20.08.11 / Atlus, Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: alchemy, atelier series, nora to toki no koubou, review, true ending
Where “Finished!” means I’ve played all I’m going to play of it. 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 to 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 colours, 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.
17.08.11 / Atlus, Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Simulation game, Success, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: alchemy, nora to toki no koubou, shepherd's crossing
Tch. Finished my first run yesterday at the 9 hour mark. Got an ending where the townspeople run Nora out of town because they blame her for a storm that wrecked the place. Ungrateful wretches, after all the quests I’ve done for them. Since Nora was run out of her hut and didn’t complete her training, she can’t become a time mage, and the game states that neither she nor her friends were ever heard from again.
Hmm. That is pretty bad, as far as endings go. Normally I’m used to getting a bad end on my first FAQ-less attempt at this sort of game (in fact I got three bad endings in a row in Atelier Lise and never did pay off my debt), but somehow this one really got my goat. The whole premise is just so unreasonable. Nora looks nothing like the so-called Mist Witch, she’s never done anything remotely harmful and she’s lived in peace with the townspeople for 2 and a half years, then all of a sudden she’s to blame for a random storm? That’s so unfair.
I’ve started another playthrough which I’ll probably finish, but I don’t like that aspect of the game. I’m thinking I won’t even bother trying to chat up the townspeople, I’ll just hole myself up in my studio and work on alchemy all game long. Screw good endings, screw making nice with the plebs, screw everything else, I’ll just do what I got this game to do.
Hanging around the homestead is fun anyway. Apart from synthesis you get to decorate the place with new walls and floors, you can mature cheeses and hang meat and fish out to dry and plant seeds in your garden. Oh! And when I started the second run, Koko sold me a duck that looks exactly like Brammy from Shepherd’s Crossing. Heck, it doesn’t just look like him, it is him. He’s even called Brammy! I told you I was getting Shepherd’s Crossing vibes from this game. So Success was involved huh? So that’s why your seeds go all over the place in the garden and your house is so messy and you can accidentally end up uprooting crops without meaning to, etc etc. Even some of the items look straight out of SC, especially the wooden fence, hay and the cheese. Heheh, that makes me happy. My love for this game went up +5 when I realized that, but I’m still mad about the ending.
I need to buckle down and finish Persona and some other games, though. I’m slipping yet again into my habit of starting new games before finishing old ones, and right now I have about 4 90%-complete games waiting for my attention. I might delay the completion of this second playthrough of Nora to Toki no Koubou until at least one of them is done.
15.08.11 / Atlus, Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: alchemy, atelier series, nora to toki no koubou
tl;dr: I love it. So far.
I’m 4 hour 59 minutes in, and it’s been a great ride so far. I just reached October of the 2nd year and the game lasts 3 years so I should be finishing up my first playthrough pretty quickly. I’m not using any kind of FAQ or guide yet, so we’ll see what kind of ending I get.
Nora to Toki no Koubou (Nora and the Time Studio) is about Nora Brandor, an apprentice time mage/alchemist, who has to live and work in a little forest hut for three years as part of her training. Somehow the people in a neighboring town mistake her for the Mist Witch that tormented them years ago, so in addition to her training she also has to carry out quests to increase their trust in her while preventing anyone from finding out what she really is.
That’s pretty much it for the story. There was a lot of “go here and do that” in the first few months, and there are certain items you have to make to progress (and a pesky dragon I still can’t beat) but apart from that the game is fairly non-linear. Whether you want to spend your time holed up in the studio, go out there and forage or go to town and do quests all year round is entirely up to you. I’ve been keeping a balance between the three so far, with an emphasis on synthesis. I’m not sure what’s carried over into the next game so I’ll stock up on money and items in the last year.
Being a time alchemist sounds complicated, but it boils down to using the fast-forward or rewind button on an item. You can turn a fruit back into a flower and the flower back into a seed, you can turn salted fish into dried fish, you can speed-age cheese, etc. It’s pretty interesting, but not exactly “zomg best innovation evar” material. Which is perfectly fine with me. I like gameplay that’s simple and fun without being stale and unoriginal.
Time alchemy isn’t the only form of synthesis though. There’s also “dismantling”, where you split an item into smaller parts (e.g. you split a hunk of meat into ‘delicious meat’ and ‘bone’) and processing, which is the usual synthesis we’re all familiar with. As with most other Atelier games (yes I know it’s not an actually an Atelier game, but it plays almost exactly like one) you have to buy tons of books and tools to make all the things you want to. In fact my only (tiny) beef with this game is that you have to place all the tools and items personally, which makes my room messy and leads to uncomfortable Shepherd’s Crossing flashbacks.
Those are my first impressions anyway, subject to change. The only cloud on the horizon is that I’m a little worried I probably won’t be able to do many replays because the story and characters are weak. Yah okay, the townspeople think Nora is a witch, but I already know she’s not one and I don’t really care about proving them wrong.
Then there’s the little mystery about what really happened between the Mist Witch and the hero Pauly who supposedly vanquished her, but again, ehhh, I dunno. And this might be a bit of a spoiler but… I’ve got this mysterious character named Mellow who has amnesia and doesn’t seem to eat. You think she could have something to do with the witch and hero? Gee, I wonder. Nah, actually I don’t. I don’t really care one way or another.
The characters are okay, but they’re all types I’ve seen before in other games. Your tiny advisor, the young adventurer who wants to make it big, the little girl who’s trying to prove herself, the beautiful and extremely strong swordswoman, the ditzy amnesiac, I’ve seen them all before somewhere.
Of course all that is just going to affect the replay value, but I haven’t even played it completely once, so it’s a little early for me to worry about that sort of thing. “Become the best X you can be within XX years” has been a staple of the Atelier series for years and I’ve always enjoyed the freedom that gave me. It should be no different this time round, as long as they have enough endings to account for different playing styles. I picked this game up for the alchemy anyway, and there’s a lot I still haven’t made so I’m in very good spirits right now. 
Now I just have to figure out how to beat that dragon at the springs and then my game can move forward again. Battles in Nora to Toki no Koubou are the usual 3×3 turn-based affairs Atelier games always use, but the enemies hit HARD and your HP is low so you can’t relax too much. That’s another plus, btw. I complain when games are too hard, but I don’t like it when they’re too easy either. With the right equipment, synthesized items and a little training I should be able to get the dragon before the game is out. I might need to revise my party a bit as well. I was using Nora, Keke and …I forgot his name. The red-haired guy who wants to make it big. I’m going to switch them out for Karuna and either Mellow or Sirkka ‘cos I need more attack and more magic. I’ll report back once I’ve beaten the darned thing.
02.11.10 / Gust, Japanese, RPG, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: alchemy, atelier lina, atelier series, lina no atelier, review
[Note, this is not my real opinion of Atelier Lina. This was published before I'd played the game properly, and my final conclusion can be found here, helpfully titled "Lina no Atelier is Awesome!" As for why this post appears out of order, I really don't want to talk about it.]
*sigh* I think Gust is losing their touch. Whoever they’re farming the DS Atelier games out to is making a royal mess of them. First there was Atelier Lise, which was horrible in every way, shape and form. Then there was Atelier Annie, which wasn’t a bad game but had a really kiddy story and too much talking. Third time’s the charm, right? That’s what I was expecting when I started Lina, but nooo, it’s just as bad as the others.
I haven’t gotten that far in, but this game could turn out to be the one Atelier game I don’t finish. Two things bother me. One, it’s brought back the crazy money requirement from Lise. I HATED that thing, and you know with a money requirement like that there’s almost no way to make that kind of money in one playthrough unless you have a FAQ. That’s highly unpleasant and totally unfair.
Secondly, and more importantly, it seems that buying and selling will be a more important part of this game than alchemy will. I already made a few items in my atelier and it was awful: even simple items take forever to make with a low, low chance of success. You don’t have time to waste, so I don’t see myself spending much time on alchemy. DAMMIT. What’s the point of an Atelier game if you don’t get to synthesize?
You know how else I can tell the focus isn’t on alchemy? Because even though you need money in this game, when you suffer and suffer and complete a store request, they don’t give you money. They give you scavenger items! If you spend time on synthesis, you’ll be BROKE! When you waste 10 cole to check rumors, they tell you about item prices, not about the latest forage areas. Arrgh, I hate this.
Oh, and the incessant talking from Atelier Annie is back. The talking that made that game the bane of my existence, that made coming back to my lab torture every single time. Yes, that talking. I knew I should have written a protest letter to Gust when that happened.
Phew, anyway. Guess I’ll keep plodding away at it. I’m also slowly plodding towards the end of Saga 2, and starting to really get under way with Dragon Quest 9, so it’s not like I’m trapped with this awful game alone. Time to play!
02.11.10 / Atlus, PS2, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: alchemy, gate of eternity, persona 3, review, shigenori soejima, stella deus
Or The Catacombs of Eternity, as I came to call it. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
Stella Deus is a strategy RPG released in 2004. Developed by Pinegrow (I feel like I’ve played another game by them but I can’t remember which) and published by Atlus. Many have heard of it, few have played it.
I’ve had it in my collection for a while, but I always found something else to play when it was time to choose a new game. Then one day, shortly after finishing Persona 3, I looked at the cover and thought…wait, these character designs really look like those from P3. Really. So I did a little digging and yup, Shigenori Soejima did the designs for both games. And that’s what it took for me to finally put this game in and play it.
I’m prone to making snap judgments about games in the first few minutes. Sometimes that proves to be wrong, but often I’m right. Rarely, very rarely, I am both right and wrong at the same time. My initial impression about SD was that it was bland, boring, preachy and colorless and had some of the worst voice-acting I’ve ever heard in a video game in my life.
That’s all true, to a great extent. I’ll give the game props off the bat for the cast. Apart from the dull, goody-goody Spero, the barely-there Gallant, the annoying Tia and the idiotic Lumena, most of the cast is lively, funny and interesting. The overall voice-acting is so flat and awful it’s also easy to forget that a few voices are really well done, Grey’s and Adara’s for example. The battle system is also decent, definitely won’t disappoint fans of the strategy RPG genre. Plus the story is very simple and straightforward, which might be a plus or a minus depending on what kind of gamer you are. Since the story takes place in a world that is gradually being swallowed by a strange mist called Miasma, even the washed-out color palette is strangely appropriate.
Where does Stella Deus go wrong, then? Pretty much everywhere else. The story about trying to revive a fallen world is disgustingly cheesy and preachy. Much of the late-game dialogue is the usual “We’ll never give up!”-”Humans are brave and resilient!”-”Never give up hope!” stuff that you’ve heard about 5,000 times before. As usual the enemies are extremists who have lost all faith in humanity, and then there’s the usual evil deity…who wrote this scenario? Was s/he even trying? *yawn*
The music is meh, so I won’t even talk about it. Over the course of the game you get to visit a lot of towns and cities, but you never get to explore them and you almost never get to interact with ordinary townspeople. You know, the same townspeople you’re trying to save? Might be nice to get to know what they’re really thinking, get them on your side and stuff, don’t you think? What’s more, interacting more with the world around usually leads to greater immersion in the game, giving the player more incentive to save the world and finish the game. As it is, it’s very easy to lose motivation and stop playing, because you really don’t care.
Most of gameplay time in an SRPG is made up of battles though, which is why it sucks when the battle system is really slow (FFTA2, I’m looking at you) or excessively complicated. Thankfully Stella Deus’ system is neither of these. In particular the enemies don’t waste time thinking, so their turns move relatively quickly. The system works like a regular one with a twist: every character starts their turn with 100 Action points that deplete when they move on the map or select an action. When they run out, you can’t move/act any more and have to end their turn. In the beginning it feels really restrictive, but once you get used to it it adds a fun element of planning and strategy. Will you spend your whole turn approaching the enemy? Will you approach, hit, and retreat? Will you hit them with magic, hit them physically and then heal your ally? There’s a lot of thinking to be done once you get into it.
Then there are combos you can do with your party members, some of them extremely powerful. Before too long, your regular attacks will be hitting for more than the combos, but it’s still fun and flashy. Then there are Zone Effects, which are buffs and debuffs or status effects you automatically use on any enemy/ally who gets in range. By equipping ZSkills, you can, for example, boost the evasion of all allies in range/heal them a set amount every turn/cast darkness on enemies/cast Fear on enemies…etc, etc. etc. On top of all that, there are other stat-boosting/reducing skills you can equip on yourself to get stronger.
As you can tell, I had a lot of fun with the battle system. So much so that I quickly abandoned the main storyline to focus on the 100-level Bonus Dungeon called the Catacombs. It’s just 99 battles against powerful mooks, but somehow it’s the most addictive thing in the game. Seeing as it’s automatically unlocked right from the beginning, I believe the game makers anticipated that players would get into it really quickly. How else do you explain the fact that unless you’re a level or two higher than every boss you face, they will usually wipe the floor with your face?
Off to the Catacombs I went then, happily fighting my way down each level. Some of them were tough, I tell you, especially the oddly designed ones and the ones where your party is spread out all over the map. Whew! But clearing each level gives you a sense of achievement that the battles in the main game rarely do, plus you later get all these cool weapons and armor that you can use in alchemy. …Wait, alchemy? Why didn’t I mention that earlier, you ask? Because…alchemy in this game sucks. Without buying or downloading a guide, you won’t be able to make most of the good stuff except by chance. Also since you can only make goods one at a time, you’ll be selecting, deselecting and reselecting items over and over and over again until you’re sick of it. But it’s the only sure way to get really good weapons if you plan to go beyond level 50-ish of the Catacombs, so you have no choice. Blerrrrgh.
I had fun playing this though. The main game was below-average, but I got into the bonus dungeon and the battle system with a vengeance, so it was a worthy purchase. If you like SRPGs, like endless battles, like grinding and don’t mind bad voice-acting, I actually recommend this game. I don’t want a sequel, but I hope to find other games like it soon.
02.11.10 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: alchemist of lemuore, alchemy, atelier series, atelier viorate, final fantasy my life as a king, free game, lemuore no renkinjutsushi, remyuouru, review
Have you ever picked up a game you thought was poorly-designed, poorly-conceived and poorly-executed…and ended up playing it for 30 hours?
The simplest games tend to be the most addictive, I don’t know why. The concept of this game is simple, the design is simple and the gameplay is simple too, maybe that’s why I found myself rubbing my eyes at 4am wondering where all the time had gone. Lemuore no Renkinjutsushi is a DS port of a free Japanese game of the same name. I have helpfully included the link to a download if you want to check it out, but you’ll have to figure out how to run and play it yourself: Link.
Now then, how to describe this game… Well, there’s a (rather awful) game out there called “Final Fantasy: My Life as a King.” If this game is ever localized, it could be called “My Life as a Shopkeeper” (right before it’s sued into oblivion by Square-Enix, of course). You play as Tico, an alchemist with bad spending habits who wakes up one day to find herself 100,000g in debt. At the urging of your apprentice, you open up a general store to buy and sell items in order to pay back your debt.
There are a couple of ways to get stuff to sell:
- The easiest is to just buy items from town.
- You can also buy farm animals like hens and cows, which will produce eggs and milk for you to sell every day.
- Additionally vendors will drop by your store once in a while selling items, lottery tickets and newspapers.
- You can direct your slave/apprentice Ruvel to pick up a few for you every night. Usually low-price, low-quality forage items.
- Once in a while a character named Theo will drop by and make you play a mini-game. If you win, you get some free stuff.
The most lucrative way, though, and the way to get the best items, is to pay adventurers to go out and forage for you. There are two in this game, Theo and Fil. They’re pretty costly in the beginning, but as they level up and learn to go more places, soon they’ll be bringing in items faster than you can sell. Before too long I had completely stopped going to the local store.
So anyway, you’ve got your items and you’re selling them, making a tiny profit on each item. Your bank loan is only 100,000G, so you can make it in a few game months quickly if you haggle with customers constantly and spend sparingly. But doing that would be boring, wouldn’t it? The game title means Alchemist of Lemuore for a reason, and that reason is, once you sell 200 of an item, you get to refine it into another, better item. For example you sell 200 candles and suddenly you can make lamps. Or 200 oranges and then you can make bottled orange juice. For some items, if you sell 200 of the resulting product, you can refine it even further. And further. And make OODLES of cash in the process.
It reminds me a lot of the earlier Atelier games, which is probably why I played it so much. And you don’t have to go out and find the items yourself, so you can spend even more time on synthesis. Synthesizing takes up some of your “life”, so in the beginning you can’t do too much. Before too long you’ll get an (utterly broken) forage item that refills your HP for free, and then you can really go to town on those items. I estimate there must be at least 500 different items to make, and that I barely scratched the surface, but I’m having fun so no need to rush.
By the time I stopped playing I had millions in my bank account and had poured millions in investment into the town. As I said, the 100,000G bank loan goal is something you’ll get fairly quickly, but the game introduces a further goal: to get 500,000G (I believe?) to fund research by your apprentice’s annoying little brother into a new item. Along the way he comes up with all kinds of unreasonable requests (like “make me some mahjongg tiles so I can play with my friends”), and all that takes time to complete. You’ll get that done eventually, and after that there’s no point playing except you’re a completionist. I’ve never been one, but I might go back and make a few new things here and there one day.
Other random points about the game: Once you sell 100 items, the stock automatically refills every morning. If you sell 100 cigarettes, every morning they’ll deliver between 1 and 20 cigarettes to your store to sell, unless you stop carrying the item. This saves a lot of time. Good addition, except you can’t choose to receive 0 items, you always have to get at least 1. What if I don’t want to stock any that day? Well, too bad, F you.
Once you sell 500 items, the stock will automatically refill throughout the day, every time you sell out. Again, you can’t choose 0. And what if you don’t want to sell any more, you want to switch to another item? Normally when you run out of an item the game clock pauses and lets you replace them, usually with something that sells better. If it auto-refills, it buys them at the market price, which means you make less of a profit…blah, blah, blah, you’d get a better idea if you actually tried the game. The link is up there.
The music is very meh. In fact I turned it off very quickly. The sound effects are scary, everything sounds like someone being slapped. *pow* Haggle and fail? *pow* Sell some items? *pow* Change a few things? *pow!* , in fact I think that’s the real reason I turned the sound down. The graphics are what you’d expect of a free game: not that good, but not terrible either. The character designs are cute though, although the variety of customers is very small.
All in all I had a wonderful time playing this game, and if you’re a fan of sales simulation games (or Atelier Viorate), I’d tell you to get it. But – and I hate to do this to a game I like, but – you might want to get just the free game instead. It’s 95% the same as the DS port except for a few additions. And it’s free. And you can have it now. So go for it!
01.11.10 / Gust, Japanese, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (1)
Tags: alchemy, atelier lina, atelier series, felsen, hengst, lina no atelier, pesca, review, ryuon, strange journey
Yeah, I know I made a post a while back calling it terrible, but that was long ago when I hadn’t played very far into it. Having played it some more and, in fact finished it 4 times for 4 different endings, I must say it’s far and away the best DS Atelier so far.
Let’s take my complaints again one at a time. First off, the money requirement isn’t as high this time as it was in Lise. Somehow I misread “hyakuman” as 100 million instead of 1 million, which is why I flew off the handle. And in fact I was more than halfway there when I realized my error.
More than halfway, you ask? You mean it’s that easy to earn 50 million cole in this game? Yup! Remember my second complaint that buying and selling is more important that alchemy in this game? Well it’s true if you want to make money, though you won’t need that much. The fastest way is to buy and sell weapons between Hengst and Felsen and Pesca, buying what isn’t sold in one town and selling it in another, back and forth. Weapons sell for most in summer, but you can spend spring, fall and winter buying and then sell in one swoop. Once you unlock the higher level weapons you can apparently make 500,000 in one trip! So yeah, you probably still need to spend one playthrough getting enough money and enough synthesis raw materials, and then you can spend the following runs getting a proper ending.
I also complained about the talking, didn’t I? Well it’s not half as bad in this one as in Atelier Annie. I think I was still traumatized by all the blabbing there and ended up overreacting. There’s still a bit of talk, but apart from Ryuon your party members don’t waylay you inside your atelier, in fact they never show up there. Even when your friendship with them is at maximum they don’t talk too much, and they don’t bug you endlessly with requests like they did in Annie. Plus they’re really likeable too, each and every one of them. Even the storekeepers!
What else did I say? Oh yeah, I said something about alchemy taking forever to produce even simple items. Unfortunately that’s true, but only in the beginning when the level of your alchemy tools is low. Once you have the right tool for the job and have levelled it up enough, you can make massive quantities of items in very little time, some of which sell like crazy (but not as much as the right weapons). Also almost all drops are fairly easy to come by, which means you can make just about every item you have a recipe for instead of grinding for hours for an item with a 1 in 2000 chance of dropping. Cool, right?
Oh, oh, and they brought back the fairy hiring system from early Atelier games, though you’ll need to fix the forest a bit more before that option becomes available. In the beginning you can only hire incompetent black fairies (come on Gust, why is black still the worst?) but by the end of the game you’ll get fairies that might be even better than you at alchemy. Sweet! They cost a pretty penny, but what’s a little money to a multi-millionaire like me?
And even better, all six endings are quite easy to get, including the best one. I’ll do a post about how to get each ending if you’d like. But that’ll have to be later because right now I’ve got some SMT: Strange Journey (oh god it’s boring, but I just learned not to judge a game by the first 2 hours) to play. Yay!
