The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Mana Khemia 2 is a pretty fun game as well. We should talk about it.
Aroduc
regular
regular
Al-Revis, the academy of alchemy. Students from all over the world congregate there to learn the ancient art of transmutation. Only the most gifted could even find their way to the floating islands that Al-Revis called home. However, after the events of MK1, the powers of mana started to weaken, and it slowly descended to the world below. It soon adapted to its new location, but the school could no longer rely completely on the powers of mana to support itself and had to begin seeking assistance from outside.
That support was given, but the sponsors gave the school a board to oversee its activities, and the first chairwoman of the board decided that alchemy was a waste of money and the school should be transformed into a martial academy. This is the story of two of the workshops of students who are the first to enter the new Al-Revis academy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vovhGWm2HWE
Mana Khemia 2 is the latest in the Atelier (alchemy) series, developed and produced by KOEI apparently. It came out today for the PS2. I haven't played it yet, but Mana Khemia 1 is one of my favorite RPGs on the PS2, so you should buy it. And this too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfScbz-j8h0
Core Features of Mana Khemia that have remained unchanged.
The battle system is more or less the same. Traditional JRPG party based with a heavy focus on rapid character switching to perform follow up attacks or protect other members from damage. Skill use is VERY expensive compared to other RPGs, but characters in the reserve rapidly regenerate SP. Ergo, you still get to use a lot of the skills, so long as you're smart about constantly rotating people in and out.
Burst Mode remains the same. As you deal damage, you build a gauge. Take damage and it drops. When the gauge maxes, you enter Burst Mode and (eventually) get a second gauge with a certain condition attached (deal damage, stun the enemy, take damage, etc), which when filled enables the use of a Finishing Strike. Entering Burst Mode stuns all the enemies and increases skill damage output immensely for as long as it lasts. It also builds a combo meter which gives you extra AP at the end of the battle.
Synthesis is more or less unchanged. Combine items, spin the element wheel, stop it on the right things to change the ether level of an item and what properties it has. Equipment synthesis combines properties to give you stabbier things.
The game flow is also more or less the same. Almost all the chapters are divided up between classes and free time. After some mandatory scenes, you choose which class you want to take for that term (mostly mandatory at the start of the game) and then you're given an assignment. Usually it's something like fetching an alchemy ingredient from a new dungeon, fighting a certain enemy, or synthing something in a certain way. You're then graded on how well you completed your assignment. When all classes are over, if you've accumulated enough credits, you get free time. If not, then you're forced to do remedial assignments to make up the missing credits. Any time you have left after them is free time.
During free time, you can (eventually) assign your workshop members to various tasks, like collecting synthesis ingredients from dungeons, or synthesizing items on their own (doesn't cost ingredients) or the bazaar (see below). There are also extra sidequest jobs that you can do for extra cash, recipes, and items, as well as character quests to improve your relationships with your workshop members and unlock their endings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi6trnO2On0
New features from Mana Khemia 1.
Split storyline.
You choose a protagonist at the start of the game, either Raze, the indentured servant of a spoiled girl forced to enroll in the academy, or Ulrika, an alchemist trying to hatch a strange egg she was given years ago. The two characters have their own competing workshops. The storylines are also separate and each one has it's own stable of characters that join up.
Minor gameplay spoiler
The two workshops join up near the end of the game and you get to use all the characters. Still mostly different stories though and only the endings from your own workshop are available.
Intimate Strikes
Called Variable Strikes in MK1. Done by doing a consecutive attack through all the reserve characters. Now only done in Burst Mode, but all characters have their own Intimate Strike, not just the main protagonist.
Grow Book
It's more or less the same as MK1, in that you improve your stats using it instead of traditional level ups with different things unlocked when you synthesize new items. However, each item now has three grow factors attached to it. The first two are unlocked when you synthesize the item for the first time, but for the third, you need to maximize the ether level of the item before you can unlock its corresponding trait in the Grow Book, so you need to pay quite a bit more attention to what you use to synthesize and how you do it.
Team Synthesis
Like MK1, you can have your party members help synthesize items, but much of the focus of their help is on the added effects they apply to the item this time instead of how they can directly or indirectly affect the ether level.
Encounters
Like AI3 and MK1, you can see the monsters roaming around, but instead of slashing them to gain initiative, when you bump into them, a controller button will pop up and you've got about half a second to hit it or the enemy gets the first attack.
Titles
Instead of the rumor system from MK1, the game uses titles that affect specific characters instead of the whole party. They're unlocked by doing random shit, like... jumping a lot. Or killing X enemies. Etc.
The Bazaar
During free time, aside from assigning your workshopmates to synthesis or material collection, you can open a bazaar and sell your extra alchemical items. Each person sells things differently and will attract different customers, and if you do a good job selling items, then they'll become popular and other workshops will begin selling the same items, possibly giving you a (relatively) cheap way of grabbing some rare materials.
Main Characters
Raze's parents died when he was a child and ever since then, he has intensely hated all manas. He was given to a rich family, and is forced to follow their daughter to alchemy school, despite his hatred for it. Raze soon acquires the Ring of Light, a weapon intensely damaging to manas, but is unable to remove it, or even understand why it was given to him.
Lilianne is Raze's master and has a huge crush on him. She brought him with her just so that she'd get to be alone with him. She's extremely spoiled and already has her own water mana, Whim, who does all her fighting for her.
Ulrika is cheerful and impetuous. She was given a strange mana egg ten years ago and has been trying to hatch it ever since. She enrolls to try to figure out the secrets behind it.
Chloe is Ulrika's best friend and a bit of a bitchy nerd. She prefers magic to alchemy, and was dragged to the academy by Ulrika to keep her company.
Recurring characters:
Flay Gunnar
The self-proclaimed hero of justice from the first game is now the vice principal for the school and continues to set strange targets for his victims in order to mold them into true heroes. Raze's homeroom teacher.
Toni
The former mini-antagonist is now one of the alchemy teachers at the academy and did mellow out, but after being trapped at the school without a chance to see his family for the last three years, he's getting bitchy again. Ulrika's homeroom teacher.
Zeppel
Former homeroom teacher in MK1, now the principal for the school, although he's still walked over by practically everybody and is struggling to deal with Marta.
==============
Whew.
I got a text message last night saying my copy'll be available this afternoon, so I'm picking it up in a few hours. Still haven't decided whose path I want to do first though. Ulrika sounds so much less angsty and bitchy than Raze, but the tsundere with an maid ice mana is tempting as well.
TALK ABOUT IT, BITCHES.
Also... what's with the French, Houk? NIS trapped under Quebec's iron thumb?
Aroduc on
0
Posts
I'm disappointed.
Knowing Gust though, it's probably just some sexy catgirl CG in one of the ending sequences though. Certainly nothing quite on the Ar Tonelico levels of fanservice.
And stop making me want to play the first one.
Let's hope this isn't the buggy localized mess that AT2 was.
My thoughts exactly.
I dunno, why would anybody make a thread about some weeaboo (or, given all the french, ouiaboo) rpg / high school simulator?
:^:
Oh, you flirter. I bet you say that to all the great RPGs. I'm sure you'll be an absolute delight once Sakura Taisen's released.
========
Oh lord, Ulrika's got a southern accent thick enough to cut meat. I'm glad I went with Raze.
Also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpeiu9JuM0
Good lord, they could have structured the start of each chapter and the recipe dump on you so much better. Chapter 3 and 4 for me both began with like, an hour of just sorting through all the new recipes, making them, filling in what parts of the Grow Books that I could, grabbing the spare ingredients that I need from the shops to finish the remaining ones, and then going through everybody's equipment.
Maybe 90 minutes.
On the other hand, that may be overkill, because for the start of 3 and 4, the new areas opened up with monsters already in the 'auto-kill' state, although I'm not entirely certain how you can be overleveled in a game without leveling. Speaking of that, the limitation on growth is opposite what it was in MK1. Instead of having like, a billion recipes which you can't make and AP out the wazoo, I've rarely had extra AP, and even now I've got Lily sitting with a 2,000 AP cost skill unavailable and about another 3,000 AP worth of stats to go to max her out at the start of chapter 4.
Edit: Bumping it up from Normal to Hard has made things delicious once more.
Harvesting has been reworked, mostly for the better. Most of them have kind of dumb little mini games that you have to play, but you get about 8 times as many items per harvest spot, and there are a number of items I've gotten to immediately regenerate them, or give you another shot at the mini-game or whatnot, so it works out mostly. Except for the fishing shit. That can go fuck itself. Another related QoL improvement is that you can camp at any save spot now and advance the time to morning, noon, or night, making some of the harvesting far less retarded, as well as letting you basically ignore the night powerup for monsters.
I'm not seeing the character delineation in this one so much this time, and I kind of miss that. It could just be Raze's party though. Puniyo's about the only one that feels unique in any way, and I rather like the little death dealing monstrosity. She's almost a better mage than Lily. It looks like there are multiple levels of support attacks and defenses this time too, which is neat.
The character quests are also a lot more detailed, or at least all have had a very short dungeon crawl or mini-boss battle attached with an inordinate amount of AP awarded for the difficulty therein. 1,000 AP for fighting three gimpy punis that can be one-shot? I'll take it.
The main thing that bugs me (outside of the beginning of chapter alchemical orgy), are the insensible load times and the world maps. The maps make me somewhat ill. It scrolls to show where you've selected, but if that's on the left side and the menu's on the right, the menu will leave the side of the screen to pop up on the other, which is a giant pain in the ass since almost every location is two menu selections deep, and if you don't scroll quickly enough, the menu will start moving while you're still trying to select something. Not so hard to memorize it, but it's still really really fucking annoying. The load times though... battles and whatnot are fine, but stores or alchemy... it'll pause for a moment while you're scrolling around to load up the picture. Never more than half a second or so, but that's still half a second that it has no business pausing whatsoever. Yes, thank you, you loaded a 100x100 pixel graphic of an uni for me. And all it cost was the frame rate. Fucking wonderful.
I'm still trying to figure out how exactly certain parts of the alchemy system work in relation to the ether level, and the bazaar is something of a mystery (although I've only had it active for half a chapter thus far), but otherwise, I'm mostly enjoying myself. I'm definitely leaning towards MK1 being the better of the two at the moment, but still liking it more than AI1-3. Haven't run into almost any particularly glaring localization issues either. There's the occasional spoken line that doesn't quite match up to what's written, an incorrect "it's" in an item description, and a few convention inconsistences, but otherwise, smooth sailing.
Raze Chapters 1-4 bosses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOYQ2yivtsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC7Ieoonkw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGusmfaQf4
I figured out the alchemy wheel. It's on a cyclical thing, not antagonistic. The element that comes before it on the wheel is the one that'll reverse the e-level change. With the exception of the one that has null before it (fire I think), but just skip null and go to the one before that. Still no clue how Et's alchemy works, but I've taken to ignoring her. Also, holy shit, Yun is an alchemy god. The moment I unlocked his third alchemy support was the moment I started maxing out the ether levels on almost fucking everything. "Add first ingredient's e-level change to this one?" Why thank you. One maxed ingredient is then worth +/-40. And then his fourth support is like "if fire, 2x e-level change," and his extra passive support was something useful too, but I forget what. I don't even understand Lily's fourth support. "Changes e-level incline by the difference between the item's and the current." Her extra passive support was kind of inane too. "If ingredients all have same e-level, get 5x synthed items." I guess good if everything's at 100/0, but I can't imagine that'd happen until a New Game+. I'm still reliant on at least one or two harvested items or things too low on the chain to max.
I was right about multiple levels of support offense and defense, although so far it's just "adds more hits" or "has a higher chance of inflicting status whatever" with a slightly different animation. I'm starting to feel rather confined by Raze's group's elemental specializations though. There are battles/dungeons where certain characters are just outright worthless because all they have is one element. Thankfully, the only elemental character in Ulrika's group is Chloe, so that should be much nicer on that runthrough. It may also just be me, but normal attacks seem like they got a big slam with the nerf-bat starting around chapter 4. Then again, that is where I switched it to Hard, but they're almost outright worthless now and I remember getting good use out of them all through MK1. I do miss having a sixth party member right now something fierce. Et, Raze, and Puniyo burn through SP worse than Anna did.
I miss Anna.
I also discovered that the Plant Regenerator actually regenerates ALL harvesting spots, including fishing, mining, and trees. I'm so glad to be able to regrow metal with fertilizer.
I'm planning on doing the guy first because the Fire Mana guy you get looks cool.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
That's Yun, lord of alchemy. He's a pretty decent fighter, but I'm not really certain what his niche is other than "uses fire." He seems to be getting an inordinate number of counter attack abilities, so maybe he's meant to do that. He did just get the first buff/debuff attack for the entire freakin' party though, so there's that.
=========
Also, I forgot to mention that I have no idea what's up with these little powerup skits or the like that seem to have randomly started happening in chapter 4. I go to an area, and Et runs off and comes back with 5 of every possible gatherable there. Or Lily's powers up Whim's skills because I have some random item sitting in my inventory. It makes me nervous that I'm missing free powerups for other characters somehow too. Not that they've done anything more than adding a hit or two and making the animations snowier, but still.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
So if you have a water element ingredient and you hit the first or second time the water element comes up, you get an automatic +5 (not sure how many times an element comes up before the wheel has spun, but I think it is 2, maybe 3. I'm not at home to double check).
Okay, that seems to be it. Makes her co-op synthing sort of a pain/nigh impossible to use though.
Re: CQs
I don't think so, but it could be. I had only done Lily's first two when I got the three powerups, and one powerup came a chapter later. I've since done her third and haven't seen an extra scene as of yet.
There are lots of things that seem to be locked just by where you are vis a vis the passage of time, like character inspired recipes. They'll just randomly pop up in the middle of my free times for some old piece of trash I synthed a chapter ago. All I've seen the CQs directly do is add to the passive/active synthesis support stuff, plus I haven't seen any extra scenes for Puniyo at all and only one for Yun (which didn't seem to do anything, and he's my synth buddy for practically everything). The CQs also kind of mystify me. In chapter 4, I finished my classes in two terms, and then wasn't allowed to do any CQs for the first free time so I did the bazaar, but everybody's CQ was available from then on. I wouldn't have even realized it if I hadn't wanted to change what jobs people were doing either.
----
Since I was just putzing around, Yun's secondary passive effect is "+10 incline when you use items of the same element in a row." Yeah... so much more useful than Lily's.
I can't be the only one to read that and think, "Oh, those poor doomed students."
He's in training to be a fairy. The reason he's so burly is because at the moment, he's a terrible fairy.
That said, even though I've only seen Goto about 3 times so far in Raze's path, he's manly enough to make up for eight Pepperonis.
The reason he's not in the end of chapter 4 fight is because
Haha, it is as great as you would imagine.
And he gave me the first B I ever got in MK1 or 2 on some stupid timed battle assignment. What an ass.
(I haven't played the game yet, but it is on my Gamefly list)
Re: 'boss' fight of chapter 5
I still have no idea what Lily's new passive ability does. "+5 items if ingredient e-levels are the same," but I made something with everything at 100 e-level and still just got the one. Puniyo's new ability is rather neat though. Sets the initial e-level to 0, and connects 0 and 100 in a cycle. Which means that you need a net change of -1 if you want to hit 100 using it, but it's really damn easy to get those <10 / >90 effects with her.
Edit:
Ugh. I tried playing through chapter 1 with Ulrika. A.) Chloe's the one that gets the ID skill, and B.) I thought they'd change things a little bit to make Ulrika's side less antagonistic and bitchy... but not. Almost literally Ulrika goes "What? She has a maid? That's it. I hate her." Although I think I may like Tony as a teacher more than Flay. He's so yelly and angry.
Also, once Chloe IDs something, it gets a little Chloe icon in the upper left of its HP/attributes box. What's up with that? Raze isn't good enough for an icon?
So say you have a 50 E-level for the item you're trying to make and you're currently on a 100 E-level item. That item will give you around a +50 change.
That's what people are saying. May be a emulation thing.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Although I was amused when I dumped Puniyo into the bazar and gave away everything, raising my popularity to max in a single week. Almost makes me wish I knew what that did. I also spent about an hour going through and making sure I had at least one of every single item, and discovered about 6 extra modified recipes in the process.
I really really hope New Game+ lets you keep the recipes and unlocked 100 E-level stuff. Not that it matters -that- much since I'm still about 30k AP short with everybody from maxing out what they've got, to say nothing of the 25 or so things left to unlock.
Imagining trying to play it on a 19" SDTV...I had to move to the family room because it was unplayable on my TV.
Well...Pretty Cool Dudes + Whim.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
It's just what you think. It takes a common skill she just did and does it again, free of MP cost. Pretty great move actually.
It better be for costing bloody 9k.
Edit:
Oh hey, this Dumpster area is an AP bonanza, and everything's weak against Raze. 400+ AP per regular encounter? 700+ for the big enemies? Delicious.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970