I’ve been playing a lot of Atelier games this year whereas I used to space them out more in the past. That’s because in the past I found them quite satisfying and enjoyable, so one game could tide me over for a long time. Since Atelier Ayesha, however, I haven’t been enjoying myself. That’s why I’ve been playing these games back to back, but it’s not working.
Ayesha was meh. Escha & Logy was relatively okay. Shallie was a waste of time. But Sophie? Sophie is just garbage. A step back in every way conceivable. I apologize to all the people who warned me the series was in decline for not believing them. How could I believe it was possible to muck up a series as simple as this one? You get a girl, you give her a studio, she throws different things in the pot, presto! I didn’t believe Gust would actually make a game like Sophie where they ration out the alchemy recipes like a stingy CEO with yearly bonuses, making you waste time jumping through horrible hoops to unlock each one.
By hoops, I mean things like having to synthesize items with particular traits, or having to get a particular item from the field, or get hit by a special attack from a certain enemy. One especially annoying one was having to get the friendliness of all artisans up… except there’s a certain artisan you can only unlock through an event, but the game doesn’t tell you that the event is the only way to progress, so I spent ages talking to the artisans in town to no avail. Massive waste of time. Worst… Atelier… ever…
I would be okay if they combined this system with the conventional “buy books to unlock recipes” gimmick. You can have some key, story-essential items that need special requirements to unlock, and then your everyday pedestrian items like Bombs and Neutralizers can be obtained normally. That way I still get to make a lot of stuff, and Gust still gets to “innovate” and impress the fans with their new features. As it is, Atelier Sophie is terribly boring because of the small number of recipes that you have to suffer to get.
Combat is boring too. I started out on Hardcore mode, but even the commonest enemies had too much HP so the battles were taking forever. Downgraded to Normal and then to Easy for the first time ever, and I still think the battles take too long. That’s not the big problem, though. The big problem is the enemies respawn constantly. I know I’m spoiled from the Dusk saga where you could clear out a screen and forage in peace, but even if they had to respawn, couldn’t they wait a little longer? You finish an enemy off and literally 5 seconds later it pops up again right behind you, ready to battle. The drops are meh, the EXP is pitiful and I can’t enjoy myself in the field because of the mobs hunting me down. It’s the pits.
Characters and interactions… the jury’s still out. I like the lower frequency of character events. But on the other hand everyone has turned into a Harvest Moon character. They have like, one thing to say for the longest time. Their stories don’t update, their inventories don’t update, they rarely leave their assigned spots, etc etc. Atelier Sophie is one of the more recent games, so why is it so backwards in this regard?
TL;DR I play Atelier games for the alchemy, and in Atelier Sophie the alchemy is locked behind busywork so it sucks. And normally I would add “so I’m dropping it,” but even an inferior Atelier is still Atelier. A starving camel is still bigger than a horse. Besides, it’s the first in a trilogy so there’s still time for Gust to fix the mistakes in Firis and Lydie & Suelle. Heh, I sound so desperate right now. Anyway, I’ll play a little longer and let you know how it goes. See ya!
Firis is much worse.
Impossible. The universe would explode.
I can’t compare it to the other ones, but Luydie & Suelle had me bored to tears so I dropped it a couple hours in.
That bad, huh. Oh, Gust…
I was toying with the idea of getting that game, but I guess I’ll give it a pass after all. More precious money saved, hooray! The three Dusk games will probably be enough to scratch any alchemy RPG itch I may harbour until the end of times.
I’m still plodding on, but it sucks so definitely save your money.
I was going to take the opportunity to write about Lulua but I’m feeling somewhat lazy so maybe I’ll do that at a later point of time, but I just wanted to bring news that apparently both the upcoming Atelier Ryza and new Sakura Wars are now going to have Action battle systems, which is a bit of a hmmm (I don’t like Action in my RPGs but it’s less of a bummer because I can’t say I really play either Atelier or SW for good turn-based combat either)
Wow, I low-key love action RPGs, but they’re just too hard for me. But since these two games are aimed at the more casual, character-focused fan, I’m hoping they’ll be easier to play. Or at least grindable. More Rune Factory than Monster Hunter, if you catch my drift. The more I hear, the more I like. Now if only Ryza could get clothes that didn’t cut off her circulation…
RE: Lulua – You’re not going to say it was bad, are you? Even the Rorona that everyone likes to hate on was a lot of fun IMO.
“You’re not going to say it was bad, are you” – mmm, half and half I guess? Anyway just gonna shotgun my thoughts randomly
I guess this is definitely more personal than objective but Lulua doesn’t actually have Arland-style gameplay with the time limits and that – it has Mysterious-style gameplay and that’s kinda a real bummer because I expect the Arland nostalgia game to actually have Arland gameplay so.
Though I think I remember reading something that you said that maybe it’s not really the lack of Time Limit that makes a lot of the neo-Ateliers not as fun but rather than it’s become a linear chapter-based straight line where you get gated by where you are in the plot anyway but yeah – under this setup it really feels like you’re “going through the motions” a lot sometimes and what stands out to me most in this regards is probably the combat, which takes forever to finish because of the long unskippable skill animations and isn’t very complex so it’s just kinda a time tax to force you to craft new ore -> weapons every chapter just so you can beat battles in a reasonable amount of time.
(Also it kind of feels that items aren’t as strong as they should be in this game – the best strategy seems to be spamming skills over and over which allows certain backline members to chain their own skills and deal more damage than you could ever do with a bomb)
I don’t remember whether this is reused from another game but one of the main gameplay gimmicks is the Alcheriddle book, which is sort of like a quest list except in the form of cryptic hints that you have to figure out instead of just having it spelled out (like “craft high quality X”). It has the same issue with puzzles in most games, in that it’s satisfying if you can figure it out on your own and not so much when you’re spending 2 hours trying to figure out wasting your time because it’s too cryptic a hint.
Some of the objectives are also kinda obnoxious (like ones that need you to spam specific items 10 times in battle when it wouldn’t be something you would normally do because it’s not the quickest way to end battles) and I think there are several main chapter quest requirements that are literately pretty lazy “Craft / Battle 10 times before we let you progress”
The Alchemy/Crafting is fine but I think it stops growing in new features like halfway through the game which means eventually you just kinda feel like you’re “going through the motions” crafting the new items that are unlocked every chapter without putting much thought into it. Since there’s no time limit and the usable items are meh you can’t even have the satisfaction of optimizing your crafting here.
I think I kind of made the gameplay sound like I’m really pooping on it but to be honest, it’s fine for at least half a game and the pacing feels a bit better than a bunch of the Mysterious games I’ve played – it’s just that I can’t feel really motivated to bring it all the way to the end.
Ok, moving on to non-gameplay related things… uh, I guess I don’t really know if this really benefits much from returning to Arland. I can’t really put it into words but like it’s such a laid back world everything is progressing as usual and there’s no real tension in the whole “what are the old characters you liked doing now?!” thing that these long-term nostalgia thing is supposed to invoke.
And I’m pretty sure some of the areas in the game are supposed to make you go “whoa, so these are how the old areas look like with modern graphical technology!” but it’s not a huge jump from the past games… and I don’t even remember most of them anyway! It’s not exactly Midgar city here.
Maybe it’s the appeal of seeing the old girls as MILFs but I’m pretty sure they’re secretly vampires since years have passed and they still look as youthful as ever. Except for Sterk, they must be draining the lifeforce out of him because he looks pretty desiccated (and he’s also trying to beat the record to become Arland’s oldest living virgin, apparently)
Oh that reminds me but there’s a bit of scummyness and Rorona is the only returning main character that’s playable in the game even though Totori and Meruru show up and have decent screen time – you actually have to purchase DLC to get them playable. And I don’t know if it’s better or worse that those DLCs weren’t even available on-launch, they came like months later and I don’t really know who the heck would still be playing the game months later if they were interested.
Also Rorona’s in the running for the Mother of the Year award – she’s away “on jobs” most of the time and doesn’t even teach Lulua alchemy herself, she offloaded the job to Piana, a minor character from one of the older ones (was it Totori?)
Some of the Arland storytelling tropes are wearing a bit thin to me, like the overly friendly girl best friend character.
Anyway this came out a lot more negative than I thought it would but like I said I did have a lot of fun for like half of the game before I just kinda went “honestly I don’t really see the need to actually finish the game, I’m sure they all accomplished what they wanted to do and lived rich full lives, the end” so
Ahh, everything I suspected. All the tediousness of the recent games wrapped up in a nostalgia coating to sell more copies. I think, like you, I would be vaguely curious to find out how everyone (Esty, Cody, Gio, etc.) got on in the end, but if they all look and act and fare the same, then there’s no need to rush to play it. If the gameplay (puzzles?!) is junk on top of that, then all the more reason to abstain. Thank you for your sacrifice, Davzz.
I was so stupidly happy when I get my copy for PS4 that I recall I cried of joy when I got out of the store (how silly of me, but I’m just that kind of a fan). After 5 hours of playgame I began to think “wtff with this game!?” just because the stupid recipes are goddamn blocked. I don’t like the job system, I don’t like the trait requirements for these jobs (I still can’t make a Bomb with the “Kind of Light” trait, damn), and maybe the alchemy system isn’t that bad, but with the blocked recipes, I just want to grab the game and sell it out there. I don’t mind lack of interaction between character; just like you, I just want to grind items and do alchemy, but nope, nope nope, not here, not in this game. Now, after Plachta start to feel weird with her memories, I got interested in the plot so I’m going to play this till the end, but at this point (after 23 hours in myu gameplay), I’m starting to feel very desappointed in how GUST are taking the series to a level where Waifus and pretty colors are more important than alchemy per se. It make me feel like I want to spend time with the whole saga, leaving Mysterious Saga buried and forgotten.
I’m sorry if I cursed too much in my comment, but I just feel frustrated, for me to spend valious money in a shitty game. I can see that GUST has put some effort in the Alchemy System, it is fun to play, it is indeed new and fresh to the series, but I see no effort in other points.
I still want to play Firis though…
My thoughts exactly. The distinguishing feature of an Atelier game is the alchemy system. Why would you put so many hurdles in the player’s way? I’m close to the end of the game (I think) and there are still plenty of recipes I have no idea how to unlock because of the stupid requirements. I’m just going to ignore them and try to finish the game.
I’ll second you, and I’ll swich to Easy Mode too because stupid tigers freakin’ broke. I hate them a little bit.
Let us finish this and then… I think I’ll going back to the roots.
I love your Atelier reviews. My favourite games so far have been Escha & Logy and Firis, whereas Sophie was so dull I couldn’t finish it. I don’t understand the hype about it online.
I don’t get it either. I hear they even made a sequel. The Atelier series tries new things with every entry, so sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss. Sophie was a miss for me, but the next game was Firis, which I loved. That’s just the way it is.