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Besides attending class and completing assignments, you'll spend a lot of time perfecting the alchemy process. There are two places to create items: in your workshop and the Athanor Room. The base ingredients often need to be created in your workshop before traveling to the Athanor Room to create weapons, armor, and accessories. It would be nice if you could create all items in the Athanor Room, as often you will need to go back and forth to complete more complicated ones. Alchemy can be mastered from the beginning if you figure it out, but classroom sessions won't reveal the advanced parts until later in the game. You will also be able to add other effects to the items that will come in handy when equipping or using them. Alchemy not only affects useable and equippable goods, but each character's base growth as well. Because characters no longer level up with combat, alchemy becomes a key to being able to keep up with increasingly difficult enemies. In battle, you'll earn AP. Then, depending on the items you create, you will be able to activate skills and stat effects. It's sort of like the system used in Final Fantasy XII, and actually works really well to tie in all the elements of the game. You'll need to fight to earn AP and the necessary items for synthesis to unlock new branches of the Grow Book.
Though turn-based, combat is a lot more interactive than it may initially appear. As you collect party members and complete the first few terms, combat will become much more robust, so don't write it off early in the adventure. The initial row of three fighters starts the round with three support characters ready to be swapped in. Combat gets really interesting when you start comboing character attacks.
For instance attack with a character, and you will have time to hit X to swap in a support character for a follow-up attack, hit R1 to quickly rotate to the next support character and swap him in. You can string a series of attacks together this way, but it does take time to recharge once a character has been sent to support. Mastering this system will be necessary in beating tougher enemies and will do more damage to enemies. Support characters recharge SP as well. Each character has the usual set of tools, such as attack, guard, skill, and items. As you expand each character's Grow Book, they gain more attacks per turn, better stats, and more powerful skills. Once you perform enough attacks, you will enter burst mode where you can do more damage and perform larger combos. There's a lot of variety in combat, so it makes farming that much easier.
Mana Khemia offers plenty of humor, great looking 2D graphics, solid music, and a combat system that makes the turn-based approach a little more hands on. The best way to enjoy this adventure is with balance: equal parts item farming, character growth, and synthesis. If you enjoyed the alchemy games of the past or want to jump in to the genre, then Mana Khemia is an easy choice.
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