As I mentioned in the previous post on Atelier Firis, I’ve been having a good time with the game, but at the same time I’m eager to try other games. Atelier Firis is a super open and open-ended game with no clear storyline besides your initial objective of getting Firis to become an alchemist in one year. After that, it’s up to you how much finding, fighting, foraging and fusion you want to do before you’re completely sick of it.

Firis is actually the kind of liberating, free-exploring game I was hoping Atelier Shallie would be, so it has been a largely satisfactory experience and I have only minor complaints and pet peeves about the game. Which I will explain if I ever get around to doing a proper round-u. Which will not be today. For now, I plan to shelve this game briefly for three main reasons.

1. I already said it in the first paragraph, but I wanna play other stuff! I’ve had enough of crafting and of turn-based battle for a while, so next up will either be something non-combative like an otome game (actually I’m going to play La Corda d’Oro next, but I mean after that) or something with more intense combat like an action RPG. I want new sights, new music, new colours and new characters!
2. The supply of new alchemy recipes has dried up so I haven’t made anything new in a long time. Atelier Xenoblade is all good and nice, but in the end when I play a game about alchemy, I want to do a lot of… alchemy! Especially since the story of the game is about helping a girl become an… alchemist! I’ve mentioned before how different Atelier games have varying ratios of combat to synthesis to interaction, etc. This one is heavy on the exploring and collection side with a lot of items to pick up, so if that’s your thing, definitely give it a try.
3. Navigation got tiresome after a while. The way travel is set up, you can warp around within a map from landmarks and campfires, but there’s still plenty of running in-between. You also can’t warp from map to map, which is incredibly tedious when you have to go see Sophie at Reisenberg or Norbert at Grau-Tal or whoever, and they’re on the opposite side of the map. This takes out a lot of the fun of questing and exploring. I can understand them wanting you to suffer a bit early on, but the flying ship recipe should have been auto-unlocked after the alchemist exam, regardless of how little sense it makes story-wise.

Free tip from me (minor spoiler): Try to get the flying ship as soon as possible after the exam. When you land back in Ertona after the exam, go to the place where the light shines and fish up two Worm fish. When Meklet and Atomina give you the quest to make the Elixir of Laawe, make it and hand it in ASAP. Check out the island at Moon Catcher Pass when they tell you to, then make your way to Flussheim to do the rest of the ship quest. Phew!

TL;DR: I’m tired of going to the same places, collecting the same items, fighting the same enemies and fusing the same items. And I’m actually tired of writing about it, TBH. Not so tired I don’t want to play any more forever, but so tired I don’t want to play any more for now. When I come back to Atelier Firis in a couple of weeks/months, I’ll need to:

-Turn down the difficulty and fuse better armor so I can beat the dragon on Liane’s storyline
-Finish exploring the Floating Island to complete Meklet and Atomina’s storyline
-Explore the extra maps: Riesentrain and Holy Vestier Land
-Fulfill any easily fulfillable requirements to unlock new recipes

That’s all and then I’ll call it a day. See you when I get round to doing all that!