Mana Khemia.

I'm really impressed how well designed this game is. The item farming and alchemy stuff is actually a lot of fun and ties directly into a grid based system to power up your characters, which you need to do since they don't level up. It also allows for a lot of experimentation to find new items by messing around with the materials at hand. The combat is really fun too, especially Nikki's animal capture and specials.