Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Mana Khemia was originally released on the PS2 and received mix signals from critics and fans. Many media outlets handed out low scores for the game, while fans praised the title for many of the gameplay aspects. That’s right; it’s one of those niche titles that’ll have many haters and just as many lovers.
Basically the premise of Mana Khemia is that you’ll take the role of a new student to an alchemy academy. Much like Harry Potter, you have a famous last name, but you yourself aren’t entirely sure why so many people have an interest in you. Despite having some of the older students wanting to challenge you in order to see if you live up to your name, you gracefully withdraw and instead concentrate on your class assignments with your new friends. Of course, the students are a variety of different species and races. You have cat people, humans, etc. Just like high school, right?
What’s Hot
Mana Khemia is a very unique game. The game really focuses in on the alchemy segments of the game. Whether it is for battles or class assignments, you’ll find yourself searching for new ingredients to create and craft new items, weapons, or materials for class projects. You’ll have to search the campus grounds and the outer regions of the campus to successfully find all the necessary components to completing the more complex alchemy equations. The class assignments, though timed as far as the game days go, can be done whenever you want to complete them. In order for a day to go by in the game, you must first complete various tasks assigned to you. At the end of a set time period, you’ll be graded on the said assignment. Of course, this means you can venture around and do as you feel before actually taking part in the class assignment with no negative consequences. Some will find this kind of freedom a positive thing and others will find that it detracts from the reality of a school setting. Aside from that, you’ll find the level of customization and freedom within the game is quite vast.
Most of the time you’ll find yourself having to travel to the outer regions of the campus grounds to move forward in the game and level up, here you’ll find yourself traversing forests, dungeons, etc. Within all this labyrinths you’ll run into a variety of enemies. Much like the “Tales of” series, you’ll see the characters walking around the world. Walking into them, or getting walked into, will activate a battle, of course, you can also preemptively strike the enemy on the world screen, and — if it’s weak enough — you’ll kill it instantly or you’ll be able to get the battle advantage. The battle system is really on the main strengths of the game. You have your basic attack and then more powerful magic based attack. The combat really shines when you begin to link attacks and you stun enemies to gain the greater advantage and take out powerful enemies quickly.
What’s Not
This is one of the first PSP titles to offer the option to save the game to your memory card. Weighting in at a hefty 200MB load, the quick installation is meant to help with load times — much like the PS3’s installing option. Sadly, it doesn’t greatly improve the loading issues the game suffers from. You’ll see a loading screen very often during your gaming sessions. If you are leaving the school, a room, entering or exiting battle, you’ll see a load screen come up. This isn’t what you want to see if you’re gaming on the go.
Along with load times, you’ll also notice a significant amount of slowdown during battle sequences and after the initial load. The characters will move absurdly slow and you won’t even be able to comprehend what’s happening during a battle. Many of the problems found within the game come from technical problems.
Final Word
Mana Khemia is in gaming purgatory. It’s neither good enough to receive great praise, but it’s not bad enough to be condemned to gaming hell, either. So, it’s in gaming limbo. Some RPG fans will fall in love with the story and characters, while others will curse the loading times and slowdown. It’s a niche game, and it appeals to a niche audience.
