[h1]Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and The Mysterious Journey was a very different experience compared to the other Atelier games from the Mysterious franchise, yet the game-experience was pretty lovely.[/h1]
[b]Atelier Firis' story was very different compared to the two other atelier games from the Mysterious series, Atelier Sophie, and Atelier Lydie & Suelle. In Atelier Firis, you're trying to become a certified alchemist within a year, to prove that your parents are wrong. You, Firis Mistlud want to prove to your parents, that you're not the little crybaby anymore, you want to show them that, you've grown up and ready to fly out and reach the skies.
In short, you're tired of living in a cave-town and want to experience how it is to be outside, but you can't do that because it's dangerous. That's why you as Firis Mistlud have decided to become a certified alchemist to protect yourself and to prove you're an adult at the age of 15.[/b]
I personally didn't really enjoy the base-plot of the story, but at least you were able to decide how to story was going to end. The only thing that I would consider as an objective in the game was, you have to become a certified alchemist within the 365 days you have to become one. After that, you're free as a bird. Meanwhile, you're traveling towards your main destiny, you get to meet a lot of different characters, and you have the choice of choosing whom you want to end with. There are a total of over 10 different endings in the game! The path between all these endings were all different from each other. The thing they had in common was, you had to do "x, y, and z" thing, and have over 80 friendship and that's it. The different character endings were very wholesome, and I enjoyed them a lot. My personal ending would probably be "An Atelier For Two", where you end up sharing an atelier with Ilmeria. I support wholesome yuri!
Now that we're speaking about characters, in our journey, we get to play as 12 different characters (Including Firis & The two DLC's). All these characters are very lovely in their own way. They were all contributing to my party to an extend, and that is something I haven't experienced before when playing an Atelier game. Good job on that, big props!
The gameplay in Atelier Firis was very based and felt like the average Atelier Game. You get the Slice of Life cutscenes as always, and you get to go outside and collect materials for synthesizing the specific item you want to craft and the combat was very boring. Atelier Firis' combat is basically item spam to victory, and that's about it. Nothing else, just use lots Blitz Core: Void with the three combined traits such as Severing Flash/Steals Lots of Life, Twin Powers, One Time End, or Enhance with Count and you're set to go. I personally didn't enjoy the battle aspect of the game that much, since it was just item spam to victory, but the other aspects of the game were good. Not only that, but fighting specific bosses/events were not the main objective, so you do have the option to avoid fighting any monsters if you want to.
Doing synthesis in Atelier Firis was a very different experience compared to Atelier Sophie. In Sophie getting specific traits in the game were more difficult to obtain compared to Firis. From what I remember, in Atelier Sophie, you had to do over 5 different syntheses' to obtain your trait on a "Forever synthesis quality loop." (For those who know what I mean, you know what I mean.) In Firis you just had to do 1-2, and you're able to do the quality loop with just "Distilled Water", if not, you can always do the safe quality loop that was done. (Alchemic Clay ->Neutralizer Y -> Zettel -> Any kind of metal-based item, such as Ingot or Harmonium and repeat until 999 quality with the traits you desire). The crafting system also added new content, for making alchemy easier, which is always lovely. No one wants to waste over 30 minutes to make an item with the perfect effects.
The OST in Atelier Firis was very pleasant. It fitted in very well! The songs gave a very lovely atmosphere to the scenery and made you feel like, every place in the game was unique compared to each other. An example of this could be, in Atelier Lydie & Suelle, the near forest areas had the same OST, but in Firis, every forest had a different OST, which I really loved. I loved the OST so much, I only changed one of the OST, rather I didn't change it, I just added more OST in the atelier, after hearing the same OST for over an hour of synthesizing. (I'm quite sure everyone has done this...)
Overall, I really enjoyed Atelier Firis, but I had a really rough time starting out on it. I really disliked the fact, you did not have fast travel until the end of the game, and the grinding could take a longer time than you anticipated.
I would not recommend this game as your first Atelier game simply because of the "strict" time limit, but otherwise, if you already got some experience with the Atelier games, I think this game is a must-try! Maybe not as good as Atelier Lydie & Suelle, but it's quite epic, that's for sure!
