Atelier Firis – Hello, freedom! (exam spoilers)

Yay, I passed the alchemist licensing exam! I nearly bombed it, but a pass is a pass. The doctor who graduates at the bottom of her class and the doctor who graduates at the top, at the end of the day they are both doctors!

The exam has three parts. Part 1 is the Written Exam where you answer questions like “Which of these is not a color of Puni?” I got 11/20. Part 2 is where you synthesize the highest quality item in your arsenal. I synthesized a measly Scale Vest with a quality of 42, which was terrible. Better to go for one of the recipes you have made repeatedly with higher quality. Part 3, they trot out a level 999 slime and you have to use your strongest item to damage it. Meh. After that, no matter how well or poorly you did, Ilmeria will turn out to have the exact same score, so you have to battle her and lose miserably like I did.

After that lengthy ordeal, you pass the exam and go through a looong sequence of credits and further events, during which you cannot save. During which my controller stopped working briefly and made me panic like only faulty technology can. Eventually the game sets Firis and Liane free again, this time for realsies. There’s still day and night and time still passes, but there’s no deadline any more. There’s no goal or objective either, except “Go to Reisenberg and talk to Sophie.” Except I was in Reisenberg just now and the game forcibly returned me to Ertona, and now they want me to travel all the way back? How about “Not until I bloody well feel like it”?

Now that I have my long-awaited freedom, I’m going to enjoy it to the fullest. If there’s a grand story, it’s bound to be rubbish anyway and will almost certainly ruin my mood. So first I’m going to explore all the places I skipped over in my haste to head to the exam – Southern Plains, Quiet Forest, Silent Labyrinth, several field bosses – then, after all that, if I still have the energy, I’ll see about possibly thinking about heading to Reisenberg to maybe consider seeing Sophie. Perhaps.

What I like about Atelier Firis so far

➕The sheer size of the game, especially compared to Atelier Sophie. There are at least 5 settlements and a ton of NPCs to talk to. There’s also a wide variety of environments, from deserts to icy wastes.

Plus unlike Xenoblade 2, the map isn’t filled in already, so you get to run around and hug all the walls to discover new landmarks, camping sites and foraging spots. And you’re even rewarded for completing your collection with some great cash rewards. Having quest locations clearly marked out on the map is really helpful as well.

➕It’s easy to unlock recipes now, and you can even buy a couple from stores. Not only that, but doing sidequests gives you points you can use to unlock recipes as needed. This really comes in handy when you need something desperately but can’t get the recipe right away, e.g. Alchemic Clay to unlock the (Elixir) category. I’m still not a fan of having recipes locked behind requirements, but this is a much more flexible system so it’s not half-bad.

➕I love the high degree of freedom. I got to dilly-dally and shilly-shally around for ages, traveling from one corner of the map to the other, and I still had plenty of time to spare before the exam. You’ll have to try really hard to waste a lot of time in order to miss the exam. And now that all that jazz is over, I have even more time to explore. Mezase, 100% completion!

➕Alchemy is fairly straightforward. It’s not that different from Sophie’s system but it’s easier to understand what you need to get what kind of result. Even the catalysts and their effects are clearly spelled out so you know what you’re doing right from the start.

What needs improvement in the next game, but I’m not holding my breath

➖Firis’s squeaky voice and childish attitude is annoying. The side characters are dull and colorless. Pretty sure I’ve said this before.

➖Navigation is a pain. You can warp around places on the same map but not between maps. So if I want to get from the Parched Plains to Reisenberg, I can’t go there directly. I have to warp from one edge of PP to the other, run into the next area, warp to the edge of the next area, run to the next area, etc etc. I hear this will all be resolved once I do some sidequests in the post-exam world, but I would have preferred to have it unlocked from the start.

➖The day and night schedule is annoying. It makes quests a pain when people and stores aren’t available at certain times of the day.

➖The camera is a bit wonky. I’m always having to adjust it to show what I want it to show. It’s not bad in wide open spaces, but terrible in towns and cramped places like those useless cave dungeons.

➖The environments are varied, but the enemy variety is extremely low. Palette swaps, palette swaps everywhere. And I’ve been using the same old weapons, armor and items for the past couple of hours so combat is a bit dull as well.

That’s it. I don’t have many complaints about Atelier Firis. It’s good, solid fun apart from a few annoyances, and I’m looking forward to playing to my heart’s content over the weekend and dropping it when I’ve had enough.

Atelier Firis – Hey, this is pretty good!

In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that alchemy is still heavily rationed in Atelier Firis, I would even raise my early evaluation to “Great!” I’m not sure how many hours I’ve played so far, but it should be more than 10. I just arrived in Flussheim, for those who are familiar with the game. But because of the open-world nature of the game, a lot depends on how many detours you take so it’s hard to estimate the time.

ANYWAY, there are four reasons why I’m so happy with Atelier Firis.

1. The game world is much, much bigger than in Sophie. Sophie was this one tiny town and then a bunch of tiny dungeons all over the game. That game was such a piece of garbage… Firis has the starting town and then a lot of space for running around and exploration. It’s no Xenoblade, but it’s still very open and spacious, which is great for me. It’s doubly great because the enemies are much slower and less densely packed than before so you can explore without too much harrassment.

2. There’s very little railroading. You have your grand objective, which is to get three recommendations and take the alchemist licensing exam in Reisenberg. Apart from the few quests directly related to that, which are usually found in towns along the way, everything else is up to you. You want forage all day? You want to fight to exhaustion? You want to waste resources on alchemy? You just want to head straight to your destination? It’s all up to you.

3. The alchemy requirements aren’t as obscure or as onerous as before. This time you get clearer hints about what will unlock new recipes, and a lot of them have to do with things you would do anyway, like beating certain monsters or foraging certain items.

More importantly, you don’t need to make most of them to progress with the story. So far there hasn’t been any of that “make this item with X obscure trait that you have to carry over from Y item via Z item” nonsense, but I know it will pop up eventually. I’ve been ignoring catalysts as well, but I know I won’t get away with it forever.

4. The battle system isn’t absymal any more. Doesn’t mean battles are fun now, but I don’t feel as frustrated and bored as I did before. I haven’t felt like tinkering with the difficulty level either. I like having the bosses clearly marked on the map so I can decide whether I want to challenge them or not and when.

My expectations after Sophie were rock bottom, which is why I’m gloriously happy that Atelier Firis isn’t completely junk. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect or anywhere near that, mind you.

For one thing, I’m very worried about what will happen once I pass the alchemist exam and get an extension. If they set me free to explore, I don’t know if I want that because exploration and battling isn’t that fun and they won’t let me synthesize as much as I want. At the same time I don’t want them to give me any tight objectives either. A set of loose goals after the first year and a maximum length of 3 years would be perfect.

Also I haven’t found any characters I like so far, so as the game drags on I might get tired of following them. Firis’s squeaky voice, childish attitude and blatant disrespect to her parents pisses me off. And seriously, another ditzy alchemist protagonist? What is this, the 10th? Liane’s Firis obsession is creepy and annoying. Revy, Tiana, Kald and Ilmeria just showed up recently so I haven’t dug under their skins yet.

TL;DR I just started Atelier Firis and I like it a lot, but I’m concerned about the future of the game. I’ll be back to report once I pass the licensing exam and see what direction Gust took with the rest of the game. See you then!

Closure post on Chaos Rings III

Chaos Rings III is a game I played a little of, posted about and prepared to drop, and then suddenly the story took a turn for the dramatic so I decided to stick around a little longer. The initial mood of the game was the usual happy-go-lucky shounen fare, small time country boy traveling around on adventures with an eclectic bunch of friends.

Then it all went dark with bad guys trying to consume the corpses of dead fathers, mentors sacrificing themselves to save others, friends going missing, protagonists losing an arm and almost dying and then said protagonist falling into a terrible but not surprising depression.

So I thought I would keep playing at least until things got a little more cheerful. It’s not like Chaos Rings III was a great game or anything, but I didn’t feel right leaving it on such a negative note. Not only that, but while it’s common for people around the hero to fall like flies, it’s less common to see them personally suffering lasting disability. So it would have been interesting to see how they dealt with it if they had taken things in that direction.

But first, Square-Enix chickened out and gave him a new arm somehow, don’t remember how. I’m happy and all, but they could have explored that avenue a little further first. More importantly, despite the story development, the truth still remained: this game really isn’t any fun to play.

The gameplay is just way too tedious with its slow, repetitive battles and boring card options. Every time I picked up the controller and thought about playing it, something in my mind just went “Urghhh…” Worse than that, it turned me off from PSTV/PSVITA as a whole, because every time I thought about playing something, I would think “Oh yeah, I still need to continue Chaos Rings III…”

Well I hereby declare that I don’t have to do anything in 2020. This year I won’t play anything I don’t 100% want to play, no matter how long I’ve had it, how good the reviews are, how far I’ve already gotten. It doesn’t matter, if I don’t wanna, I’m not gonna. This most likely means I won’t be playing many games and dropping a large percentage of those I do try, but that’s what happens when you prioritize quality over quantity. See you guys again next time I feel like playing something!

Games I dropped very quickly in 2019

I know I said there would be no edition of “Games that didn’t work out” for 2019, but right after dropping Fate/Extra, I remembered a few other things I didn’t play much of last year.

Fate/Extra (PSP) – It seems to be for fans of the Fate series only. For me, there was too much talking and railroading when I just wanted to explore freely. After a seemingly endless prologue, they finally let me fight a bit, but the battle system was underwhelming. It’s this rock-paper-scissors where you predict what kind of attack pattern your opponent is going to use and then counter it. It might have been good if they’d then let me spent time fighting and getting used to it, but then they threw me into another long sequence of talking and waiting and I ran out of patience.

My motto for 2019 still applies this year: “It’s enough to play a little bit of a game.” Plus I’ve already played a VN/RPG hybrid game called Tsukumonogatari where you roam a high school gathering intel to use against opponents, so the concept behind Fate/Extra was doubly ho-hum for me. If I’d liked the story or the characters, I might have stuck around regardless, but I hardly know any Fate characters and I certainly don’t care about them so that’s that.

Limitless Bit (PC) – An indie Japanese game from inutoneko. It’s a training simulation game where you take raw recruits who just joined the town guard and try to mold them into tough fighting men and women. I forget why. I also forget everything about the gameplay because I only tried Limitless Bit briefly early last year. I only remember it being extremely dry and boring and everything taking forever to get anywhere. I meant to go back and give it another try at some point, but it’s been a whole year and I haven’t gotten round to it. I haven’t even felt like getting round to it, and as I type this, all I feel is a big fat “meh” inside, so I think it’s enough that I played a little bit of Limitless Bit.

Chaos Rings (VITA) – I played quite a bit of Chaos Rings III last year before dropping it, so I should really write a round-up post one of these days. I also tried a little bit of the original Chaos Rings because I really liked the character designs. Unfortunately, while the story was intriguing, walking around felt sluggish and the battle system rubbed me the wrong way for reasons I can’t remember. Dropped.

Lord of Apocalypse (VITA) – I remember mentioning that I had started Lord of Apocalypse, but I don’t know if I mentioned dropping it. It was too hard and progress was too slow. I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere and I couldn’t figure out the battle system. It’s enough to play a little bit of Lord of Apocalypse.

Ys: Memories of Celceta (VITA) – I stopped playing temporarily because the large field dungeons with no save points were stressing me out. I meant to start all over again at a later date, but I kept putting it off until I finally realized, I don’t want to go back to Celceta. It’s enough to play a little bit of it. On to the next game!

To replace Lord of Apocalyse and Celceta, I hope to try another Ys and one of the God Eater games this year but I’m beginning to think that more hardcore action RPGs aren’t really my thing, so I won’t rush to get any of those. I predict there will be many more dropped games in 2020 since my goal is to clear out the libraries on my older consoles. See you again same time next year to see how it turned out!

Happy New Year 2020! And a few resolutions

Happy New Year everyone!

I spent the day playing with my nephews and nieces in my backyard, and even my 2-year old niece ran circles around me, so my resolution for 2020 is to spend more time exercising and less time sitting around gaming or tinkering around with my smartphone.

What little gaming I will do will mainly be done on my PSP, DS, 3DS and PS2. As I mentioned last week, I’m trying to polish off the last few games on each one so I can hand them down to the next generation and declutter my life. So this resolution list will cover the few things I have left to play before I move on from those old consoles.

PSX (It still works, but a bit picky on what it will read. I’ll just emulate these games or play ports)

Princess Maker 3
Breath of Fire 4
Dokidoki Poyacchao (the game Shining Hearts was supposedly modeled after. I’m curious)
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (umm, maybe. I don’t have good memories of Innocent Sin)
Parasite Eve (heard so much about it but never tried it)
Tokimeki Memorial 2

PS2
Radiata Stories
Angelique Trois
Dark Cloud 2 (started long ago, must finish this time)
Harukanaru Toki no Naka de (the games in the series I haven’t played yet)
Suikoden IV and V (not really enthusiastic but I might play them)
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (same as above)
Rogue Galaxy (same as above)
Other games on my PS2 backlog list
Assorted otome games because the PS2 has like 2 million of them.

PSP
Elminage Original
Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke (replay)
Harukanaru Toki no Naka de (the games I haven’t played yet)
Ys series (if I can’t bring myself to play them this year, then it’s not meant to be)
Tons of otome games I’d been wanting to try.

DS (I’ve tried everything I want to on the DS, but there are a few thinsg I want to try again and one or two I want to replay)

The World Ends with You (second chance)
Destiny Links (second chance)
Rune Factory 2 (never finished)
Ace Attorney 1, 2 and 3 (replay)
Ouendan 1, 2, Elite Beat Agents (replay)
Picross and Color Cross (replay)

3DS (meh.)

The Alliance Alive

Come to think of it, I’ve played pretty much everything I wanted to on the 3DS. I should play Alliance Alive quickly so I can give it away while it’s still in good-ish condition.

PSVITA (no plans to give it up soon, but I might as well list some games)
Atelier Firis
Atelier Lydie & Suelle
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters (I’m curious)
Sword Art Online series (I like colorful games so it would be nice if I could get into this series)

And this list is just for starters. If I remember anything I’d been meaning to try, onto the list it goes. I also need to scour past comments for suggestions people have made that I’ve forgotten about.

As for more recent games and consoles, nothing has really caught my eye lately. The Switch needs at last one more year to gather games like Rune Factory 5 that I might be interested in. PS4/5, nah, nothing going. Not to mention there are a lot of PC ports these days so consoles are like so retro… y’know?

TL;DR, 2020 is the time to say goodbye to all those retro consoles and catch the wave of the future~! Or something like that. Actually I’m so lazy I prefer lying in bed to sitting up when I game, so as long as handhelds are a thing I’ll probably always own at least one. But that’s something to worry about once I’ve disposed of this current batch of systems. Aight, see you guys later!

Oh, there’s no “games that didn’t work out” edition this year, btw. I hardly played anything anyway…

Update: I remembered a few things I dropped early, so there’s a 2019 edition after all.