Where “Finished!” means I’ve played all I’m going to play of Nora to Toki no Koubou. I got another ending this time, the normal ending. I was trying to get Ruttz’s ending, which involves killing two dragons, but I guess I started it so late that I was already locked out of it by the time I finally defeated the second dragon.
It took me three attempts to defeat the blighted creature, but with a bit of luck and a lot of healing items I was able to power my way through. Even with stacked defense buffs Nora still got herself killed on the third turn or so, but Karuna stayed alive and kept pounding him with her Fighting Spirit attack that hits for x3. Ruttz played healer and attacked occasionally. I also discovered that the dragon could be poisoned, but I didn’t have any strong poison items so that didn’t help.
The Normal ending starts out like the Witch Hunt bad ending, but you get the choice to stay and explain yourself instead of running away. Your friends (except Octaja, Karuna and Kitt) will cover for you, and the shopkeepers and Aira will come to your defense. In the end you’ll attempt to fix the Pauly statue that got broken and fail, but the attempt will cheer Timos up a little bit and you’ll be able to stay and complete your training. Better than being chased out with torches and pitchforks, I suppose.
Now that that’s over with, I think I’m done here. Character endings might be nice, but I’d probably only be able to do maximum two per playthrough. With 8 possible character endings, that’s at least 4 near-identical runs, blargh.
I also found out from a FAQ that the ending I got before was not the bad ending but in fact the ‘Witch Hunt’ ending. There’s a real bad ending as well, gotten by being friendly with Aira but not doing anything else. To get the ‘True’ ending, I have to see all of Aira’s events, max my friendship with the townspeople and have Lv. 18 or more skill in time alchemy. Having Alchemy Lv. 18 without maxed friendship will give you the ‘Traveler’ ending, said the FAQ. I only had level 16, and my last save is only 7 days before the end so yeah, I’m out. The ‘True’ ending sounds similar to the Normal ending, only you get to fix the Pauly statue, which reveals your background to the townspeople, etc etc. Whatevs.
Final thoughts about Nora to Toki no Koubou? It’s good. I don’t feel lied to or disappointed by the hype now that it’s finally out. It gave as good as it promised, it just didn’t go above and beyond that. The music fits the mood and is relaxing, the character designs, while a little too “cutesy” are fine, the game satisfied my usual craving for bright colors, I got to synthesize lots of items, the random battles were tough but rewarding, etc, etc.
Battling was especially good, except for the part where they sometimes won’t let you run away. Your 9 party members all have different attacks, different things they do well or do poorly – though I doubt there’s a better party than Nora, Karuna and Ruttz. Enemy drops are plentiful, and leveling becomes a cinch once you use the leveling up and leveling down items on a monster, (a fact I discovered only just now by reading a FAQ. Darn, wish I’d thought of it earlier) you get to buy or trade for all kinds of weapons and armor and you can create a wealth of battle items: bombs, healing items, buffs, status items and more. I found plenty to like in this game.
Most of the things I didn’t like are niggling little issues that could be fixed in a sequel to make a fantastic game.
– Time passes too quickly when you’re foraging. Every single item you grab makes a whole day pass. A whole day to grab a bunch of flowers? I feel the hand of Success behind this one. At least time doesn’t pass when you go from town to town, strangely enough.
– You can only save and load in your room. Whut?
– You can only sell and buy specific items from specific places. Some items can’t be sold at all, which is a PITA when you’re trying to liquidate your assets to prepare for the next playthrough. Some item exchange can be done, but it’s highly limited.
– Your room and your garden tend to get very messy and hard to organize. You could move tools and furniture with the L/R and direction keys, but the room is so small it gets cluttered regardless. I also felt that the gardening and pet-keeping concept was under-developed and that far more could have been done with it.
– There was no proper item sorting. If you wanted to see only items of a particular type, e.g. cloth, you had to go stand in front of the sewing kit. If you want to see only food, you have to go stand in front of the cooking range, etc. Again, a little more organization would have gone a long way.
– The number of items you can hold at one time is severely limited unless you buy other items to raise the limit.
– The lack of success rates in synthesis was a bit of a letdown, especially for an Atelier veteran like me. So long as you have the proper ingredients, there’s no way you can fail, even at the most complex jobs. You have a time alchemist ranking that goes up as you make more things. It affects a number of things (recipes sold, chrono fluids used, certain endings) but has no effect on your success rate.
– Neither the story nor the designs nor the characters are particularly memorable. It’s good for a playthrough or two, but this isn’t a game I’ll be pining for in a couple of years.
– There aren’t enough endings to satisfy different kinds of gamers. Most Atelier games at least have Hero endings for beating all the bosses or a special ending for making a philosophers’ stone and more. Here the first 5 endings need very similar requirements to obtain so you’ll be doing the same thing on each run regardless of which ending you’re aiming for. Not good enough.
– DAT BAD END. It’s really unfair.
– The carryovers to New Game+ are almost non-existent. I could understand if they chose to do away with carryovers altogether, but once you’re doing them at least be a little more generous. As it is all you can take is money, your pets and your unlocked CGs. You can’t even keep meaningless little things like your tools or the wallpaper you bought. Throw me a bone here, Atlus.
– The stingy carryovers and lack of ending variety make for low replay value. Since you’re essentially starting from scratch every single time, you’re basically playing the exact same game over and over again. Oh, joy.
So really, just a few things hold Nora to Toki no Koubou back from being great. It’s better than Atelier Lise or Atelier Annie, at least. Lina >>>>> Nora >> Annie > Lise. Something like that. I don’t usually do number ratings but I’d give Nora a solid 3 or 3.5 over 5.
Next time, I really need to finish either Persona or Arms’ Heart.
