Surviving The Long Night

Well, that actually went much better than anticipated, really.

I managed to tear my way through Night's Domain in Atelier Rorona, and it was actually a good deal more fun than I expected.  For a game that was all about finding stuff to make the best goodies, it's good to find a bit of challenging combat encounters here and there.  There is a bounty system in place, which will spawn in mini-boss and boss level critters, but unless you're dedicated to straight monster eradication in a given playthrough, they tend to not be worth your time (both in-game and out).

I'm moving ever closer (and much faster than expected) to giving a final review on this game, and I'd like to touch a few points; I'll likely bring them up again later, but I need to get them off my chest anyway.

First, the time-management aspect.  It's both kind liberating and very restrictive.  The only real gripes involved here is that trying to get requests that involve more than minimal gathering and dungeon-crawling can get really frustrating, really fast.  Things got better as I progressed through the game, but I managed to fail several requests early on, and it probably compromised my in-game reputation enough to lock me out of the better endings.  The good news is that this is the kind of game that lets you figure out your mistakes fairly quickly, and being intended for multiple playthroughs means you can actually put a fair bit of planning into your little excursions.  All in all, you get to give your brain a good workout, and actually figure out things like efficiency and a bit of long-term strategy, and it works pretty damn well.

The combat is still the weakest overall part of the game.  It's not bad, and it's actually fairly well-balanced internally, but it's fairly bare-bones (especially in the era this game was produced).  It's a bit of disappointment after the intricate combat mechanics of the Iris series, and just really give the sense of spectacle its predecessors had.  It's still turn-based, with basic attacks, flashy skills (but fueled by HP), with a special emphasis on tossing out the fruits of your labor to rain doom upon the unworthy; it just doesn't the oomph.  It also has the classic RPG problem of letting your plow through mooks early on, then smacking you upside the head with the next tier of critters, making for annoying speed bumps.  The combat difficulty curve is always hard to gauge, even for experienced developers, so it's pretty forgivable.  The curve here has been sharpened by the time management aspects, which can make grinding counterproductive.  But hell, this is still a game that takes all those (traditionally useless) offensive items and turns them into the harbingers of the Harvest.  Have fun tossing alchemic dynamite, explosive snowmen, and giant sweetgum balls upon your foes, then up the ante with things like blasting them with cannons, unleashing elemental blasts o' doom, and summoning meteoric death from above.  Why the hell doesn't anybody respect alchemy in this game again?

In any case, the Harvest must continue, and the forces of badness shall be reaped to fuel the cause!