concentrates on the daily life of a student in an alchemist school. And the plot takes full advantage of this to create a narrative that feels significantly different than the usual pompous self-grandiose feel of most Squeenix games (and much more charming might I add). Plus the characters feel more natural and are far more interesting than any JRPG characters (outside of the humor-slanted ones). Really, I played this one as long as I did solely because of the story. It's that good. (plus Atlus provided a better than average voice actors, Japanese track's still better, but it's tolerable).

Graphics: Most of the graphics look really bad ... like "a skilled team could easily run everything except the higher resolution portraits on a PS1" type of bad.

Music: ... it feels like mediocre anime soundtracks ... tolerable for the genre, but personally I found it annoying more often than catchy.

Battle System: the system itself has some nice organization and all the attacks move along really fast, so the pacing's great. UNFORTUNATELY the camera zooms in on every single attack, so it's disorienting and irritating to watch. It would have been far better to keep the camera in the static position and save zooming in for rare occasions (i.e. once-twice per battle).

But yeah, if you're a die-hard fan of JRPGs who's forgiving of faults, do pick this up. There's a lot of great fun to be had.

If you like JRPGs you're gonna love this one. Fourth in the Atelier Iris series, the game focuses on a group of students studying alchemy, the crafting of stuff into other stuff. You've got the quiet hero, the perky girl sidekicks, the warrior, the rival, and a number of recognizable themes.

The system at a glance: the game revolves around your alchemical studies. You find components and recipes, and you make your items and gear out of them. You learn, you create, you advance. You don't gain levels. Instead, you synthesize items that go on your character's growth chart. You then fill in those spots with points you get from fighting (the closest thing to EXP the game has). You always have a ton of it. This usually results in a burst of ability each chapter, when new recipes and key components become available, and you rapidly fill in what needs filling.

The theme is great; little vignettes are spread out in the game and help give the characters, well, character. You can also choose to play side events that flesh out their stories.

SPOILER ALERT: This game has 8 endings, one for each character. The side stories determine what ending you get.

The graphics are atrocious. There are no FMV cut-scenes aside from the opening, and the sprites are featureless clumps of pixels.

The music is good, and the voice-overs can be in either Japanese or English.

The stories are cute, and the game plays like a romp through high-school, only you're learning how to fight and blow stuff up. I rarely finish games, but I couldn't wait to finish this one just to see how it ended.

I highly recommend this game. If you're the compulsive collector in games, even better! Tons of items, events, and endings to discover will keep you occupied for a long while.