In the previous installments we’ve seen as part of the Atelier MegaFeature up to this point, alchemy typically progresses by the protagonist gradually learning recipes for more and more powerful items.
Sure, you’ve always been able to use alchemy to create items that are useful in combat, but for the most part success in combat doesn’t directly make you better at alchemy, and the reverse is also true. The Atelier series has always featured a combination of alchemy and combat, but in most cases those two aspects of the game have been kept relatively separate from one another from a progression perspective.
So let’s take a closer look at that today. While past Atelier games kept things relatively conventional in this regard, following the “experience points and levels” system, Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis features a very distinct way of powering up your characters that fits in very well with its core themes and other mechanics. This not only applies to combat mechanics, as we saw in the previous part of this feature, but also to character progression. The freedom afforded them by the digital medium means that they can get highly creative and abstract with all of their core mechanics without being limited by physical components, complexity of calculations or even any sort of rational plausibility. Turn-based, menu-driven RPGs for computer and console - particularly the latter - are, for the most part, well past being simple adaptations of tabletop gaming rules. This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
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