Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX

( full review with screenshots: https://gaming-parrot.com/post/atelier-rorona-review-flawed-craft/ ) Note: Despite being marked Unsupported for Deck, the game runs flawlessly other than needing mouse controls to launch. The menu lag you'll encounter is present on Windows as well. Atelier Rorona is the first game in the Arland sub-trilogy of the massive Atelier series. Like all of the trilogies, it's entirely self-contained, so you don't need to have played any of the older games to start here. Rorona was one of the first games in this series to get much recognition in the West, so if you ever considered playing one of them in the 2010s, you probably saw comparisons being made to it. Some people would accuse newer Atelier games of being dumbed down in terms of time limits and crafting in comparison to Rorona. Now that I've played it, I can confidently tell you that's nonsense. Atelier Rorona casts you as Rorona, who is an idiot. You will know that she is an idiot because every character will go out of their way to call her one in every other cutscene, and also because she is pathologically unable to display any agency at any point. But to be fair to her, most of the other characters are also idiots and the entire plot, to the extent that there is one, is mostly driven by idiots misunderstanding each other. A better written game could make a good comedy out of that premise, but Rorona mostly uses it to waste your time with endless streams of cutscenes in which nothing important happens. I eventually just started fast forwarding any time anyone talked and I still feel like I understood everything that happened. The gameplay loop has you receiving one mandatory task that you must complete within approximately 80 days every chapter, plus a bunch of bonus tasks you can complete for extra rewards. The main tasks are so simple that some of them can be accomplished just by buying items from the store, and the optional tasks are hardly any more difficult until the last few chapters. Tasks are accomplished by traveling out into the world to gather ingredients and fight, then returning to the atelier to turn those ingredients into new items. Most tasks ask you to make a handful of items, but others want you to kill a few enemies. The crafting system is extremely basic compared to later games and basically comes down to picking ingredients that have the right properties attached, and nearly every combat can be won by mashing attack until the enemies die. It's actually fascinating how bad the combat balancing is. Even without making much effort to be strong, you'll often be OHKO'ing every enemy and only taking 1 HP in damage, but then you'll abruptly run into bosses in the same zones that OHKO you and take hardly any damage back. If you're not trying to reach the best ending, nothing in Atelier Rorona will ever require you to think at all. The first 9 or so task lists can be completed with full rewards with minimal effort and without spending anywhere near the amount of time you're given. It seems like the deadlines are actually pretty tight if you're trying to see all the events, activate all the endings, and beat those optional bosses, but the gameplay and story were not interesting enough for me to want to put in more than the minimum amount of time.

　アーランド3部作バンドルまとめ買い（¥ 3,762）の１作目レビュー、原作は未プレイ。 トゥルーエンドまでプレイ済み、２作目３作目をまっさらな状態でやりたいので延長戦はやってない。 　アトリエシリーズは古いのを何作かやった事がある。 　PS3時代の時間制限付きアトリエ作品でただクリアするだけならよっぽど変な時間の使い方をしなければそこまで難易度は高くない、実際トゥルーも簡単だった。ただし特殊なボス討伐や、特定のエンディングを狙うと一気に難易度が跳ね上がるのでコンプ勢は頑張ろう。バランスはいつものガストゲー、雑魚の弱すぎ具合に対してボスがとても強いので挑戦する際には気を付けよう。 　今作では量販店システムがあり、登録したアイテムと同じ品質・特性を持ったアイテムを購入できるようになるシステムで、中盤以降はこのシステムをうまく活用する事で製造・依頼などを効率よくこなす事が出来る。……非常にありがたいのは事実だけど[spoiler]賢者の石[/spoiler]すら量産できるってどういう事よ。 　セール中は手頃な値段で購入できるオススメ作品、ただスキップ機能等が無いので周回は少々面倒な感じになるだろう。 　アトリエシリーズのキャラは男性も女性も全員魅力的だなぁ。 ・追記 　他2作をやった後だとロロナが一番UIが良い、快適な作品だと感じた。

还是老工房适合我 虽然限时有点恼火 库酱炸毛实在是太戳我了

Since it's an older game, IMO it's worth it if you get it during a sale. Recommend saving frequently since game crashed multiple times on me. I personally don't mind the time management aspect of it, since I won't be going for 100% achievement or all endings.

I'd always been nervous about the time limit I'd heard about with the Atelier games, and apparently the DX versions make them more generous so that's part of what made me finally decide to give it a shot and I'd glad I did. This game, at least, is quite forgiving indeed with the challenges and playing blind I've been able to fulfill all of year one's deadlines with ease and do lots of fumbling and learning along the way. I've been enjoying myself quite a bit overall, and picked up the other two games in the trilogy since the whole bundle is on sale. Certain things aren't entirely clear, though, and one of the optional objectives that I failed involved some googling and attempts to make the object people said would do it to no avail (the right kind of bomb to actually destroy the rocks blocking some areas). From what I've gatjered this is a game that's intended for multiple playthroughs and I do find myself wanting to see what the game might be like on a NG+ so I'll try to remember to return once I've beaten the game with my full thoughts. post-game impressions: overall, a solid and fun game and I'm looking forward to doing a NG+ run. Still not a huge fan of the way the rocks worked but you can still complete the main assignments even without that.