When Your Sword is A Jackass

But that jackass is pretty much Gandalf in stabby form.

So, having inexplicably gotten the True (AKA best of the generic) endings in Atelier Rorona, I put down the controller for a bit.  I had some IRL issues to handle, and my work schedule for the last few days could be best described as chronological schizophrenia.  That's over with for the moment, and I picked it back up.

I did a bit of thinking.  I wanted to go ahead and play the sequel, Atelier Totori, and already tracked down the next sequel, Atelier Meruru (which still sounds like a basset hound bay), but I kinda needed the break from the long chain of new games, and decided to return to an old friend.

I popped in Atelier Iris 2:  The Azoth of Destiny.  It's still a blast, and a pleasure to play.  It's very much an Atelier Series game, but there's much more of an emphasis on the RPG and storytelling aspects.  You've got the crafting, and quiet alchemy chick that hangs out in town and gives alchemical goodies to the locals, but there's also a second protagonist that does traditional RPG stuff like save the world and loot stuff and harvest the unworthy with flashy moves

His sword is also sentient, and a smug smartass.  Seriously, the local Merlin equivalent decided that the Dark Side is totally awesome and used the Philosopher's Stone to become a talking +7 Sword of Alchemic Doom (instead of y'know, straight up immortality or something), and tried being Alchemist Sword Sauron.  Then, his apprentice was all "Shut up evil, Imma Alchemist!  Bah-ZAM!" and did the exact same thing.  Stuff exploded, people died, alchemy and alchemists were locked up in a pocket dimension, but a nice one where alchemists could chill with Mana spirits and make cool stuff, and Good Guy Azoth decided to be like Excalibur and hung out in a pedestal guarding the pocket dimension.  Bad Guy Azoth lurked in a cave or was sealed away or got stuck in a pawn shop hitting on the Alicorn Amulet somewhere until Liam O'Brien showed up a thousand years down the road and decided to start wrecking shit and now all hell is breaking loose.  I'm not making this stuff up.  Gust is hilariously awesome like that.

Anyway, I can see why the hardcore Atelier fans were somewhat unhappy.  The whole down-to-earth, shopkeeper fetch quest and character scenes stuff was sidelined for classic tearing-about-the-countryside antics.  Crafting is pretty straightforward, no real chance of failure, and materials have uniform quality and properties, compared to the constantly changing variables and required experimentation and notation through trial-and-error.  The combat is quirky; only designated alchemists can whip up items on the fly in combat, but everybody can use the goodies now, and special moves use a growing and depleting meter (kinda sorta like a fighting game's super meter) instead of MP (or worse, HP like Rorona), and is much more serviceable than traditional Atelier fare.  You wind up fighting an evil empire and then Alchemist Sword Sauron triggers an apocalypse to capture the titular Iris, who happens to be the incarnation of the Mana Goddess and the game's little magical waif, so now he has the power and intent to bring the universe into Age of Sigmar and make everything terrible.  Naturally, you whip his ass.  It's a far cry from all the small-scale, run a magic items shop stuff.

But, y'know what?  I like it a lot.  It's a wonderful change of pace, and rekindled my love of crafting stuff in games.  It's simple to start but can be hard to master.  It has some of the prettiest graphics I've ever seen; between the wonderful hand-drawn backgrounds and the happy li'l mana spirits, it's pretty much the awesome Seiken Densetsu/World of Mana game everybody's been waiting for since, well, Secret of Mana itself (hell the plot pretty much kicks off with a big sacred tree vanishing and mana going to hell, add in the evil empire being manipulated by an ancient bodysnatching sorcerer for fun).

Wow, I'm really fanboying out here.  Oh, and don't forget:  This is the game that gave us Flashbang Poe, the Gun Mana.  A little wood fairly that acts like a dirty old man, and brings the dakka with an kickass magical doomcannon.  All hail Flashbang Poe!