I explored the Fallen Ruins and beat the last boss fair and square. That being the case, I can say I legitimately finished Atelier Escha & Logy Plus. It just happpens that I had 240 days left on the clock and I could only skip forward 10 days at a time. Meaning I’d have to sleep and wake up 24 times just to see an ending… Or I could save myself the trouble and watch the endings on YouTube at 2x speed. Guess which one I chose.

Now I’m done with Escha & Logy, I don’t feel like writing much. But I will say again that it’s 20 times better than Atelier Ayesha and a very satisfying experience. We don’t get the full story behind the Dusk or why the crops are failing, but at least we know that we don’t know, so that’s progress. After dragging it out so long, I’m sure Gust will finally solve the mystery in Atelier Shallie, but I’m not in any hurry to get to it. After all, just like in Ayesha the characters claim there’s crop failure and food shortages, but my container is stuffed with giant pancakes and bowls of soup so I don’t know what they’re talking about.

After they came up with so many items in Ayesha, I didn’t think Gust had anything left, but surprise surprise, there’s a TON of new items to make in Escha & Logy. Soooo much stuff. So many accessories and weapons and armor. Alchemy is also more important to the plot, so you don’t feel like you’re wasting time that could be better spent elsewhere on synthesis.

Characters… Hmm. I didn’t like Logy or dislike Escha as much as I thought I would. They were okay, I guess. Everyone was okay. I liked the paucity of repeat characters, though 0 returnees would have been my ideal number. We got a bit of romance with Escha and Logy, even though I don’t really buy it but I’m not invested enough to argue. Even the last boss was somewhat sympathetic, though it was weird how everyone was suddenly claiming to be her friend and preaching the power of friendship when they’d never even met her before. These JRPGs and their friendship fetish…

TL;DR – It was good, I had fun, lots of time for exploration and synthesis and a heartwarming story with a good ending. If Ayesha hadn’t been so awful I would have looked for more to complain about, but this is such a breath of fresh air after that. Now I feel that Gust has done right by me. I’m looking forward to playing Shallie in a while, but my alchemy itch has been well-scratched for now, so I’ll get round to that in a couple of months. Or I might jump to Sophie for a change of pace and return to the Dusk series later.

Schedule for March: I was close to the end in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ so final push for that next week. This weekend is dedicated to a Do-or-Die attempt to get back into Dragon Quest VII. If I can’t beat that stupid cloud boss by Sunday night, I give up forever. I also need to do a final reckoning with Chaos Rings III and talk about my progress in Ys: Memories of Celceta.

Update 3 days later: Let’s talk some more

It’s been a nice restful weekend. I hung around doing nothing for a while and suddenly I’m feeling more chatty. So let’s talk about the few things that are still bugging me after finishing Atelier Escha & Logy. The main thing is Logy’s so-called “character development,” which was very forced and in fact non-existent IMO. For most of the game he’s just a normal, cooperative worker. Then come end game and he’s spouting all this stuff to Escha about how she helped him change and learn to work with others, blah blah blah. Like, what?

All that changing actually took place in his backstory off-screen. Before the start of the game, in Central. That’s where he went ahead with the airship development and got his friend injured. When he shows up in Colseit, he has obviously learned his lesson already. He’s helpful, works well with others, doesn’t complain even when others hold him back, even the objections he raises about the airship are all sound and rational, and he gives his all to complete the project regardless… Sounds like I’m writing a college recommendation for the kid, haha.

But seriously, Logy is already a changed man when he appears in Colseit. You could argue that he had changed mentally before he arrived and that working with others helped him put those changes into practice. Even then, it would be due to working with everyone in the town, not just Escha. The whole thing felt like an attempt to shoehorn the usual “Power of Friendship” trope in there so we could lecture the boss before beating her. That, and a forced attempt to add romance to the game. I so don’t see it but at least it’s not as creepy as Katla and Micie.

If they really wanted to make sense of the whole “I changed thanks to you” plot, they should have put more effort into showing Logy’s initial reluctance to work with or trust anyone instead of making him so supportive from the start. This is where people will say “Oh but you missed the scene where…” Actually I did miss/skip a few scenes, but only a few. Three in fact.

The first is the one where Logy tells Escha about his past and then she throws herself into his arms and starts crying. I was so dazed, like seriously? Why are YOU crying? This isn’t about you. I figured it would be one of those anime scenes “Wah, don’t blame yourself I’m here for you waaah” kind of things, but I was so annoyed I skipped all the dialogue so… yeah. Not everything is about you, you frivolous pink-haired frou-frou faux-cutesy charlatan.

The next scene I skipped was the animated scene where the airship tries to approach the Unexplored Ruins and there’s all this turbulence and stuff. They try to make it look like there’s a chance of failure, but of course there’s no way they won’t succeed so don’t waste my time.

Same thing with the third one I skipped, where Escha is late to the ship when the ruins are crumbling and it’s like aaah, what will she do? Obviously the writers would never let a main character fall to her death, so I skipped to the inevitable conclusion where she ends up safe and sound. That said, I made the same assumption in Chaos Rings III and got a nasty shock the other day… Gotta find time to continue the story and find out what happens. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Anyway, that’s enough about Escha and Logy. I should probably say something about the 6-man battle system, since I enjoyed it quite a bit. Might be my imagination and the fact that I didn’t play on Hard, but battles moved much faster, characters were more powerful, items were much more useful. There were tons of area attacks so you could clear useless mobs in one strike, and there were specials all over the place but the animation never got tedious. Gust really learned a lot from the mistakes of Atelier Ayesha.

Synthesis: Once you got good items and replicated them through the homunculus, it was easy to unlock all the properties on any item you made. BUT it’s still a pain in the ass to put non-standard effects on items. You know, that tedious process where you have to make item X with property Y, then use X to make another item Z to transfer property Y to the final item, etc etc.

You’ve never heard me complaining about this process before because I flat-out refuse to do it. Any content that cannot be cleared through standard means will simply not be cleared. Luckily in all the Atelier games I’ve played, this sort of chicanery is only necessary for optional bosses. That was the case here, so Child of Terror and Dreadnaught can stay over there and terrorize anyone they want, I’m done.

Right, now I feel I’ve said whatever I wanted to say about this game. Normally I advise people to play games in chronological order, but you can just skip Ayesha and go straight to Escha & Logy, you won’t lose anything. Though you’ll appreciate the latter so much more if you play the former first. All your complaints will vanish because it could be so much worse. You know what, just play the games as they came out. Now back to Picross Dragon Quest VII.