Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis

[Demon Cleaner]

Old school RPG released for PS2. Still waiting for Baroque, which should be released in 1-2 weeks.

[Harrison]

Nice. Is it currently Japanese only? (looking at screenshots). I do still like the more traditional 2D RPGs as much as the newer 3D ones.

[Demon Cleaner]

The screenshots are japanese, but the game was released in the US the 31st march. The game is now in my Easynews queue, if you want to grab it, go on. Only let me know when you're done, so I can remove it.

[Harrison]

Cool thanks. I will grab it now.

[Demon Cleaner]

Do you have it? Yesterday evening I cleared the queues not noticing that I should leave it there for you? If not, so tell me, and I'll put it into the queue again.

And btw, I saw that the release is from DAGGER, so I don't know if it will work properly, can you test it? My PS2 is not set up anymore.

[Harrison]

No I've not got it yet. If you could add it again that would be great. And yes, I can give it a test and let you know.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, done.

[Harrison]

I had a quick play around with this game and it seems to work OK, so you should be OK to burn it and keep it safe in case you ever want to play it.

The actual game looks quite interesting, and as I've really liked the previous games in the Atelier Iris series this could be just as good.

I haven't explored it that far yet and have yet to see the combat system or much of the actual game mechanics. It starts off with you as a boy who befriends a talking cat and then gets recruited into an alchemy school. Once there you meets some other freshmen and seniors and start to explore the campus and then get rail-roaded into being part of a group responsible for a campus workshop with some quests attached to you being allowed to keep it.

There is also suggestion of some underlying importance of your character, as is often the case in RPGs. Many of the other characters already introduced seems to know the main character's name, whereas he seems to have forgotten most of his own past. And the initial characters introduced and befriending the main character are true to the traditional formula of the genre.

It could be good but I need to explore it more to see where it leads.

[Demon Cleaner]

I tried it yesterday, as I still had to burn about a dozen PS2 games, so I set my PS2 up and played for a while. Very traditional, but nicely drawn. Combat system is also very old school, but I prefer newer (looking) titles, although this style of RPG has its charm.