A fair amount of the game’s dialog is spoken in full voice acting, and you can opt between English or Japanese voices (though the text is obviously still in English no matter what voices you pick). If you have even a basic grasp of Japanese, I suggest going with those voices; their actors generally turned in a better performance, and you’ll pick up on interesting little subtexts in the story that simply don’t render well into English text or speech. Of course, knowing Japanese is not a requirement; the English vocals and text generally keep the story moving along just fine.

I’m also quite fond of Mana Khemia 2’s music. While a few tracks are a little lackluster or hard to notice, a fair number of them really set the mood for the current part of the plot. It’s dramatic when your characters are fighting, inspiring in the intro scenes, and otherwise usually matches the emotional tones of the story pretty well. Apparently the folks at NIS America felt the same way, as some editions of this game come with a soundtrack disc.

Mana Khemia 2 does have its flaws, however. Rather than any one deep problem I can point at, the game instead suffers from several minor issues and odd design choices. The long intro before you get to do anything meaningful is the first and most obvious, but other little things add up over time as well. For one, you’ll be spending a lot of time at loading screens; going from room to room requires a loading time for each one, and while it usually ranges in the two to five second area it can get as high as fifteen seconds in some cases. Also, sometimes it isn’t immediately made clear what the player is doing wrong when their characters receive lackluster grades for a class, and in some cases it’s entirely possible to get a very middling grade even when you accomplished the assignment’s goals two or three times over. None of these are crippling problems, but they are annoying all the same.

On the other hand, Mana Khemia 2 gets most of the major things right. The story is reasonably long and engaging, and you’ll probably want to do at least a second run through it, to see things from new perspectives with different characters. Likewise, the RPG combat mixes both familiar mechanics and interesting twists. Each character has their own personality, goals, and talents, so you’ll likely find at least one that appeals to you and that’s well enough. For all the little things it gets wrong, most of the important parts are done right and Mana Khemia 2 ends up being a solid Japanese-style RPG. If you’re a fan of the genre or enjoyed most of NIS America’s previous releases then you’ll find a lot to like here, and you will get plenty of play time for your $40 purchase.