This is a Ninetail game. The same company known for Gears of Dragoon and the Venus Blood series (through their subdivision Dualtail). If I had to describe this title in a few words I would just say "a poor man's Gears of Dragoon".
Story
At first glance it looks like your standard magic academy plot (just replace "magic" with "alchemy") and for the most part this is what you get. Interestingly the academy's organization is closer to a university than a standard Japanese high school like usual. As you play you learn more about the world at large and nefarious plots start to be unearthed.
The story is actually pretty decent. The problem is that it develops extremely slowly and most of the characters are very dull—especially the protagonist, Shin. Can something that only becomes interesting after 30 hours or so really be called good? To make matters worse, this game has two routes—Law and Chaos, as usual for a Ninetail game—and the story doesn't really work unless you pick Law.
This isn't new for Ninetail, as most of their games since Venus Blood Abyss really favor the Law routes. But The Alchemist of Ars Magna takes the Law favoritism to new heights. Chaos is a shameful afterthought, it skips every single major reveal, has arguably fewer H scenes than Law (typically the main draw of Chaos) and is dominated by a feeling of loneliness and nihilism that makes playing it all but pointless for anything but New Game+ rewards.
Characters
Most are just very dull. The protagonist is the biggest offender, being your generic good guy without any personality quirk to differentiate him from the mobs and yet all the girls just love him. He does get a personality in Chaos at least, the one of a generic doomsday villain. I suppose it could be called an improvement. It doesn't help that he is the only character without a voice actor during VN segments (he is voiced in battle).
Heroines are very archetype-driven. Aria is the adoptive big sister with a teasing streak, Celes is the princess knight and Enri is the super loyal but mysterious loli.
In general, secondary male characters fare better than the girls but they have less screentime because well, they're dudes. Johann's voice actor is absolutely excellent and it's a pity he doesn't have more roles in the industry.
Gameplay
Well, that's the meat of a Ninetail game, isn't it? The basic gameplay loops consist of VN segment => Item crafting => Dungeon crawl => Boss => VN segment again.
Dungeon crawl is not a very good experience. Maps are made out of nodes and you move a symbol representing your party around. Movement is kind of sluggish in a way only Unity manages to be and you often have to pan the camera to see where you go, as the nodes are unnecessarily huge. Sometimes the node can be a resource point, a rest point, or a battle.
Battles are turn-based frontview. At lower difficulty you can auto-battle everything but as you challenge higher difficulties you really have to pay attention to team composition and tactics. It's actually not bad but damage becomes out of whack when you know what you're doing so high difficulty play mostly consist of surviving first round then killing everything in 1-2 rounds... including bosses.
Now, most of the character's performance comes from weapons. And weapons are obtained by crafting. Crafting can become a chore real fast when you do it a lot, especially for high rank items. The amount of clicking necessary to make a rank A or S item if you don't already have the exact materials for it isn't fun at all.
Overall I'd call the gameplay serviceable. It can become fun at high difficulty once things click into place but there are better games out there for that, especially from the same developers.
Porn
Actually pretty bad. CGs by themselves are fine, but scenes are criminally bland. Most girls behave exactly the same the second a dick is put inside them, regardless of their usual behavior. Non-penetrative scenes (fairly rare) are generally more enjoyable simply because they preserve the girls's original personality better.
As for the "vibe" most scenes are vanilla. The game has vague harem elements, though there are only 3 main heroines and their respective endings can't be obtained in the same playthrough. The Chaos route has some darker content (light BSDM, sharing) but it's overall very mild. Even the 3 (yes there are only 3, one for each main girl) Game Over rape scenes are rather tame.
The total amount of scenes is also fairly low.
I don't recommend this game if you're only interested in porn.
Final words
This review sounds negative and yet I've played for about 80 hours, surely there's something to like, right? As I said before the plot is decent once it finally gets going and the gameplay is serviceable if you're looking to challenge the higher difficulties. The soundtrack is also pretty nice.
That's it. It's a serviceable game, so 3 stars. I can't in good faith rate it the same as other Ninetails titles but 2 stars would be too harsh.
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Story
At first glance it looks like your standard magic academy plot (just replace "magic" with "alchemy") and for the most part this is what you get. Interestingly the academy's organization is closer to a university than a standard Japanese high school like usual. As you play you learn more about the world at large and nefarious plots start to be unearthed.
The story is actually pretty decent. The problem is that it develops extremely slowly and most of the characters are very dull—especially the protagonist, Shin. Can something that only becomes interesting after 30 hours or so really be called good? To make matters worse, this game has two routes—Law and Chaos, as usual for a Ninetail game—and the story doesn't really work unless you pick Law.
This isn't new for Ninetail, as most of their games since Venus Blood Abyss really favor the Law routes. But The Alchemist of Ars Magna takes the Law favoritism to new heights. Chaos is a shameful afterthought, it skips every single major reveal, has arguably fewer H scenes than Law (typically the main draw of Chaos) and is dominated by a feeling of loneliness and nihilism that makes playing it all but pointless for anything but New Game+ rewards.
Characters
Most are just very dull. The protagonist is the biggest offender, being your generic good guy without any personality quirk to differentiate him from the mobs and yet all the girls just love him. He does get a personality in Chaos at least, the one of a generic doomsday villain. I suppose it could be called an improvement. It doesn't help that he is the only character without a voice actor during VN segments (he is voiced in battle).
Heroines are very archetype-driven. Aria is the adoptive big sister with a teasing streak, Celes is the princess knight and Enri is the super loyal but mysterious loli.
In general, secondary male characters fare better than the girls but they have less screentime because well, they're dudes. Johann's voice actor is absolutely excellent and it's a pity he doesn't have more roles in the industry.
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Gameplay
Well, that's the meat of a Ninetail game, isn't it? The basic gameplay loops consist of VN segment => Item crafting => Dungeon crawl => Boss => VN segment again.
Dungeon crawl is not a very good experience. Maps are made out of nodes and you move a symbol representing your party around. Movement is kind of sluggish in a way only Unity manages to be and you often have to pan the camera to see where you go, as the nodes are unnecessarily huge. Sometimes the node can be a resource point, a rest point, or a battle.
Battles are turn-based frontview. At lower difficulty you can auto-battle everything but as you challenge higher difficulties you really have to pay attention to team composition and tactics. It's actually not bad but damage becomes out of whack when you know what you're doing so high difficulty play mostly consist of surviving first round then killing everything in 1-2 rounds... including bosses.
Now, most of the character's performance comes from weapons. And weapons are obtained by crafting. Crafting can become a chore real fast when you do it a lot, especially for high rank items. The amount of clicking necessary to make a rank A or S item if you don't already have the exact materials for it isn't fun at all.
Overall I'd call the gameplay serviceable. It can become fun at high difficulty once things click into place but there are better games out there for that, especially from the same developers.
Porn
Actually pretty bad. CGs by themselves are fine, but scenes are criminally bland. Most girls behave exactly the same the second a dick is put inside them, regardless of their usual behavior. Non-penetrative scenes (fairly rare) are generally more enjoyable simply because they preserve the girls's original personality better.
As for the "vibe" most scenes are vanilla. The game has vague harem elements, though there are only 3 main heroines and their respective endings can't be obtained in the same playthrough. The Chaos route has some darker content (light BSDM, sharing) but it's overall very mild. Even the 3 (yes there are only 3, one for each main girl) Game Over rape scenes are rather tame.
The total amount of scenes is also fairly low.
I don't recommend this game if you're only interested in porn.
Final words
This review sounds negative and yet I've played for about 80 hours, surely there's something to like, right? As I said before the plot is decent once it finally gets going and the gameplay is serviceable if you're looking to challenge the higher difficulties. The soundtrack is also pretty nice.
That's it. It's a serviceable game, so 3 stars. I can't in good faith rate it the same as other Ninetails titles but 2 stars would be too harsh.