Admirable Alchemy- Mana Khemia: Student Alliance Reviewed

Mana Khemia: Student Alliance for the Sony PSP. Developer: GUST, Publisher: NIS America


Not long ago, the most prevalent environment for role playing games was the murky, monster-filled dungeon. Thanks to the last two Shin Megami Tensei titles, Disgaea 3, and now Mana Khemia: Student Alliance, the school campus is becoming the dominant setting for RPGs. Harry Potter seems to have replaced Dungeons and Dragons as the cultural conduit of the young geek.

Last year, developer GUST delighted Playstation 2 owners with Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, a non-traditional, turn-based RPG. Student Alliance is a gratifying port of that game with two noteworthy additions: a multiplayer battle mode, and the ability to cache game data on a memory stick to reduce load times. As the game opens, players are introduced to Vayne Aurelius, a solitary young man who lives in the forest with his feline sidekick, Sulpher. Our hero is quickly yanked from his woodland isolation and brought to the local alchemy academy. At this enchanted educational institute, students are taught the basics- everything from making fish robots to explosive food items out of everyday materials.


In sharp contrast to the predictable ‘save the world quest’, Mana Khemia’s challenges center around the difficulties of high school- from making friends, earning good grades, to prevailing through student rivalries. During the title’s journey, players will study for three years at the alchemy academy, divided into eight week sessions. Players can choose which classes they would like to take, which correspond to a variety of missions- from monster killing, questing, and item creation. At the end of each lesson, the player is graded accordingly- ‘A’ grades require supplementary efforts, while ‘F’s are given for a complete deficiency in meeting the class requirements. 

Battles are engaging affairs with the ‘ACCB’ bar showing the sequence of character and enemy turns. The gamer can cast spells or change the party line-up to alter the progression of events, adding a dose of strategy. As players pluck away at foes, they will add to the burst-mode meter. Once, this gauge has been maximized, characters assail antagonists with attacks that do mammoth amounts of damage. When not engaged in skirmishes, players will be sinking hours into the game’s synthesis mechanic. In the gamer’s workshop, party members gather to create new items formulated by collected components. The party’s level of expertise will affect the ‘ether level’ or overall quality of the item. Luckily, once an item is crafted, reproduction is easily allowed.  


Student Alliance’s hand-drawn character sprites are lovingly rendered and typically well-animated. Character portraits, used during dialogue delivery, are sufficiently detailed and pleasing to the eye. Our one caveat with the graphical presentation is the three-dimensional environments, which scroll unevenly and can be a bit blurry at times. Early on in our adventure, we had difficultly indentifying a valve on the wall as actually being a faucet. Sonically, the game has an assortment of upbeat, catchy tunes, which repeat a bit too frequently.

Without the use of the game’s caching system, load times were slightly frustrating. With the ‘jump start’ option, the game creates an additional 209MB file on the player’s memory stick. Once this was initiated, movement around the different campus was much quicker and easily reduced by half. Additionally, without having to power the spinning UMD as much, our battery life seemed slightly improved.


While Mana Khemia: Student Alliance offers 40-50 hours of playtime, gamers shouldn’t expect the journey to be especially challenging or complex.  RPG fans will certainly enjoy the game’s engaging combat and multifaceted alchemy system, and should be captivated by the game’s clever dialogue. While owners of the PS2 version of Mana Khemia won’t find enough substance to warrant a double-dip, PSP owners craving an original role playing game on the go, won’t be disappointed.

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Posted by DesertEagle at 3/12/2009 4:03 PM
Categories: PSP,Reviews
 

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