Atelier Firis – 42 hours, starting to wind down (spoilers)

Contrary to my fears after finishing the exam, no real story has showed up in Atelier Firis since I started. Firis wanted to become an alchemist, she became an alchemist, now she’s just having fun here and there. This is the kind of Atelier I wanted to play, so I really like this game.

Sure, there’s something going on with the twins Meklet and Atomina and something they need my alchemy help to create, but they haven’t seen fit to share the full details with me yet, so I’m just chilling. They were annoying in Atelier Sophie and I never got to beat them up, so I’m not really interested in helping them.

There’s also a sub-story involving helping Firis’s sister Lia find her homeland. For once a Japanese game plays down the “not blood-related” aspect and insists they’re real sisters anyway. Good, Gust, good. But we still have to find her origins anyway, because she’s curious about her past, which is understandable enough. I’m not particularly curious, but it seems like it’s the only way to get access to certain parts of the map, and I’d really like to get to 100% or as close as possible before I drop the game (currently at 66% of the map explored).

Current stage: head to Grau-Tal to talk to Norbert and see what he knows about the earrings that are the only clue to Lia’s heritage. I’ve been doing quests and defeating enemies along the way, but those level 70 bosses… where the heck do they come from? Well I’ll just avoid them, it’s not that big a deal. If the story doesn’t move quickly after I talk to Norbert, I might just drop Atelier Firis and play something else. I really like it, but I’ve seen enough. For some reason I really want to play La Corda d’Oro again…

Atelier Firis, Firis, Firis the Explorer!

She’s a super cool explora-firis~♪

Small update to say I’m still exploring and exploring and exploring in Atelier Firis (in fact, I’ve taken to calling it “Atelier Xenoblade” in my head :-p). I’m slowly making my way over to Reisenberg to see Sophie and discover whether Atelier Firis actually has a story or not. Very slowly, though. For most of this week I was nowhere near my destination. Instead I was way off on the other side of the world map, getting closer and closer to the Floating Island only to finally discover that I need some kind of flying vehicle to actually make it there. Boooo.

I’ve forgotten all the places I went to before Flussheim, but once I got to the Claudel Prairie I went north and discovered Leafy Laforet. Didn’t even know that area was there. From there I explored Moon Catcher Pass and the whole area around the heavenly tree thingy… Ein-something. Once I’d 100% explored all those areas, I returned to Claudel Prairie, crossed the bridge which I had no part in repairing and then ended up in the Weist Plains. I would have finished that area by now, but the game froze on me the other day and I’m a bit annoyed about that so I’m taking a short break.

Saying “I explored” is really revisionist history though, because most of the time in Leafy Laforet and its environs, I was just running for my life. I don’t know if the enemies were scaled up to match me or if these areas were meant to be post-exam only. Either way, the mobs in those areas are pretty high leveled. Not only that, but my equipment and weapons have barely changed since the start of the game. If not for some lucky chest finds, Firis would still be carrying her starting staff, it’s that bad.

Thanks to Firis’s attack items, my party can do good damage given half the chance. Apart from a few overpowered bosses, most enemies don’t have that much HP either. It’s just that my party’s speed and defense are so low because of their shoddy gear that they don’t get the chance to show off that attack power. “If only I could attack a little faster!” “If only I could take more than one hit!” I walked away from countless battles with such regrets in mind.

I could have been a contender

That doesn’t mean I’m completely helpless or ready to give up, however. There’s plenty I can do. In the first place, I have quite a bit of money, so buying better equipment from various merchants is an option.

Secondly, I haven’t put much effort into optimizing my current equipment. The way the alchemy system in Atelier Firis works means that you can’t put traits on items right way. You either have to use catalysts or make the item over and over again until you master it. I haven’t tried doing either one for my weapons, armor and accessories yet. At the very least I should be able to raise my speed and defence with traits like Dragonscale Defense and Speed of Skanda. Forging lots of weapon and armor mats might also unlock new recipes and recipe hints.

Thirdly, there’s a greater than zero chance that actually heading to Reisenberg and progressing the story dutifully like I’ve been told to might open up new dungeon areas, quests, items, etc. that may make my party stronger overall. However I don’t think this is very likely given the unrestricted nature of the game so far. A game that has been letting you do whatever you want in whatever order you please so far isn’t suddenly going to lock key progress behind a story event… or is it?

Fourthly, there’s a Break feature in the combat system that I have been ignoring so far. I’ve also been triggering Chain Mode by accident and not really doing anything with it. It might be worth my while to spend time studying options like Chain Burst, Chain Finish, Combination Attack and whatnot. Learning how to take advantage of them might make it easier to beat strong enemies at a lower level – assuming I can stay alive long enough to trigger those things.

Aaaaanyway, all that is to say that I’m still playing Atelier Firis and still have a lot left undone. I think I’ve got most of the map explored by now, and despite all I just said above about fighting and getting stronger, that’s not the main attraction of the game for me. Depending on how things go once I hit Reisenberg and talk to Sophie again, this game might be over sooner than you think. See you guys in another week or two!

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!