Yep, it's time for the official Mana Khemia rant! Sooo yeah. Completed, 45 hours or so, around 97-98% Grow Book completed. Bit less on one or two PCs. Didn't get the 13500 AP skills and a few other things. Hardest bosses were the ones in Chapter 6, 8, 9 probably, though 11 wasn't bad either. 6 came the closest to killing me - very, very close, and I had a few other scares, but no actual game overs, which is rare for me, but easily explained by the fact there's really very few battles capable of it. More on this later.
The game was a fun little romp. I was pretty skeptical for a while, but that's because the game is a bit of a frustratingly slow starter. So much of the battle system doesn't enter the picture early - skillsets practically don't exist, switching doesn't exist, Burst Mode doesn't exist (by the way, Burst Mode sucks anyway; I still hate the assignments involving it). And plotwise, the first three PCs just happen to be three of the worst; Jess and Nikki almost put me off character quests entirely. It's saved by the promise of CTB and Flay being just that awesome, at least.
Once it gets going, well. Gameplaywise, it's a very neat little CTB game. Pretty much the standard package (think SH2), with a couple very nice twists which raise it well above that. One is timed cards. These are basically extra attacks, independent of character turns, that slip into the turn gauge; think FFT Sing/Dance, except it keeps going no matter what happens to the original caster, for a few turns. Your own timed cards made for interesting attack options; the enemies' made you scramble to find ways to defend against them. The second very neat thing was the switching system. You could switch a la FFX, except that when a character switched out, they had to stay out for a while, so it wasn't a free lunch (neat idea). But you could also switch in as support; offensively, you could switch a PC for another mid-attack, and the new PC would add a weaker attack of their own, or you could switch a PC mid-enemy-attack, and the new PC would automatically defend. This is handled very well, and my only complaint is that it's rather broken; characters didn't need to act as soon after support-switching as they did. Still, the additional strategies it provided greatly improved the game, especially once you get character-specific supports.
Challenge-wise, the game was uneven. Midway through the game I read a review which raised my eyebrows a bit at the time, it called the challenge highly unbalanced, ranging from unbearably easy to unbearably hard. Most of the time it is very easy. Randoms in the day aren't Grandia level (they take a hit and thus need thought to take down efficiently), but they're still not much. Randoms at night are much better, but mostly just annoying resource drains, still unable to actually threaten you. And resource management in a game with fixed encounters? Doesn't work. And makes the game not fun, because as soon as you start trying to avoid those encounters, you ensure that every fight you DO get in will be them ambushing you, which while not fatal, is very annoying indeed (MK run command being broken helped, though). (Fixed encouters remain an unimpressive idea to me, but MK needed them with its dungeon retreading, that or encounter control.) Bosses, on the other hand... after a poor start (and ultimately an unimpressive finish) are very potentially menacing, easily outstripping the best "major" randoms AT NIGHT, and they don't get night bonuses (which is good because that would just make them nightmares for a first-time player). They do fine damage, have lots of timed cards to threaten you with, have more than adequate durability, and generally feel like the parade of Godlikes they are despite the increasing amounts of broken you have. Fortunately they are very fun, but god knows they would be frustrating as hell if you slacked on your Grow Book too much, and it's pretty easy to let that happen, and explains the experience of the reviewer I mentioned.
There's also job bosses. Apparently I fought all the wrong ones because they were terrible, but reading up it looks like there's some very cute/powerful ones. I don't really care for optional bosses as a general concept, and the fact that you could go into a job not knowing whether you'd get one of the scrub bosses or one of the badass ones seems undesirable.
Item creation's the other big part of the gameplay. It pretty much necessitates a lot of time being sunk into it, unless you want to be underlevelled, potentially badly. It's a bit cumbersome at points. By far the biggest issue is the fact that you need to go back and forth between two rooms to do it; that was completely unnecessary and certainly added to annoyance. Tieing stats to it as strongly as the game did also struck me as a bit of a mistake; the biggest fix I'd have made is to make the grow book non-linear, so that you could miss one item and not potentially be out an entire stat/skillset branch for it. And the interface could be better; no fast scrolling was bad, no alphabetised way to look up items in the encyclopedia also bad. The Ether Level system was poorly explained, and made getting certain abilities VERY cumbersome (also I really don't want to keep spinning that gauge every time I synth an item with a new recipe, thanks). Besides that, it was reasonably addictive, and the item gathering/synthing system made sense, and it didn't actually need a FAQ - I mentioned the encyclopedia, which ruled. I was usually content to put in an hour per chapter on it, occasionally even a bit more. If you focussed on really important stuff you could probably get away with much less and only suffer for it a little, if you kept your eyes open for what is really important.
Polish-wise, I already mentioned one or two issues, the other big one I can think of is the Grow Book itself is rather annoying to move about in. You can't zoom out far to see what you haven't learned, and you have to move around the sphere-grid-like book on the existing paths you've opened, instead of scrolling over to the node you're interested in. Since the grow book is branching, this is a needless annyance. And you can't see the HP/SP of swapped-out party members. Otherwise? Can't think of any major polish issues. The card gauge, in particular, deserves some praise - you can easily see where most attacks will place you before you make them. And character switching, which involved using L/R to choose characters and a button to sub them after an attack/in anticipation of a defence, worked especially smoothly.
Plotwise, the game barely has one (it's not horrible, it's just barely paid attention to). It's more of a character game, and while MK's style of characters and interaction isn't as appealing to me as it is to some, it had a few really excellent characters to keep me interested. This seems as good a time as any to get into the traditional character stuff. Minor spoilers only, mix of plot and gameplay reviews here. More extensive DL rankings are posted at Contenders.
Vayne - As I've mentioned before, I found it annoying that Vayne just seemed so perfect/talented at everything. This actually ends up getting excused in a reasonable way, though, so eh. He's still a bit of a SI and still a bit of a ditz and still has girls falling over him for no real reason (though it's not as bad as it could have been). Okay character but clearly the worst of the males to me.
In-game, crowd control man. His skillset took a while to get going but once it did all the options for crowd control were just sweet. Wasn't too notable otherwise... his A-support was good, so that combined with his crowd control meant I often A-supported him after Nikki in randoms. Also Analyse is helpful of course.
DL, Heavy, slow overkiller.
Jess - Didn't find her quirks too interesting, so... yeah, she bored me. Her serious plot sorta came out of left field and I don't think it was especially handled well but maybe CQ5 would have helped.
In-game, timed healing rules. MK bosses have good offence and for much of the game your non-Jess healing is just AWFUL, so she's invaluable. Otherwise, is a mage, and like all the mages, had damage issues for me. You can twink her by monkeying with combat skills a lot depending on the weakness you expect to face, but this is very cumbersome due to how common skills are handled. Second best D-support was nice, too - often she could MORE than erase the effects of the attack she is brought into, something no other character can claim.
DL, High Middle, timed cards make her a good healer, and she dodges turn 2.
Nikki - The other bland token female early on. Nikki's design is vaguely annoying, as is her place in the plot. Two things about her are cool. One: giant hammers that raise speed. Two: being the only PC to figure out that Muppy is Pure Evil, and the comedy that ensued. Her character quests probably bored me the most.
In-game... well, obvious MVP early, I've been over that. But she never gets bad. I've seen some antihype for her and frankly I find it baffling; Nikki is probably the most important PC in randoms, because she's so damned fast, and the way MK battles work with switching and A-supports, you can use her to sub in others. Against slower enemies you can A-support people in off her and they STILL outspeed any enemies (and they're going sooner than they would have otherwise); against faster she's probably the only one going before them. Other than that, had good ST damage, and could sometimes charge for some crowd control safely, and both Bear moves were very nice indeed, but she wasn't special overall, probably the worst raw skillset of the fighters. Speed though. Worth considering for MVP on that alone.
DL, solid Heavy, speedy 2HKO or ID.
Pamela - Pamela feels like she should be amusing, and occasionally she had a line which was pretty hilarious, but most of the time I found her very bland.
In-game, one of the PCs I used less. She's certainly not bad... No Bullying! can be twinked out to be insane in particular, and physical immunity has uses, as does Seeker... but generally I found the mages a bit less good, and Pamela didn't offer as much unique as Jess or Roxis did. Also, don't get the hype for her D-support, immuning stuff is better than halving it, yes, but not hugely. I think I'd heard "Pamela D-support" more in my time in DL chat than Muppy or Jess which is nuts.
DL, Heavy/Godlike, Malik variant.
Flay - Flay is the man. Easily the best character in the game, he was constantly hilarious. Very much lives up to the standards set by Mystere or Gordon. Brilliant VA helped, but it was hard not to smile at... just about everything that came out of his mouth. His character quests were predictably hilarious (I got his ending). Not an especially serious character, although it was amusing and fitting that he was pretty much the "leader" of the group most of the time. To the Flay Cave!
In-game, Flay could really only do one thing, but he did it well. Massive ST damage! Oh, good durability too, sure. His GT was almost non-existant, and he was slow, but goodness, Raiden Charge, his timed-card attacks, his other moves... they all spelled extreme pain. Unleashing him on bosses was very satisfying. In randoms he is saved by the switching system, though less good there anyway.
DL, Low Heavy, Vayne Lite with more durability.
Roxis - I kinda liked Roxis. Roxis is antisocial, full of himself, and... you know what? People TREAT HIM THAT WAY. They mock him, they bring him down of his high horse whenever possible. They like the guy, since he's decent at heart, but he gets what's coming to him and it's very satisfying. Unsurprisingly, the highlights are his Mana and that character quest with Pamela and Flay. You know the one.
In-game, Roxis has two tricks which make him the best mage in my mind. Never mind his stats are probably the best of the bunch, too? But anyway, the two tricks are Chrona Drive (and to a lesser extent its inferior versions), which is pretty much the most damaging attack through most of the game once all its timed cards are played (GT to boot!), and Purifying, which helped ease the stress of oh-god-enemy-timed-cards, which were by far the easiest way to die in most MK battles. His supports are two of the worst but who cares.
DL, High Middle I think, decent blitzer with some status spoiling.
Anna - Vaguely there; you can tell I don't like the girls as much in this game. Though she was probably the best of them. Her quirks were endearing enough, and it's rather amusing how she turned into this unstoppable force of nature if she got the wrong idea in her head. Which she often did, because her common sense was in the negatives. Anna for plot Godlike? I think so.
In-game, neat. While probably the least damaging fighter, it wasn't by much, and she had quite a few tricks to make up for it. Quick Dream was hax when you first got it, her GT ID move was awesome; I had more luck with it than the stat topic suggests. Very solid supports, too - sometimes you just need that extra turn RIGHT NOW.
DL, Middle, kinda boring but can scrape a fast low 2HKO off middling durability.
Muppy - Okay, his recruitment scene? Gold, pure gold. I can't hype it enough. He's adorable and cute and PURE EVIL but laughably ineffective so people generally don't figure it out. A character who just worked, probably my second favourite PC. Props to El Cid for avatarring him.
In-game, LVP. Mage who offered the least, and badly underlevelled for the first few chapters after getting him due to starting with crap AP. That said, MK isn't bad on character balance, and this LVP had something he was MVP at, unquestionably. That was his D-support. Make TWO PCs immune to damage, AND, as the third, half it? Nuts. I used him just for that plenty, even if he didn't make my final battle party.
DL, Light, what I'd expect without his D-support.
Tony - I love Tony. He just tries SO HARD to be this total jerkass but he keeps putting his foot in his mouth. He's not so stupid as to be unaware that he seems to keep ending up the butt of all jokes, and that his best friend is constantly mocking him, and it makes him ANGRY. ... but in a cute way. Like Flay, he's awesome in most scenes he's in, though he doesn't have as many of them (still more than you might expect). Too bad he didn't find a way to stick around in the plot after he graduated (and the game hinted that he would, too!), but eh, eight chapters of awesome is good enough.
Renee - And it's pretty hard to love Tony without loving Renee. At first I thought she would just be the dull voice of reason to Tony's villainous schemes, but as the game grew on it became increasingly obvious that she wasn't following him because she was weak-willed, but because she just enjoyed poking fun at him so much. Tony/Renee/the party made for highly amusing three-way interaction.
Zeppel - I'm pretty surprised we didn't get more from him. Felt like the game was setting him up as reasonably important - he's Vayne's teacher, and the guy who found him... but then he barely has any scenes lategame. Not sure what's up with that. Also, it's sad that I identified with his position more than anyone else. I don't think this game is aimed at me, in terms of storytelling. <.<
Isolde - It's funny. She's kinda the closest thing MK has to a main villain - she has that creepy music that plays whenever she appears, and is certainly the character who takes the most aggressive action against the PCs (Tony doesn't count). Which is to say MK doesn't do villains. Her motivations are questionable but she ends up sympathetic enough; I did like her scene in the ending. Also, MK not doing villains? It's actually kinda refreshing. Probably the most notable thing about the game plotwise.
Guess that's everything. 7/10 seems about right. The game sort of feels like the bastard child of Shadow Hearts 2-3 and Pokemon, with a few mutations thrown in. Fun CTB gameplay (SH) heavilly emphasising boss fights (PKMN) with insanely quirky characters (SH) in a very light-hearted world (PKMN). It ends up in the same ballpark as those games, to me. Glad I played it, will play again, would recommend, will buy if I see it.
16k, not my biggest rant, but it'll do. ^_^
