Little progress in Atelier Shallie Plus (sizeable spoilers)

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?

Don’t look so smug when you don’t know jack.

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.

Story of Seasons – I am SO over Harvest Moon

story of seasons 3ds front coverI used to be a massive Harvest Moon fan long ago. So long ago that most readers probably don’t know it, seeing as I started this blog in the twilight of my farming game career. I haven’t played one since I tried Harvest Moon: A New Beginning four years ago, and even that didn’t really count since 1. It sucked and 2. the 3DS started misbehaving for real right around that time.

The reason it’s been so long since I played a Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game is because I don’t really like them any more. But as the years since passed, I couldn’t remember why I stopped liking them. So, seeing as I’m running out of stuff to play on the 3DS anyway, I thought I’d give the series another try, see if I could recapture some of that lost magic.

Alas, the attempt ended in failure. I wanted to play for a full game year at least before saying anything, but I couldn’t last that long. Out of respect for my past love, I won’t bash Story of Seasons too much. I’ll just rant incoherently for a few paragraphs and then conclude this post.

Oh right, before that, I should mention that although I’m using “Harvest Moon” and “Story of Seasons” interchangeably, I am aware that Natsume stole the Harvest Moon name some years back and have been producing their own games since then. IMO it was an unethical move, but the truth is, I’m not a very loyal gamer. I don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘loyal’, if a game is fun I will play it. It just happens that word of mouth on the Natsume games is very negative so I haven’t bothered to try them. So in this post both “Harvest Moon” and “Story of Seasons” refer to Marvelous’s series of farming games, not to the uglier knock-offs.

🥕Now I think of it, the beginning of the end for me and the series was the change of the in-game clock so that 1 hour is 1 real-time minute. It’s too slow for me, especially once coupled with store openings and closings. I often found myself standing outside the general store or restaurant waiting for them to open, which is a massive waste of time IMO. Then you add in that stupid thing they did with watering crops twice a day for better quality and I’m just dead.

🥕Speaking of which, the focus on raising higher level crops through fertilizer/more watering/longer harvest times is something else that turned me off. I just want to grow my turnips and sell them, why do I have to have to bother with the rest of that stuff?

🥕In general it’s because the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series became such a slow but fiddly and annoying game that I stopped. It’s okay to be slow and relaxing. It’s okay to be a highly complicated management simulation. But Story of Seasons barely innovates from game to game, instead they keep adding more and more annoying elements like crop levels, wild animals and swimming, unfun distractions that take away from the core of the game.

Thanks. Get out of my castle now.

🥕It’s also because they started including random elements like random shop stock and random openings that I lost interest. I woke up with excitement on Summer 1 and ran down to the general store to get my summer crops and all the old man had for sale was a single bag of onion seed. ONE bag of seed. Am I a joke to you?

🥕The game also has this trading depot place which is the only place where you can sell stuff. They show up on a pattern I can’t discern. AND their stock is random. Why did they change the perfectly good shipping box system on the farm? It slows game progression considerably when I can’t reliably get the money I need when I need it.

🥕Plus Marvelous enlarged the world of the game unnecessarily so I have to walk or ride a horse for ages to get anywhere. Sometimes I really don’t want to go into town, I just want to putter around and sleep. But to get or sell any items I have no choice but to go, and the process is just so lengthy and tedious. You see what I mean about unnecessary additions and distractions?

🥕Having to trek to town every day also dampened my ardor for the waifu and relationship aspects of the game. Normally I enjoy giving people milk and eggs and stuff so they like me more, but the distance is too far to do so enjoyably. Not to mention I haven’t met any viable waifu candidates yet. Rich girl is too high maintenance (thanks for the horse tho), the nurse is too boring and all the other women are married.

No you can’t. Not until you win some stupid competition.

🥕The last straw, and the moment I noped out of this Story of Seasons was when the guild announced competitions for rental fields. I admit I was minorly intrigued when I saw the grain fields and beehives dotted around town. Not knowing the game wouldn’t let me use them freely. Instead I would have to “compete” for the right with other farmers. And not once and for all but regularly.

Luckily I was alone when this happened, so only I heard the expletive I muttered under my breath at that revelation as I turned the 3DS off and found better things to do with my life.

TL;DR

It’s not them, it’s me. I’ve changed too much. When I play a game, I either want a simple, no-fuss affair or I want to go all in with the systems in a properly-designed game. The current breed of Story of Seasons games seem to go out of their way to frustrate and slow down the gamer. Instead of letting us progress at our own pace, they throw all kinds of obstacles in our way. Long tutorials, large areas of nothing, random stock, dating events, pointless competitions. It’s slow, frustrating, unsatisfying. The reason why I say “it’s me” is because fans still seem to be happy with it. More power to them. I’m done here.

Atelier Shallie Plus – Lousy at first

atelier shallie plus japanese coverSaying Atelier Shallie Plus was “lousy at first” implies that it’s no longer lousy. But actually it’s still kind of lousy as of chapter 6. It’s just that the game has improved a lot compared to the first few hours so I don’t mind as much.

My final post about Shallie will most likely be positive (depending on how they resolve the whole Dusk thing), so I’m going to use this post to cover the stuff I don’t like, leaving more space for fawning and flattery next time.

– Way too much time was wasted in the first few chapters. I get the whole Japanese fetish with “working together” and “building bonds” and stuff, but this is the third game of the Dusk trilogy. The past two games were sufficient for that kind of stuff. I expected a hard-hitting, straight to the story kind of game.

What is the Dusk and how are we going to solve it? We still aren’t any closer to finding an answer than we were in Atelier Ayesha. In fact, nobody in Shallie has made a serious attempt at solving it. Since the game started, I’ve been running around doing meaningless trust-building exercises like killing rats and rabbits. If anything, Ayesha was the most focused of the three games on the issue, mostly due to the presence of Keithgriff and Odelia. Shallie feels like a serious regression, though there’s still time for things to pick up. They have to pick up because this is the last game, I just wish they would do so from the start. The game is too vague and all over the place.

And I should mention that we STILL aren’t seeing people suffering from the so-called effects of the Dusk yet. Shallie tells us that water sources are drying up and her people are in a pinch, but we haven’t seen any of them yet. Instead she’s chilling out in Stellard, a city with plenty of (allegedly drying up) food and water and the rare monster attack. Instead of the game world getting darker and more serious as the Dusk progresses, it’s getting lighter and fluffier and more inconsequentional.

– Too many jerks. Raoul and Gerard Perriend were introduced as rude, mean and selfish purely so Gust could soften them over the course of the game. As a result, they start out unnecessarily prickly and unfriendly, barking and snarling at poor Shallie over things they could explain kindly and politely. Then later on they’re supposed to be friendly, caring and supportive…? Either they’re buttering her up so they can better exploit her, i.e. they’re jerks, or the writers forced them to be mean at first and nice later, i.e. Gust are jerks. Either way I remain unmoved.

Now to send it in a care package to Raoul…

Their presence just makes things unpleasant because every bit of story progression is controlled by the Cooperative or the Corporation so I can’t avoid them. I’ve come all this way just to be a lackey to two <bleeps>. I never thought I’d say this, but I really miss the freedom and self-determination of Atelier Ayesha. Without a time limit I thought for sure Atelier Shallie Plus would be a fun, free-wheeling, go where you want and do what you want kind of game, but instead you’re so tied to the whims and orders of Central AND the Cooperative AND the Corporation that you don’t get to progress anything on your own. Boooring.

Still on the subject of massive jerks, I should mention that Katla recently sank to new lows by planning to hoard and sell water in a crisis. There’s a huge gap between “cute and mischevious” and “ISIS wants to recruit you” but our little Katla is doing her best to straddle both points. Kefka would be so proud. Wait… Kefka… Katla… they’re practically identical! I see!

I don’t care, just get on with the story!

– Too many unnecessary events. Especially between the two Shallies. Was there even a need to have a second Shallie? We already did the two protagonists thing in Atelier Escha & Logy, that was enough. Shallie 2 doesn’t add anything. She’s just there so we can have scene after scene of Shallistera and Shallotte patting each other on the back. “Oh you’re so wonderful.” “No you.” “No, you.” “No you, tee hee.” And that’s just those two, not even getting in the multitude of pointless events involving Solle, Homura, Escha, Logy… As I said, I wouldn’t mind so much if this wasn’t the third and final game of the series. FOCUS, PEOPLE!

This witch again? She’s everywhere.

– Minor inconsistencies create confusion. From memory, there was an event where Kortes and Shallie speak about the Water Festival in their village, then later on the subject of a Water Festival in Stellard comes up and Shallie is like “What’s a Water Festival?” What’s amnesia, Shallie? There’s also the issue of the Eastern Continent, where they can’t seem to decide whether it’s unexplored territory that was recently discovered or whether they used to trade regularly until the sand dragon showed up. Which is it?

– A little earlier, I would added “The game world is too small” and “There isn’t enough alchemy” to the list of complaints, but the world recently opened up and I just got a few new books to play around with, so I’m busy as a bee. It’s a bit annoying that you aren’t told when stores restock with new books/Miruca gets new weapons (alchemy level maybe?) so you have to stalk them all the time. I’m playing on Hardcore so the various area bosses are a good workout too. When I finish this post I’m heading right back to Crystal Valley to kill a few more of them for phat loot.

Anyway, that’s it for a brief overview of the stuff that bothered me when I started Atelier Shallie Plus. The time-wasting was and still is extremely frustrating, but now that there are more places to go and the story “seems” to be picking up, I’m fairly optimistic about how things will turn out.

Pokemon Picross sucks and my 3DS charger stopped working again

Why Pokemon Picross sucks

Because it’s a puzzle game on a stamina system. Every move you makes consumes one point of stamina. And each stamina point takes a whole minute (!) to refill. An allegedly free game with a very heavy pay-to-play component. You need game currency to unlock stages, but it’s incredibly hard to get without paying.

For example I need 100 picrites to unlock Area 07, but my only source is daily missions, which only give me 6 picrites a day. DAY. And there are 25 areas, with rising unlock costs. If it takes 2 weeks to unlock Area 07 then… I’m not even going to attempt to do the math, I’ll just drop the game and be done with it. Nintendo, if you want money, just do like the other Picross games and have a set price.

Luckily, after this worthless experience I still have My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda and Sanrio Characters Picross to satisfy my love of Picross. When that’s done, I’m seriously considering wiping out all my saves and starting from scratch. Moar plz Nintendo?

begging catWhy my 3DS sucks

Because it has always been a cursed piece of kit and always will be. I’d be happy to take the blame for being bad at taking care of my stuff if it wasn’t for the fact that my PSX, PS2 and PSP are still working after many years no problems there at all. Nintendo DS, ancient, but still works. Wii, same. BUT THIS 3DS? It just hates me and has never recognized me as its master, that’s all.

Current issue: after the charger stopped working last time (yes, of course this isn’t the first time, why would it be), I bought not just a new charger but also a charging dock. I figured that moving the charger from place to place might be responsible for the failure, so I tried to keep everything in one spot as much as possible. Well, it worked for 2 and a half years so I guess that’s as good as it gets.

Actually I knew this would happen sooner or later, so I bought a USB charger as a backup. But since the 3DS is cursed, it’s only a matter of time before that stops working as well. Because why not? Before that happens, I’ll have to play the last few 3DS games I’m interested in: Persona Q, The Alliance Alive and Etrian Mystery Dungeon. I also started the Story of Seasons recently, but it’s boring so I’m thinking of dropping it, more on that some other time.

Oh, and I also started Atelier Shallie Plus. I was feeling a bit Atelier-ish this weekend, plus I want to solve this whole Dusk problem once and for all, so I took the plunge. Still only in the prologue. Shallistera’s route seems more story-focused so I’ll do that first, and then if there are significant differences in the routes I’ll do Shallotte’s as well. Updates on that one some other time.

Witch Ring Meister – Finished! It was fun

Witch Ring Meister is yet another simulation game from inutoneko, the Japanese indie developer I’ve been following for years. My last post was about Soul Smith of the Kingdom, another of their games. Normally I like to let time pass between games in the same series/genre. Unfortunately I’m going through a gaming rut right now where I don’t feel like playing anything with lot of talking in it. Which describes 90% of the games on my backlog. So… yeah. I’d rather play an idle clicker than any of those million-dollar quality JRPGs, bite me.

I rightly criticized the “English” “translation” of Soul Smith last time, but I’m happy to report that the translation of Witch Ring Meister isn’t half as bad. It’s still clearly done by a non-native speaker, but at least it makes complete sense now. I still played in Japanese because I didn’t want to take the chance, but I’m happy to see them going in a more quality direction.

Though I’ve gotta wonder, is it really that expensive to hire a proper translator from the start? Or at least an English editor? It bugs me when a game gets a bad translation because most video games will only get one localization ever. They need to make it count. Especially when it’s a game I enjoy, I feel sad that people aren’t going to get a good experience purely because some shoddy localization company cut a few corners. Mrrghhh. But anyway, Witch Ring Meister‘s translation is passable so feel free to try it if you’re interested.

Story: Marietta is a witch who wants to become a ring designer. Her father, who owns a jewelry store, wants her to study magic instead. Finally they arrive at a compromise where Marietta works on rings for a while, and if she can win the prestigious Miss Design Award he’ll let her follow her dream. Don’t we all wish we had a rich daddykins who would bankroll our wildest business plans? I know I do.

Gameplay: Marietta works on designs and prototypes together with her staff and a team of jewelers. Better staff, better jewelers = better rings.

My main menu right before winning the first Miss Design award.

Ring crafting takes the form of a clicking game. Get enough of the orange Work panels clicked and your production is a success. Then you can use the blue Advice panels and the purple Magic panels to get bonuses. But watch out for your HP and the time!

It’s not too hard, and you can one-click automate the process if you want, though if you really want good bonuses you’ll do it manually. For best results you’ll clear single panels that are in the way so you can link up larger swatches of color, saving time and HP. And if you fail there’s always Quick Load so don’t worry too much about it.

Once you’ve made a ring, you put it in your store and mass produce it to generate more funds to make more rings and hire more staff. As time goes on, the rings lose popularity and stop selling as well. Then you can either put them in a catalog to increase Marietta’s stats or use them as reference samples to create new, hopefully better rings.

Here’s what the catalog looks like:

The various elements of the rings directly affect the stat boosts you get. E.g. fire magic = more craft power, water magic = more HP. You need to use powerful rings as samples, but you also need to use them to power yourself up. It’s a balancing act. Usually if it’s a really good ring with a high rank or good skills I’ll use it as a sample, otherwise into the catalog it goes.

This is the Idea Note screen where all the magic of coming up with new rings happens.

That’s my Idea Note screen around the time when I won the first Miss Design award. The thing to note is the area in the middle with Technology, Staff, Shop, etc. You’re limited to creating rings around that level, give or take a rank. Since I have Bs there, my rings are coming out B+, B, C+ with the occasional A. If you want to make better rings, you’ll have to invest in better staff, invest in better jewelers who can source better material and invest in your shop. Which all takes money, money, money.

BTW, here’s my Idea Note screen around the time I won the second Miss Design award and finished the game. Posted for no reason except I’m a show-off:

Z+ is the highest rank you can get in the game. Am I awesome or what? Ufufufufu~ Since I’m at it, I might as well post my main menu from around that time as well.

I’m gonna be soooo rich when someone invents a way to convert game money to IRL money…

Enough boasting, back to the game. Here’s the shop screen where you can add all kinds of facilities to… your shop? The city of Ishwald? Seems like you pay for new facilities in the city to drive the economy so you can make more money. It’s the only reason I can think of why you have stuff like hospitals on the list.

TBH I felt that aspect was a bit nonsensical. Like instead of building restaurants and stuff, it would make more sense to have the same menu but fill it with marketing campaigns, renovations, store design options, etc. The kinds of things that would really drive sales in a real jewelry store. Not that Witch Ring Meister is realistic or anything, but random stuff like this just bugs me.

Moving on, here’s the staff screen where you can hire and fire workers:

As I mentioned, their combined stats for each category (Technology, Service, Popularity) affects the quality of the rings you can make. The better your staff, the better your stuff. So it’s in your own interest to pop into the Staff screen regularly to swap in better recruits if you can find them. Luckily they don’t mount any FFT-style guilt trips when you fire them, so fire away. Where they do play hardball is when you try to recruit talents that are way above your Shop’s level. Then you either pay through the nose or play some obscure negotiation game which plays like how I imagine Minesweeper would play if I could actually play Minesweeper.

This is the kind of game Quick Save was invented for.

Let’s see, what haven’t I covered yet… Ah yeah, skills and companions. Companions are the usual Ishwald crew. Nowadays the character stories are all optional, so I haven’t read any in ages. I got fed up with the story not going anywhere meaningful fast. If Shio and Fill don’t get together in the next game, I will riot.

Their main purpose is to give you boosts when you’re making rings. They give Marietta craft chips that can refill her HP, increase ring popularity, reduce HP loss during crafting, etc. They also have individual character skills you can buy with AP. These refill your HP, add more panels of a certain type, stop the time, etc etc. Late game, spamming Fill’s “Random Work” + Shio’s “Enhance Work” should be enough to complete most rings in the first move, leaving you with plenty of time stack bonuses.

That’s another thing I have against Witch Ring Meister: it gets really easy after a while. Quite apart from the fact that you can’t be game over’d, it’s too easy to succeed at crafting and the penalties for failure are really low. It’s good if you don’t want stress, and I enjoyed it anyway, but a Hard Mode would have been nice.

Last thing to cover: the Skills menu. Apart from character skills, Marietta can also spend AP on boosts that affect the whole game. Things like lower crafting damage, easier Contest requirements, better staff in the recruitment pool, etc.

The blue line under a skill means it’s active that month. The red line on top means the skill can be ranked up and upgraded further. The sucky thing about these is that the number (0, 90%, 100% etc) represent the chance of the skill to proc that month. So it’s meaningless to invest in a skill unless you have the AP to take it to at least 70% immediately. Also some of the skill effects are rather poorly explained, which is a bit irritating.

But enough talk. How is Witch Ring Meister as a game? TL;DR it’s awesome. I don’t have to do anything, I just point and click and the game plays itself. But the panel game is a lot of fun. It’s sort of strategic-y, sort of a race against time, sort of a rage against the cheating developers. What’s even more fun is slowly, but surely getting better rings. At first you can’t win even the easiest contest, your rings are all cheap kitsch, hardly anyone comes to your store and your HP is pathetic. Then you get better rings, you get better stats, you’re making good money, you’re winning everything, nothing is impossible for you. You’ve got it made!

But only in the game, not in real life. Boo hoo hoo.

There are only three things I have against the game.

1. I’ve mentioned it before, but it gets easy too quickly. I’m not looking for a hair-rippingly frustrating experience, but I did want to spend a bit more time racking my brains. It needed more contests, more goals, more achievements!

2. The limited number of rings you can sell and samples you can keep is frustrating. 5 of each was a bit annoying because it limits your earning potential and creativity.

3. A lot of stuff is poorly explained in the game. Especially the process for getting better rings. I had to check a FAQ to figure out that everything matters so you should upgrade everything stat. It was also from a FAQ that I learned you had to click character skills when crafting rings to active them. I thought they were automatic. Etc etc, it needed better tutorials.

Apart from that, I had a great time and stayed up all night at least twice just playing. It’s the first inutoneko game I’ve finished since Harvest Green in 2017 and I only managed it because this is so simple and undemanding and yet deep.

TL;DR: Witch Ring Meister is great fun if you like simulation games and growth narratives in a colorful, stress-free, idle-friendly package. At 30 hours for completion, it’s a good time filler too. I’m really sad to be done with it, but I’d been feeling a bit blah about gaming lately, and this has given me the spring back in my step. Yay!