Mana-Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy

Mana-Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy is a direct Sequel to the original Mana Khemia. It was localized and released by NIS America in late August, (wrongly subtitled, as the original Japanese title is roughly translated to the Alchemists of the Fallen Academy.) The new game features a completely unique cast of characters, except for three cameos. The class and alchemy systems remain more or less unchanged, but the grow book system, battle mechanics, and field monster AI are all retooled.

The storytelling style is also changed. The events of the story are now told in two different playthroughs, each featuring a different main character and core cast. Completing both character's stories unlocks a third story which brings all the characters together and concludes the game's plot.

Tropes used in Mana-Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy include:
  • Anime Theme Song: "My Silly Days".
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Averted; everybody participates. The total number of party members has been cut down to 5 per character story, with 3 on vanguard, 2 in support, and an empty slot for guest characters.
    • Or 2 vanguard and 3 support.
    • Played straight in the extra chapter.
  • Axe Crazy: Reicher after being influenced by the Soul Mana.
  • Badass
  • Bare Your Midriff: Ulrika, Yun.
  • Barrier Change Boss: Uryu will periodically changes its elemental resistance. Also the Light Mana.
  • Beleaguered Assistant: Poor Whim. Lily's commands have her doing everything from injecting ink into her veins to standing in front of a fire so her body can warm Lily's bed.
    • To be fair though, Lily provides the alchemic know-how to enhance Whim's power so it is likely that Whim needs Lily's help to achieve her full potential.
  • Beleaguered Childhood Friend: Raze for Lily, Chloe and Ulrika to each other.
  • BFS: Raze's Laser Blade.
  • Big Sister Instinct: Et to Enna, much to the latter's chagrin.
  • The Big Guy: Pepperoni.
  • Black Comedy Rape: Poor Puni Kichi laments the loss of his purity after Lily's first, um, "encounter" with him.
  • Black Magician Girl: Chloe. It's a skill set that matches her personality perfectly.
  • Blond Guys Are Evil: Lampshaded by the party members when they encountered the Light Mana, stating something around how boring a blond villain is.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: Played for Laughs during the Gone Horribly Right entry below.
  • Boy In A Bag: In two Training from Hell events in Raze's route, Et brings along Enna inside a bag. It Got Worse in the first case, since Et completely forgets about the bag, causing Enna to be trapped for the whole week inside. When he finally gets out, he nearly dies from dehydration.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Corona, Yun's "daughter".
  • Butt Monkey: Puni Kichi, to the point where Puniyo offers him to Lily multiple times during the game. To a lesser extent, Enna, Pepperoni, Et, Puni Taro, and Whim.
    • Raze, too, considering how often he gets into trouble by other characters.
  • Casanova: Goto. To the point where only the girls in the game's primary cast seem immune to his charms. As Enna points out in Goto's character quest: "75% of the school says they want Goto as their boyfriend. This includes 100% of the girls, and one in every three boys." An impressive feat for someone who spends most of his time in an animal suit.
    • It is specifically mentioned that the primary cast is only immune to his charms because he's purposely turning his supernatural charm down. When he turns it up to its usual level and looks at the female protagonist, she blushes and acts like she has a crush on him.
  • Chaste Heroine: Ulrika is charmingly innocent when it comes to romance and male/female interaction. Goto points this out when the only example she can give for a date activity is "holding hands." Raze seems to be this way, since he seems rather clueless about Lily's affections, but the Lily ending during his playthrough implies that he just pretended not to notice because it was more interesting.
  • Child Mage: Puniyo.
  • Children Are Innocent: Puniyo, although it is starting to get subverted eventually...Arguably Uryu as well.
  • Christmas Cake: Marta.
  • Clingy MacGuffin: Raze's Ring of Light.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Et. Pepperoni and Goto to a lesser extent, but at least they manage to say something coherent on occasion.
  • Combination Attack: Changed from the last game into "Intimate Attacks" and "Intimate Defenses". Two characters are required to activate one, and any two will do. Pairing up the two protagonists gets special Intimate Attacks, though, and most Initmate Defenses will improve the Vanguard's durability.
  • Comedic Sociopathy
  • Continuity Nod: the Dragon's Grave returns, albeit with differences to the original. The Millenium Tree as well, but it has grown; it's now the Millennium Forest.
    • Don't forget Mana Ruins, which is now separated into Deep Sea Ruins and Deep Ruins.
    • Flay's Mechsword and Tony's Sinister Scythe can be seen in their respective offices.
  • Cool Old Guy: The Dark Mana King and Raze's grandfather.
  • Country Mouse: Ulrika and Chloe come from a very rural and backwoods village. True to this trope's description, Ulrika quickly becomes a target of rivalry with Lily.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: there's a reason why Enna's deathly afraid of his sister.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Arguably Tetri, even after transforming.
  • Demonic Possession: Played for laughs in one of Chloe's character quests. However, due to her nature as a Dark Chick, Ulrika ends up to be the only one who noticed this.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: when Corona first appears in the school to find Yun, she insults Puniyo, Ulrika, Pepperoni, Goto, Mr. Tony and even Principal Zeppel. They (with the exception of Puniyo, who instead had a comic Heroic BSOD) later deliver a beatdown not to the girl, but to the poor guy that has the least involvement: Raze!
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: PLENTY of them. Pepperoni wrestles with Goto while covered with oil comes to mind...
  • Dope Slap: the first thing Ulrika ever does to try and calm down Uryu. Not exactly the best idea to come up with at a time like that...
  • Dual-Wielding: Raze does this in one of his skills.
  • Eldritch Abomination/The Legions of Hell: whatever the creature Chloe calls out in her attacks.
  • Easily Forgiven: Subverted. Lily doesn't easily forgive Raze after injuring Whim with his Mana-slaying sword, whatever his excuse is.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Most of Et's attacks, seeing as her Weapon of Choice is a couple of Rings of Death.
  • Evil Laugh: Chloe, in her Finishing Strike.
  • Evolving Attack: The characters' skills can be upgraded through the Grow Book. Lily is an exception, since you only need certain materials those will trigger scenes where her skills are upgraded.
    • Normal attacks count towards the evolving kind, too.
  • Extreme Doormat: Principal Zeppel. Period.
  • The Faceless: arguably, the Dark Mana. His hood completely covers the upper portions of his face, and his beard obscures the rest.
  • Fairy Companion: Pepperoni would like to remind all tropers that he IS, in fact, a fairy, and will one day train himself until he's as tiny and cute as his master. A bit of a subversion, since he's later revealed to not be a fairy.
    • We're told fairly early on in his character quests that he's not a fairy, but it's not until near the end of either story that we find out what he really is: a Mana, or at least partly one. See Epileptic Trees above.
  • Faux Action Girl: Sasalina arguably qualifies. It is described that she has amazing archery skills... and yet she always ends up defeated by your party.
    • To be fair, she is ganged up by a group of five/six people.
  • Fetish: Lily sure is fond of Punis. When a few of them arrive on campus, she arranges to have her servants capture them so that she can... touch them. Later in the game, she falls in love with one for a few seconds, and when the opportunity to make her breasts larger presents itself some time afterward she tries to envision them having the texture of punis, "so she could touch a puni whenever she wants."
    • Lily can smell Punis. Think about that for a while.
      • At one point she mentions sensing the presence of Punis through the "Puni Feel", apparently having become some kind of Puni Sith.
    • And don't forget that one two three times she transformed into a Puni. The second time is only mentioned, while the party actually discovers Lily the third time. Both later instances weren't accidents...
    • Lily's Puni fetish is inherited. Her father is even creepier about it.
    • In a character quest that appears later in the game, Lily can translate Puniyo's speech as well.
    • At the end of Puniyo's Character Quest, Raze becomes an "honorary" Puni. This gave Lily a Fetish of her own.
  • Final Exam Boss: The Light Mana is simply a combination of the final bosses of both routes.
  • Five-Man Band:Depending on the route you take, you can get the following Five-Man Bands:
  • Floating Continent:...Well, Al-Revis Academy USED to be on one. Apparently, 'Fallen' means more than the school's just having financial problems.
  • Game Breaking Bug: Sadly, NISA doesn't seem to have done much to prevent these. While not quite as egregious as the first game, a certain boss battle in the second path followed (optional job, thankfully) will freeze the game much like the optional boss in Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica, the only fix being crushing it before it gets a turn. Using Ulrika as the lead in the third path (where both teams are combined) can also lead to a bug, since, apparently, she cannot read jobs at all.
  • Gender Blender Name: Et (short for Etward) and Enna (short for Ennarcia). The game lampshades this with the revelation in Enna's character quest that the little brother was originally the one named Etward, and his elder sister tricked him into trading names with her when they were young.
  • Genghis Gambit: pulled off by Flay, as always. Three times, even, although the first two tries didn't stick.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: Starts off with Lily and Whim dressing Raze in his sleep, and never ends.
  • Goldfish Poop Gang: The gang of Punis intent on attacking Puniyo throughout her character quest never quite manage to be a significant presence, either on the battlefield or in the story.
    • And one even manages to be sympathetic during one character quest, giving the party the cure for Taro, Jiro, and Kichi's sickness because his parents had the same disease.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Chloe's "incantations" often result in this. Example: A powder makes Enna attractive, but turns all females into Stalkers With Crushes who invoke If I Can't Have You immediately.
  • Gratuitous English: If you listen closely to Goto's Japanese voice, he delivers a few of his lines in English.
  • He Who Must Not Be Seen: Despite his confirming on several occasions that he's a full-blooded human, Goto is never seen outside of his suit during the course of the game, and seems to exist within a very small sphere most of the time. He even booby-traps his suit to prevent the curious from trying to unmask him. His true form is only seen if you get his ending during Ulrika's playthrough, and you only see him from the back (though even from that angle you can see that his popularity with the ladies wasn't entirely undeserved).
  • Heroic BSOD: Raze threatens to have one a couple times over the course of his story, but doesn't finally succumb to it until after the Soul Mana's influence enrages him, causing him to strike Whim with his mana-slaying sword.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: First battle with Reicher.
  • Idiot Hair: Reicher; that's saying something...
    • Tony.
    • Simply stating one or two examples doesn't do justice to the fact that the Idiot Hair quotient in this game is one of the highest ever seen.
  • Idiot Heroine: Ulrika, arguably whose level of intelligence doesn't seem to be higher than children at Enna's age. Not to mention her inability to understand Punis (who can speak human language just fine) is said to be something that only idiots will suffer...
  • Impossibly Cool Weapon: The recipe for Raze's weapon: Dagger + Ring of Light = funky weird sword thing made out of energy/light that can change shape at will
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Sasalina.
  • Insistent Terminology: Chloe's curses incantations.
  • Jerkass: Some people view the members of Ulrika's workshop as this.
  • Jerkass Gods: The Light and Dark manas, as well as their supporters, treat the game's cast like pawns, and never express any particular regret about the hell their little bet puts them through.
    • The Dark Mana DOES express regret for everything you went through and his inability to stop the Light Mana's cheating. It is the Light Mana who is unrepentant.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Raze, generally. Mr. Tony on his better days.
  • Karma Houdini: Martha, especially after Coronoa finds decisive evidence of her embezzlement of school funds during Yun's character quests.
  • Lampshade Hanging: As the Only Sane Man (just like Vayne from the previous game), Raze is prone to do this. Possibly slides into Better Than a Bare Bulb territory...
  • Leitmotif
    • Lily: Noble Girl in Love
    • Et: Sunny Girl
    • Yun: Hired Mana
    • Puniyo: Cutie Puni
    • Chloe: Bad-Mouthed Girl
    • Pepperoni: Giant Fairy
    • Enna: Rainy Boy
    • Goto: Mr. Goto's Theme
    • Flay: Defender of Justice Has Come 2
    • Marta: THE Chairwoman
  • Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil: arguably the point of the game's Story Arc.
  • Lost in Translation: A few jokes, here and there. One was even lost because of the single letter name change from Rozeluxe to Razeluxe (i.e. the mora switch joke from Puniyo's My Hero Zero ending)).
  • Love Makes You Crazy: Sasalina, already obsessively in love with Reicher, goes completely off the deep end following several encounters with Uryu.
  • The Magic Goes Away: It started going away in the Time Skip between games, as Mana became increasingly rare, and the Academy began shifting over to a mundane school.
  • Mama Bear: Ulrika towards Uryu.
  • Mood Whiplash: The background music when the party faces the Light Mana is probably the best example. For the first few seconds, the music plays in the typical way as you are about to face some kind of divine being. And then...somebody lampshaded the Blond Guys Are Evil trope.
  • Mr. Imagination: Lily, especially when Raze is concerned. Lampshaded often.
  • Multiple Endings: A total of 11: five per each character story, and one for the bonus story.
  • My Hero Zero: In the Puniyo ending it's suggested that Raze's Puni-name be Zero. Taro objects on the grounds that it would make him lose his place as the family badass.
  • Ninja Maid: Not only is she Lily's loyal servant and maid, Whim is also her source of power. In battle, Whim performs all of the attacks, while Lily stands behind her, barking orders.
  • Noblewoman's Laugh: Marta gives off one of these when things are usually going her way. Also Lily, occasionally.
  • Noob Cave: Lampshaded by the title of the area and its purpose: "Learning Bridge".
  • Noodle Incident: Flay's "punishment" to students in an early chapter. Et was still shaking by the mere thought of it.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Remember Flay? Not only is he now a teacher here, he's also the vice-principal.
  • Only Sane Man: Raze in his workshop; Enna in Ulrika's workshop.
    • Yun on occasion as well.
  • Otaku: Yun, of all people, is hinted to be one during Et's character quest. It's even harder to dismiss the possibility if you turn on the Japanese voice.
  • Parental Substitute: Yun to his "daughter" Corona.
  • Player Killing: in-universe during the School Festival Tournament Arc, Flay hires Yun, Pepperoni and Goto as "free agents" in order to get rid of weaker competition.
  • Power Fist: Enna's Weapon of Choice, which is larger than he is.
  • Power Gives You Wings: Raze's Finishing Move.
  • Precocious Crush: Possibly Puniyo on Raze. Her family seems to think so, anyway, and her parents even look sound like they approve of it.
    • And in the beginning of Chapter 8, Puniyo stated that she will trade Puni Taro for Raze. Lily gave, um... mixed reactions to this statement.
  • Psycho for Hire: Reicher is a more tame example of this, as he accepted the employ of the Light Mana for sheer love of battle, more than any particular murder or mayhem.
  • Puppy Love: an early character quest has the characters think of something along these lines when they saw Enna and Puniyo together. Et, on the other hand, thinks that it's the Punis who are attracted to her brother...
  • Raised By Punis: Puniyo again.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Reicher, especially after his encounter with Uryu.
  • Relax-O-Vision: Whenever a character (usually Raze) is about to be beaten, the screen will usually fade to black or focus on other characters.
  • Rich Bitch: Lily acts this way toward Ulrika, and appears to be this to most who encounter her. Those who know her, however, notice that beneath her bitchy exterior there's a soft, caring center.
  • The Rival: the two protagonist workshops act this way toward each other. Also Tony and Flay, right out of the old days; it is reflected in how they teach their classes as well.
  • Road Cone: there is a small mention of Flay's "criminal syndicate", but that's pretty much it.
  • Rocket Punch: Enna's Finishing Burst ends with his Humongous Mecha firing one of these at the enemy.
    • He also summons his Humongous Mecha's hand and fires it at the enemy during his Intimate Strike.
  • Running Gag: In many of Gust's titles, characters have a habit of stating "Barrel!" when the player examines a barrel. In this game, it's also lampshaded - during some point in the game, Lily/Whim or Pepperoni/Goto stand in front of a barrel on the Campus Grounds, commenting that "yes, that is a barrel". On Ulrika's side, Raze is also there, if only to ask Lily and Whim "what are you two doing?"
  • Shy Finger-Twiddling: Pepperoni, of all people, is prone to this habit.
  • Sickeningly Sweethearts: Ulrika and Uryu appear in this way for other members of the workshop.
  • Swiss Army Weapon: Et's Rings of Death can transform into a bow and arrow during one of her skills, as well as in an upgraded back-up attack.
  • Training from Hell: Flay's preferred method of instruction.
  • Triple Shifter: In addition to having a full-time one year contract with Lily, Yun is always seen taking jobs from other people on the side. It seems strange that a mana cares so deeply about money, until you learn the reason, of course.
  • Underwater Ruins: Deep Sea Ruins, naturally.
  • Unfazed Everyman: Enna frequently has monologues where he laments being the only "normal" person in a workshop of freaks. Chloe makes similar remarks about herself from time to time, but someone else in the group (usually Ulrika) is always quick to point out that she's as weird as any of the others.
  • The Unintelligible: Puniyo again.
    • Subverted in her last character quest, for a short time. She knows full well that she is human at that point and talks normally, but goes back to speaking the Puni language near the end.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: both Reicher and Sasalina don't appear in the third story for some reason. Heck, the latter disappears roughly halfway through Ulrika's story!
  • White-Haired Pretty Boy: Reicher, played completely straight.
  • Xanatos Gambit: All of the bad things that occur in the game are in some way related to either The bet between the Light and Dark Mana, or the Light Mana's schemes to make sure he won it. On a character level, Flay is a master of this trope.
  • Yaoi Fangirl: Chloe is strongly implied to be into this (along with, apparently, a very strong desire to see strange things happen to Enna) Lily shows shades of this, as well. The yaoi fandom in general is made fun of by the game's script.
  • Yin-Yang Bomb: Raze and Ulrika's Intimate Strikes.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle: the game ends with one group's story? Nope, there are two more. Lampshaded by Flay at the beginning of the third story.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: Puniyo, Sasalina.
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