It’s been a while since I last touched Atelier Shallie Plus. At least two weeks, maybe more. I’m a bit baffled by that because usually I blaze through Atelier games no matter how busy I am. In fact they’re my favorite procrastination tools.

It just happens that I’ve hit a really boring patch where I have to crawl through dungeons to find Keithgriff so he can give me my next marching orders. Firstly, the dungeon crawling is the most boring part of the game. Secondly, I don’t like Keithgriff and don’t want to see him again. Thirdly, it’s annoying how little agency Shallie has in this game. Has she even discovered or done anything on her own? She’s always marching to another’s tune even as people stand around bawling “Discover the truth for yourself!”

All that said, there has been one development since I last posted about Shallie. We fought the Great Spirit of Water and discovered that this whole Dusk thing might be closely connected to the great spirits. Specifically the spirits of water and earth. It seems humans/the ancients may have angered them somehow? I actually kicked myself a bit when the revelation came out. Like, “Why didn’t I think of that?” If there are problems with crop failure and desertification, it makes sense to ask the spirits responsible, right?

Then I thought, “Why didn’t they think of that, then?” “They” referring to the characters in the game. But as far as my hazy memories go, there hasn’t been much talk of spirits in the game. Almost nobody knows about them except mages, who are rare. Even the alchemists in my party have never heard of them, we only encountered one per game in Atelier Ayesha and Atelier Escha & Logy, and both times they were treated as “these optional bosses you can fight if you really like Willbell, otherwise it’s cool.”

So I don’t know how I’ll feel if the whole Dusk thing turns out to be due to “The spirits are punishing us for angering/ignoring them.” I suppose if they spend adequate time explaining the whole ignoring/angering thing, how and why and when and why nobody put two and two together all along, it will be fine enough. Or if it turns out in hindsight that the hints were plentiful and I just didn’t see it.

But if in the end Gust deliberately kept spirits super low-key throughout the series so they could spring a “But it was us, spirits!” surprise on us at the end then I don’t like it. -____- It would be annoying to think they sent me on rabbit trails following ancients and petals and castles in the sky when the answer was hidden behind their backs the whole time.

But all this is guesswork on my part after the post-boss cutscene when we fought the Water Spirit. The real cause of the Dusk could be something completely different. Sadly it’s more fun for me to speculate than to actually play Atelier Shallie Plus so I’ll be running things over in my mind for a little longer.