Okay, I think I'm more in a mood for game rants. So, about Mana Khemia!
This is kind of what happens when you create a fluff game that makes no effort to hide its cotton-candiness, but works as hard as it can to make it an actual selling point. The plot and characters are utter stock anime - and one of my beefs with the game, really. The writing is so stock and by-the-book that it actually mitigates neat ideas and wastes some of the many characterization opportunities the game takes to give a personality to the cast. As it is, you have a bunch of very typical characters that are usually moderatingly amusing and/or generally inoffensive, but very stick-to-the-mold. There are no real surprises. Also, by the endgame, the localization team kinda stopped even trying with the grammar. <_< But anyway. This is a problem, but then, the game is pretty honest. It doesn't try to make its plot bigger than it is, it doesn't change its scale. The execution is flawed, but at least the game itself is self-aware of its scope and respects it a lot. This applies to basically all of its fields, as well.
The gameplay, on the other hand, is a joy. The battle system is highly polished and enjoyable, and the game just adds layers as it goes on. It starts out as pretty stock CTB - but then, the game begins adding support mechanics, new skills to tinker with, and they add new layers for each mechanic introduced with time. The game's pacing works very well there, in that all mechanics and ideas are introduced gradually and without overwhelming you at all. If you're more into a sandbox nature, this may be a problem, since the game has a bit of a faux-sandbox nature that actually leads you by the hand, with a firm control of what you can and can't do. But it's great to ease you into the game's ideas, and that's essential. Also, it has a bit of a difficulty switch with the day/night system. If you want more challenge, night battles are the way to go, and they're generally balanced well.
The synthing system applies similarly. It may look very overwhelming at first, but the game's tutorials and its own rules on what you can, what you can't and how you synth ease you into the task in an intuitive, simple manner. The game never fails to tell you when an item can lead to a new synth, which items you need and the timing for the item creation. It also showers you in resources and ways to obtain them painlessly, and the recipes that you need to make items are -not- perma-missable: if you miss an optional quest in a chapter that has a recipe, it becomes storebought in the next, and the game is very good at telling you the importance of checking shops regularly. And then, the ones that are in dungeons are never obscure: dungeon design is pretty clear, and chests are easy to find.
Of course, this is because of Grow Book mechanics. It's the most questionable design choice I find in Mana Khemia, since it tightropes you into item synthing - the Grow Book is how you level your characters, and Grow Book entries are entirely tied to the items you synth. This is why having synthable recipes being permamissable would be a testament to retardation (and the game wisely chooses not to). However, it's still a dangerous mechanic due to not giving you an option on whether to use IC or not: if you don't, you're not growing, and you're not going anywhere. So, if you don't like item creation systems, stay away. The tie-in with the game's ideas is pretty cool, but it's still a mechanic that I consider fundamentally poor. It was very well-implemented, to the point it overcomes its own bad fundaments, but it's still an issue that others may not be able to overcome.
And then, there's the item creation system itself. It's easy, it's fast once you get used to it, it's polished and it's always adding new things. I kinda like IC systems, and this one gains points for being very forgiving on you, as well as not hiding crap from your sight. You will know what you'll get, and the game tells you very clearly whether you can synth the item currently or not, or whether it'll give you new items to synth. No randomness involved, no obscure aspects that prove to be central to synthing, none of that crap. It's straight and to the point, which is refreshing. Also led very carefully by the game - it's one of the reasons why the game's pacing is so tight-handed: any loop in control and you break the game open effortlessly and ruthlessly. As it stands, though, the game paces how badly you can mangle it very well, and adjusts accordingly. The design intelligence within the choices made is veritable.
All in all, it was a very fun experience, and quite a nice, breezy experience with little to no pretentiousness and a lot of general fun. Some of the quirks may prove unattractive to others, though, and the game doesn't truly achieve greatness due to a few things appliable to its very nature. Nevertheless, it was enjoyable and thoroughly entertaining.
