This is the 5th Atelier game I played.
This game is the sequel to Atelier Sophie 2, or at the time of its release, Atelier Sophie. Overall the game itself isn't bad, but there's a few things about the game that makes it way more annoying and tedious to play than it needs to be.
[h1] Story Telling [/h1]
Let's start off with the story telling. The game is split into 2 parts, the first part is having 365 in game days to gather 3 recommendations from licensed alchemists in order to take a exam, and the 2nd part is a free roam where you're supposed to do character specific questlines. Completing those questlines unlocks an ending. This game has multiple endings. This is the first title in the atelier series to explore an open world story telling similar to Ryza 1's and 2s open world.
Compared to Sophie, the game's story is much easier to follow. The first part of the game is somewhat linear as you bolt from one place, perform some quests for the alchemist, then search for the next place with an alchemist. You might trigger some character events on the way, but it's very easy to tell what's the main story events and what isn't, where in Sophie there really isn't many main story events, just a lot of character events that you can trigger easily back to back and lose track of what's going on.
Travelling around uses an LP system like Sophie, except you're hard locked into having 100 LP max, and you lose LP as you move, gather, or fight. You regain LP by resting in bed in the atelier, resting at inns, or, at a much more slower pace, synthesizing. Any of these resting mechanics also recovers your characters' hp and mp.
I dislike the 365 days time limit. You have more than enough time to get recommendations from all alchemists however, playing on hard made even early fights somewhat challenging. Getting wiped out loses you time, than you lose more time as characters don't get their HP restored, so you're forced to rest unless you want to risk an easy wipe out. The time limit also made me not want to invest into my equipment too much which further made my characters weak. Failing to reach Reisenberg, the exam site, in 365 days causes a NG+ so make sure you actually have time to spare to reach Reisenberg. If you do reach Reisenberg early, you can skip to the start of exam, once registered, by going to bed... I didn't know that until later as I reached Reisenberg 100 days early and signed up... and signing up prevents you from leaving Reisenberg, so I nearly spent 100 in game days synthesizing as I didn't want them to go to waste...
I didn't do all the character events, but for characters I did, they're all very fun people. I find there are more events with multiple characters interacting with each other, so they feel more connected compared to Sophie. There are a few returning faces, and some new characters and events has ties to characters in Sophie. It made me very happy to see the references.
Overall the story was ok, 3/5.
[h1] Combat [/h1]
There have been some changes in this game. To start off, formations are no longer a thing and characters defending is no longer a thing, so I feel like I have to worry about damage more than before. The level cap has been increased, to I presume level 99 as I ended the game with levels in the mid 40s.
Chain link makes a return with a different flavor. By performing offensive actions you fill up a bar. If Firis is targeted, you can consume part of the bar to make another character tank the hit at reduced damage. Once the bar is filled, it activates. While activated, each action consumes part of the bar. Performing offensive skills or items in this state increase the chain link which is nice. In Sophie, offensive abilities felt useless. You also gain more control on how does the chain attack since you can pre-maturely end your action chain.
The game also does something interesting, aside from Firis, each character can equip a side weapon. Weapons and armor also grant skills, and since characters have a side weapon, that's an extra 3 traits usable for the character.
I somewhat like the new combat changes, 3.5 / 5.
[h1] Alchemy and Synthesizing [/h1]
Oh boy... They done goofed in this game. The basis of the alchemy mini-game is the same as Sophies, however there's many changes. First off, instead of these lights you have to grab to make the final item better, now there's these lines on the board, if all the nodes the lines are on have been filled, it'll apply a bonus. This could be adding a new trait, increasing effeciency of the placed material, increasing the size of the final item, and so on. I don't really like this, as I find it boring compared to Sophie's mechanic.
On top of your alchemy level, each item you synthesize has a proficiency level. That level determines a few things. How many traits you can transfer, and whether you can flip or rotate pieces. How do we level up the proficiency? By synthesizing the item... multiple times. Some items share a family, for example, if you've synthesize all neutralizers at least once, making one grants all other neutralizers some exp too, however, most items don't share a family and that makes it SO annoying to create a strong item. To offset this, the game has a catalyst system. The item being synthesized can consume a category of items to use as a catalyst. Consuming a catalyst will change the grid size and change the bonus lines, however, most catalyst bonus lines suck which makes it a horrible system making strong items when you have low proficiency.
To top it all off, THIS GAME HAS NO DUPLICATION MECHANIC!!! If you want to create strong items, have fun, as when you run out of good synthesized materials, you're going to have to re-create them over and over again, paired with per item proficiency means you spend a lot of time and materials re-synthesizing the same thing. At least gaining proficieny exp doesn't care about how good your item is, so you can make many bad ones before you make your good one, but it's annoying nonetheless.
The game does still restock consumable items, but that unlocks after you complete the exam.
The recipe discovery mechanics also changed in this game. The good thing is that some quests gives you "idea points" which you can use to unlock recipes instead of performing certain actions to unlock... that bad thing is that you must first discover recipes... Undiscovered recipes don't show up in the recipe book at all so you get 0 hints in discovering them. You'll discover a lot of them as you natually play. Where it gets annoying is when quests asks for an item you have yet discovered.
Overall, alchemy in this game isn't fun and is tedious. 1 / 5
[h1] Miscellaneous [/h1]
+ = positive
- = negative
/ = neutral
+ You can fast travel from basically the start of the game, provided you discovered the fast travel points
- You can only fast travel within the area. Global fast travel is unlocked in the middle of a character storyline in the 2nd half of the game. By the time I unlocked it, I already had some endings available which means, it takes forever
+ Costumes are cute
- Costumes affects gameplay. Only when you NG+ makes all costume effects active regardless of what you use.
/ You can customize your atelier, however some items affect gameplay, like increasing your storage size.
I want to recommend this game, but the synthesize mechanics and the lack of duplication really holds it back. If you want to experience the story, just play on easy so you can avoid needing strong items at the cost of having fun in combat.
