I'm enjoying almost everything about this. Even the fact that it leans on well-used tropes isn't a problem, as it stays consistent and (so far) doesn't do anything too stupid. The weakest part so far is just the usual starting bosses being idiots and assuming they could just turn a talented person into a literal slave. I'd really hope that wasn't a surprise at this point.
Mechanically the alchemy is a bit more interesting than usual. We get little half-explanations, just enough to show the logic behind what's going on since the 'spells' aren't the usual "just fireball everything at 10x power of an actual fire mage". Maybe more importantly, whenever people do make choices, for better or worse, we usually see consequences for those choices down the line. So far I'm happy that few events feel wasted or on a whim.
But I suppose this also applies to the idiot bosses at the start - it's also true that they were allowed to be idiots by people going up the chain so it could be a little disappointing if there weren't many other competent people in the organization. My hope is that this trend mostly applies to the 'arms' division and that we just haven't seen much of the others but even if so, it looks like they were at least mildly hamstrung even if they weren't disbanded like MC's group.