Mana Khemia 2 - Beat Raze Path, yay. I got the Lily ending, which was predictable but amusing enough. Final levels were 64% grow book completion or so, final time about 36 hours.
Enjoyable overall game. There's a bit too much synthing, which, despite the fact that it is GREATLY IMPROVED from the previous game (it's all in one room now + ability to synth things you're missing) is getting a bit tiresome, and the game could really stand to be more challenging (even on Hard Mode). Still, I think I have an overall more positive opinion of it than Mana Khemia 1, even though the gap is not large.
Cast is the big reason. The MK2 writers seemed to really know what they were going for (a fun little trainwreck which keeps the player off balance without ever going
too wacky or perverse), and they walk a fine line with it, and do it well. The cast is almost strictly considerably better than in MK1. Nobody quite replaces Tony and Renee I guess, but there's more than enough to make up for it elsewhere.
Serious plot barely exists. Barely existed in MK1 too, but there's even less of it in 2. They do lack the creative things 1's plot did, instead going for something fairly generic? Well, maybe not entirely.
I did like that they made Raze the one to get possessed and go a bit crazy; feels like in most RPGs this is something reserved for the main's best friend. But other than that, it's fairly generic; they just have fun with it, even in the game's big scenes there is always some lampshade hanging or just the writers having fun. For a not-really-a-spoiler example of what I mean, at one point, an NPC utters the cliched line to the main characters, "You have to stop [the villain]. For me. After all, it's half my fault that he's ended up this way," before poking fun at the drama with a "No, a half is probably overstating it a bit. Maybe a third? Nah... closer to a fifth." The game always keeps its sense of humour and it makes me smile. Probably one of the funniest games I have played, overall.
Character stuff. I'll slip in gameplay notes here too, since ripping off the Meeple style is fun.
Raze: It's not my style to respond directly to others in these rants, but I feel the need to do so here. CK interprets Raze as enjoying the trainwreck; I get the opposite impression entirely. Raze rarely seems to be having much fun at all (except when he admits that, against all logic, he likes his friends). Instead he comes off as delciously passive-aggressive, which makes sense given that Lily has been kicking him around for a decade. He's normally polite and reserved, but he snaps at points ("You're really stupid, you know that?") and he whines endlessly in his diary entries. Anyway, I found this very amusing, and liked how they avoided turning him into a Ryudo, a Vayne, or (vomit) a harem anime main, all of which seemed like strong possibilities.
Gameplaywise... good HP, mainly, and Analyse is of course something I use on everything. Aside from that, a bit underwhelming. Falling Leaves was nice and cost effective, at least, for all that it competed against better timed cards (Lily and Et's GT, or simply more raw damage in the case of magic) which didn't help it.
Lily: It's no real secret at this point that I love Lily. I've ranted about her already. She seems to exist to keep the player just a bit off balance with her perverse insanity. Her character quests, particularly the first three (I felt they just couldn't raise the bar after those) were delicious. She's an insufferable bitch, but half the fun is watching what trouble her insufferable bitchiness (not to mention her twin fetishes for Raze and Punis) will get her into. In some ways she pretty much runs the party through sheer force of will, and everyone else just seems to find ways to cope (Raze by being passive-aggressive, Yun by keeping a low profile and not sweating the small stuff, Et by being too obivious to see the barbs Lily hurls, and Puniyo by being a trainwreck-enjoying little bastard... but I'm getting ahead of myself). Anyway, she was handled just about as well as I can imagine someone like that being.
Gameplaywise... MVP for over half the game because her MT/GT is just so damn powerful and cost-effective. Nobody else gets any wide-range attacks without falling back on common skills, and those are much more expensive and eat accessory slots. Bizzard Axel in particular was just ridiculous offence (did it need to do that much damage?) while Rainy Mega Spear was the king timed card for randoms. I only started getting money out of Glacier at endgame, but it's obvious how that's going to be useful. Giving an accessory slot over for fire common skills is a no-brainer to avoid ice resistance (most ice resists are fire weak) but honestly, it says something that I nailed ice-resisting enemies with Blizzard Axel often enough through early and midgame anyway.
Et: Relatively speaking, I have a bit less to say about Et, but she was also enjoyable. To some extent she's a bit like Lily, except she's not mean because she's selfish, but just because she's oblivious. The girl just wants to have fun, and there's basically no slowing her down. Despite Lily and Raze mocking her intelligence, they rarely seem to actually get the better of her, while she leaves both of them twitching messes at one or two memorable points. Her last character quest was a particular highlight. Also wow, sooo happy they avoided her falling for Raze, which I expected she was going to for like, the whole game. Et just doesn't roll that way.
Gameplaywise, the best of the three fighters, which is a bit of a backhanded compliment since I feel the mages dominated this game. Still, she could rack up lods of damage with No-Hand Loop + Twinkle Moon + Lock-On + timed cards out the ass. Just needed GT bigger than Et Circle Waltz. Fortunately said GT did at least come with some heavy-hitting timed cards, so when you did face groups close together, nobody was better against them than Et. Game-best speed also helps if nowhere near as much as it did Nikki due to the new mechanics. I wish she'd been given a big ST smackdown move but she probably didn't need one on her offence.
Yun: I sorta feeled they misfired with Yun a bit. He's obviously the party straight man, since nobody else is, and parties need a straight man... but he's just kinda boring about it. I'm not sure. Pretty sure the party dynamic gets worse if you just remove him, but I was still left wanting more.
Gameplaywise, he's... well, bad for quite a while. Even later (Speedy Flame Bomb goes such a long way), I mainly pencilled him in as an item-boy and somebody to cast Boost on Puniyo and Et. He lacks big damage, he lacks timed cards, and for most of the game he lacks GT. Even his HP is worse than you'd think. The way MK2 works, a fifth warm body is sitll hugely valuable, although I wish his D-support actually halved damage. I don't care to count how many times I subbed him into an attack to watch him die. Well, less than it might have been since the game isn't too hard, but yeah.
Puniyo: Aw, isn't she cute. Cuteness that hides PURE EVIL! Nah, evil certainly goes too far for Puniyo (except when she's selling her brothers into prostitution, anyway), but... she just enjoys the trainwreck far too much, and is rather mean about it. She isn't even remotely believably 5 years old, but it doesn't matter. She worked really well for delivering some extremely mean lines. Jiro deserves a lot of the credit here, as he translates everything with such a deadpan smile it's a little disturbing ("My sister says that no matter what happens, she will take care of your corpse"). Other two punis worked well too. I can't say I cared for the scene in which she tried to talk, or her plot about realising she is human, however (Although I DID enjoy EVIL PUNIS). No loss, the rest is what dominates and is too fun.
Gameplaywise, she goes from being the clearly inferior mage (her healing isn't nearly as valuable as Lily's crowd control, and her stats are considerably worse) to the clearly superior one once Taro's Sternness or whatever it's called enters the picture. It nicely coincides with the part of the game where Common Skills start getting cost-effective enough to use regularly. They still eat up equipment like no tomorrow, and finding the right mix for Puniyo is often difficult, but it's doable with a little crafting on synthesis. Doublecast MT makes for great control, doublecast Flare Rain both hurts and makes many painful timed cards, doublecast Plasma Ray racks up big damage, swap accessories around if you want different elements and all is good. Obviously the lategame MVP, this isn't even especially open to debate despite game-worst HP (although her Guts mitigates this somewhat).
Flay: Ah, what can be said about Flay? He was great in Mana Khemia 1. And... he's still great in Mana Khemia 2. But they managed to come at him from a different angle instead of just recycling him, which was a concern. Flay's crazier than ever, and now he's in charge of education. What results is a logical extension of these propositions, but that doesn't make it any less insane. It's just aamzing to see all the stuff he does without being fired, but we can blame that on Zeppel turning into a colossal pussy over the past 15 years.
Reicher: PEDO VAYNE. Actually he kept me amused for a while just because of that. He does look and sound a lot like Vayne, just replace the mild-manneredness with an extremely creepy man who always looks like he's about to rape someone. Usually Raze. His serious plot I've touched on already, whatever to it. He does give us one of the game's few excellent boss fights, though.
Music was largely pretty forgettable, but I thought they had some pretty good electric guitar work in there at least. I dunno, not too enamoured with the Gust sound team overall, but on the other hand, very little about the soundtrack bothered me, and it avoided any bad battle tracks which is always crucial.
Gameplay was good fun overall, as the MK system tends to be. I really like the mechanics of switching, supporting, and timed spheres in particular, so it was good fun to be able to play with them again, and play with them more and earlier than in MK1 (yay fourth PC by the start of Chapter 2). I liked that the game did away with night bonuses (or near enough that I didn't notice them) because I wasn't fond of that mechanic.
Weaknesses of the gameplay... well, I mentioned them at the top. There's not enough gameplay (synthing is too large a time sink) and too much of what exists is easy. Mana Khemia games resemble Pokemon games, to me - I live for the boss fights, but I only get one every four hours or so. That's just not enough. I even did all the job bosses this time (synthing jobs can bite me) but I don't actually remember any of them except the harpy who summoned other harpies and even she wasn't great. It doesn't help that quite a few chapter bosses in Raze's path were just inexcusably bad. If MK2 had a step back from MK1 in any meaningful way gameplaywise, it is probably this, since MK1 had quite a good run of chapter bosses who threatened me, while MK2 never really got rolling in the same way. Chapters 6 and 7 had competent bosses but not really great (C1 was similar), and I only three times felt in real danger of losing: EVIL PUNIS, Kamil Rider, and Reicher. Granted, all of these fights were awesomely fun (Reicher in particular was notably better than the MK1 endgame bosses to me; graaah Fantasy Lightwave). Didn't actually die (much like in MK1) but got deliciously close.
So yeah, overall it was certainly an enjoyable experience. I had it pencilled in as a 7 for sure but I will think about it as an 8. I'm certainly not as 100% behind its gameplay as I am G3/MMXCM, but it may be good enough in the writing department to make up for this. Will probably wait to see Ulrika's path, which Ciato will play and I will watch.
