After my last post about the bland Atelier Lilie ending I got, I reloaded a save from before Lilie paid the last amount of money to finish the academy and tried to get another ending. Unfortunately I had already paid 140,000 out of 150,000 into the building coffers. Since Dorunie earns 7,000 every year by taking part in the king’s contest, I could only get up to year 4 before the academy was completed and the game ended again.

In those extra two years I did my best to travel, fight, synthesize, take quests, save money and talk, talk, talk to people in the hopes of getting a different ending, but it was to no avail. Unlike Marie and Elie, Lilie does have romantic interests and male characters who take more than a passing interest (I almost wrote ‘brotherly interest’, but this is Japan) in our main character, so I was hoping to trigger one of those endings if possible. She got pretty close to the artist guy whose name I can’t remember, but nothing came of it in the end.

The entire fourth year was spent doing nothing but the same old alchemy, exploration and questing because new recipes and new foraging spots stopped triggering pretty quickly. Maybe – in fact it’s quite likely – that I could have unlocked something new by grinding up Lilie’s adventurer level, but I really didn’t want to do that. Grinding up her alchemist level proved impossible though, no matter how many Elemia ingots I made. Thanks to that she couldn’t learn any new recipes, so it was just same old, same old for the last year.

Now I understand why Lilie is supposed to be one of the harder Atelier games. It’s not hard in and of itself, but it’s like Lise or Judie in that you need to at least skim through a FAQ if you want to play effectively. If anything it’s better than Judie because the game automatically ends after 5 years instead of getting stuck in an infinite loop, and it’s better than Lise because the default ending isn’t quite so terrible.

I’ll give an example of what I mean by needing to go through a FAQ to beat Atelier Lilie. There’s this adventurer called Ilma who you meet after a year or so. If you don’t talk to her and get your fortune told several times, she won’t tell you about a new map location called Robson Village. If you don’t go to Robson, you can’t go to Granbi village. No Granbi, no Elf Village. But the game doesn’t tell you that, so if you happen to just not like Ilma very much, you’ll accidentally cut yourself off from a lot of potential events and trading partners.

There’s also the little problem of locations just flat out not unlocking despite fulfilling all the necessary requirements (according to the FAQs anyway). Heinz is supposed to tell me about Berzenburg after year 3, but he never did. He’s supposed to tell me about Berzenburg Castle once I’ve visited Granbi, Robson and Elf several times, but no dice on that either. Airfolk Tower is supposed to unlock after Year 3 when Lilie is over level 20. Well she was 37 when the game ended and I visited the castle over and over again but nothing happened. I never met Sisca because I didn’t go to the church after August 10th when she’s supposed to show up (how was I supposed to know?) etc etc.

As if all that wasn’t enough, only a FAQ will tell you that your alchemy level is limited by your skill and wisdom. The lower they are, the less alchemy-exp you get from synthesis, no matter how complicated the item you make is. Skill is easy to get by making new stuff, but wisdom comes largely from making, buying and reading about new stuff. When new stuff stops showing up, your level stops growing and you fall into the same boring loop that I did.

I’ve already thought of several counter-measures to deal with all these problems (i.e. I’m going to spend the rest of the day reading FAQs) so I’m going to hold off on a final review of Atelier Lilie until I’ve finished my third and last playthrough, starting over from scratch. So far I’d say it’s not quite as good as Marie, Elie and Marie, Elie & Anis… sudden urge to replay MEA… urge successfully repressed… for now… but less tedious than Judie and Viorate and meatier and more satisfying than the DS games. I doubt getting a better ending will change that opinion but I want to synthesize more items and kill more bosses and finish Airfolk Tower like I did in all the other Salburg games. Then I’ll be satisfied and then we can talk for real.