Well, it took some doing, but I managed another RPG double-kill last weekend: Atelier Iris 2 and Secret of Mana. Things got so hairy that I actually burned out and haven't even picked up the controller for a good few days.
Now that I've actually played my two favorite games from the Mana and Atelier fanchises, I still strongly suspect that Atelier (or at least the Iris subseries) borrowed a lot of elements from Mana. I plan to natter about that later, after a bit more research and pondering. Truth be told, I'm actually still burned out on both games for the moment, which is surprising considering neither claimed my free time and resources quite like the last few--hell, the last dozen--RPGs.
Anyway, I've decided on my next big endevour, and a bit of confession time.
I've never actually beaten Final Fantasy VI.
Way back in the day, I played the hell out of it, but for one reason or another, I never tackled the final dungeon. Some of it was that I was playing a borrowed copy, so my savefiles tended to go poof. Other reasons came along, some good, some stupid, and one very bad. When I was an aspiring nerdling, I asked my friend if I could just beat the final boss on his already completed savefile. My friend, being a wonderful dude (I was such a spoiled little prick, but he let me play with his SNES and his games anyway, without griping) let me do so, therefore giving me an excuse to say I beat the game.
I honestly think this is the moment that spark some really nerdy commitment issues, the ones where I pick an RPG, play it up to the last dungeon and just stop. I've managed to get over it, at least for now. So it comes to this. It's foolish, it's childish, and it's frightfully nerdy, but it is long past time I've put this game on my finished list one and for all.
The Harvest Has Triumphed Twice Over! And now it's time for that wonderful little saying: When life gives you lemons, go murder a clown.
Showing posts with label atelier iris 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atelier iris 2. Show all posts
Friday, August 25, 2017
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Ending a Mad Dream
Here we are again; a final dungeon. I already tore my way through the thing and walked back out, so I can bit of extra grinding and fiddling with the crafting system. Talking Sword Sauron is probably quite bemused at my antics.
I've always found the Temple of Creation to be something of a disappointment (except for the kickass soundtrack Battle in the Sunlight), since it goes right back to generic looking pillars and tiles, with only a hint of unique elements, and recycling a much earlier tileset (granted, it's the cool looking giant runestone tileset). It stands in contrast to the characterful Vintavne dungeon most players have just been through.
Otherwise, things are progressing quite well, and really i'm just holding off beating the game again so I muck about a bit. I've actually progressed a fair bit faster than normal, to the point where I don't have the main character's final weapon and best move unlocked, and thanks to the lessons I learned from Rorona, I've actually managed to make several of the more expensive-to-make combat items a lot more practical to produce.
It's been a blast, and playing a game that relies on harvesting materials and making your own gear just has its own special charm. There's a lot of things to love in this game, and though there are some rough spots (the storyline is usual JRPG fare, the dungeons are blocky and like to recycle graphics, there's a couple of battle backgrounds that do weird things if the screens gets too busy or flashy) it's still very much a joy to play.
I'm probably overthinking it and speculating a bit too hard, but there's just enough hints and similarities to make me wonder if Gust (the developer behind Atelier) wound up with a bunch of old Square employees that wanted make good World of Mana games really bad. The colorful drawn backgrounds, the emphasis on quirky elemental spirits (with some really freaky elements represented), and the emphasis on Mana and a goddess-like figure that controlled it (complete with a great disaster that ultimately sealed her away); there's just too many paralells.
In any case, the game is coming to a close, and I'll pull out a new one as planned. As I've already mentioned, I pulled out Iris 2 for a bit of walking down memory lane and as a mental palate cleanser, and it was very much worth it. I'm still not sure where the Harvest will go next, maybe something involving space pirates or a guy who punches demons or fantasy Western gunslingers or something.
I've always found the Temple of Creation to be something of a disappointment (except for the kickass soundtrack Battle in the Sunlight), since it goes right back to generic looking pillars and tiles, with only a hint of unique elements, and recycling a much earlier tileset (granted, it's the cool looking giant runestone tileset). It stands in contrast to the characterful Vintavne dungeon most players have just been through.
Otherwise, things are progressing quite well, and really i'm just holding off beating the game again so I muck about a bit. I've actually progressed a fair bit faster than normal, to the point where I don't have the main character's final weapon and best move unlocked, and thanks to the lessons I learned from Rorona, I've actually managed to make several of the more expensive-to-make combat items a lot more practical to produce.
It's been a blast, and playing a game that relies on harvesting materials and making your own gear just has its own special charm. There's a lot of things to love in this game, and though there are some rough spots (the storyline is usual JRPG fare, the dungeons are blocky and like to recycle graphics, there's a couple of battle backgrounds that do weird things if the screens gets too busy or flashy) it's still very much a joy to play.
I'm probably overthinking it and speculating a bit too hard, but there's just enough hints and similarities to make me wonder if Gust (the developer behind Atelier) wound up with a bunch of old Square employees that wanted make good World of Mana games really bad. The colorful drawn backgrounds, the emphasis on quirky elemental spirits (with some really freaky elements represented), and the emphasis on Mana and a goddess-like figure that controlled it (complete with a great disaster that ultimately sealed her away); there's just too many paralells.
In any case, the game is coming to a close, and I'll pull out a new one as planned. As I've already mentioned, I pulled out Iris 2 for a bit of walking down memory lane and as a mental palate cleanser, and it was very much worth it. I'm still not sure where the Harvest will go next, maybe something involving space pirates or a guy who punches demons or fantasy Western gunslingers or something.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
I'm Significant
Screamed the dust speck.
Hmph.
Anyway, the Atelier Iris 2 campaign goes well in hand. Finally got the big bad empire on the run and got the whole party together, so it's time to take care of business and tear through something resembling a unique dungeon (to be fair, Vintavne is actually pretty flavorful and interesting to go through).
I've forgotten how much the challenge can get ramped up in the combat once you close in on the endgame. It's actually something kinda nasty, yet a pleasant surprise. You smack your way through Fort Zeyung and Riese Palace, tearing through a ton of imperial minions (Riese Palace alone gives you more encounters with enemy soldiers than most players would face from their Gesthalian counterparts throughout all of Final Fantasy VI, not counting Veldt rematches) and thwarting Theodore McTwit, and then you delve into some dungeons and the mooks knock you on your ass.
An then there are the bosses. They're some of the most flavorful and unique things I've seen in an RPG, and I'd really like to see more like them. You start facing a short series of clockwork magitek automata, with lots of flash and freaky moves and light shows; compared to the variations on the usual fantasy critters, they come out of nowhere and give this game some much needed character. The sad part is that they seem to have been made even more rare in the PS3 Atelier games; I never faced anything even close to this stuff in Rorona, and I've only had bare hints that anything shows up later.
They really help give the Atelier games a character of their own, and to be fair there are a decent bunch of regular enemies that are fairly unique and characterful in their own right, and even the variation on the usual suspects have their own flair. Ghost enemies are actually outright immune to normal physical attacks and like flinging freaky fireballs and hexes. You encounter poison-elemental dragons (that are green no less), and while they are palette-swaps of normal dragons, you see them among their firey brethren (along with zombie dragons), and in the same place you face swarms of Charmander ripoffs that also have stone/poison and ice conterparts in the same place. The dungeon in question is a cave full of magma and brimstone, where most RPG designers wouldn't even think of putting in non-fire critters, much less ice-elemental ones as regular encounters. And the evil totem poles are hilarious. They hoot snippets of tribal chants while they try to kill your party. The demons are about what you'd expect, except that you can turn them into Elvis jackets for some reason. The next time you bump into an impersonator, remember that their getup is made from pure evil!
Well, I'm off for some rest and then the Harvest begins anew.
Hmph.
Anyway, the Atelier Iris 2 campaign goes well in hand. Finally got the big bad empire on the run and got the whole party together, so it's time to take care of business and tear through something resembling a unique dungeon (to be fair, Vintavne is actually pretty flavorful and interesting to go through).
I've forgotten how much the challenge can get ramped up in the combat once you close in on the endgame. It's actually something kinda nasty, yet a pleasant surprise. You smack your way through Fort Zeyung and Riese Palace, tearing through a ton of imperial minions (Riese Palace alone gives you more encounters with enemy soldiers than most players would face from their Gesthalian counterparts throughout all of Final Fantasy VI, not counting Veldt rematches) and thwarting Theodore McTwit, and then you delve into some dungeons and the mooks knock you on your ass.
An then there are the bosses. They're some of the most flavorful and unique things I've seen in an RPG, and I'd really like to see more like them. You start facing a short series of clockwork magitek automata, with lots of flash and freaky moves and light shows; compared to the variations on the usual fantasy critters, they come out of nowhere and give this game some much needed character. The sad part is that they seem to have been made even more rare in the PS3 Atelier games; I never faced anything even close to this stuff in Rorona, and I've only had bare hints that anything shows up later.
They really help give the Atelier games a character of their own, and to be fair there are a decent bunch of regular enemies that are fairly unique and characterful in their own right, and even the variation on the usual suspects have their own flair. Ghost enemies are actually outright immune to normal physical attacks and like flinging freaky fireballs and hexes. You encounter poison-elemental dragons (that are green no less), and while they are palette-swaps of normal dragons, you see them among their firey brethren (along with zombie dragons), and in the same place you face swarms of Charmander ripoffs that also have stone/poison and ice conterparts in the same place. The dungeon in question is a cave full of magma and brimstone, where most RPG designers wouldn't even think of putting in non-fire critters, much less ice-elemental ones as regular encounters. And the evil totem poles are hilarious. They hoot snippets of tribal chants while they try to kill your party. The demons are about what you'd expect, except that you can turn them into Elvis jackets for some reason. The next time you bump into an impersonator, remember that their getup is made from pure evil!
Well, I'm off for some rest and then the Harvest begins anew.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Alchemy, Dear Boy
Ah, the old crafting formula:
Step 1: Unleash the Harvest
Step 2: Toss the proceeds into the cauldron
Step 3: ALCHEMY
Step 4: Profit!
Step 5: Unleash the Harvest again
I'm not quite sure why, but there's something really satisfying about this Atelier business. Maybe it's because there's a real sense of player agency when it comes to what you get to make your toys from and what to do with your shinies. Maybe it's because you can actually make your own, better shinies from the shinies you find.
This series pretty much renders the Harvest to its essence; you go out and smack crittters, cultivate plants, and mine rocks, and then use them to fuel your crafting rampage. I can see why there is some suspicion among the series's population, and why there's such a sense of discipline and need-to-know and iniation among alchemists. Talking Sword Sauron alone came across like what would happen if a Captain Planet villain was actually competent and wound up with magical replicator technology. Damn if this isn't fun, though.
Things are coming along quite well in Atelier Iris 2. I'm already pretty close to the end of the game (Atelier games are many things, but 60 hour epics they are not) and I'm taking a brether and just fiddling with the Dragon's Den, a nice little arena where you can battle certain series of monsters for XP and prizes. On top of all that you get to keep the cash and item drops, so some planning and a bit of luck can really grow your material stash like crazy. It's great if you feel like level grinding, but really you're just here to grab rare alchemy ingredients (like the crazy expensive mana orbs), plus do amusing things like turn demons into Elvis impersonator suits. Whoever thought of that one is awesome, by the way.
Well, we'll see what happens when I finally get back to the storyline. The Harvest Never Rests!
Step 1: Unleash the Harvest
Step 2: Toss the proceeds into the cauldron
Step 3: ALCHEMY
Step 4: Profit!
Step 5: Unleash the Harvest again
I'm not quite sure why, but there's something really satisfying about this Atelier business. Maybe it's because there's a real sense of player agency when it comes to what you get to make your toys from and what to do with your shinies. Maybe it's because you can actually make your own, better shinies from the shinies you find.
This series pretty much renders the Harvest to its essence; you go out and smack crittters, cultivate plants, and mine rocks, and then use them to fuel your crafting rampage. I can see why there is some suspicion among the series's population, and why there's such a sense of discipline and need-to-know and iniation among alchemists. Talking Sword Sauron alone came across like what would happen if a Captain Planet villain was actually competent and wound up with magical replicator technology. Damn if this isn't fun, though.
Things are coming along quite well in Atelier Iris 2. I'm already pretty close to the end of the game (Atelier games are many things, but 60 hour epics they are not) and I'm taking a brether and just fiddling with the Dragon's Den, a nice little arena where you can battle certain series of monsters for XP and prizes. On top of all that you get to keep the cash and item drops, so some planning and a bit of luck can really grow your material stash like crazy. It's great if you feel like level grinding, but really you're just here to grab rare alchemy ingredients (like the crazy expensive mana orbs), plus do amusing things like turn demons into Elvis impersonator suits. Whoever thought of that one is awesome, by the way.
Well, we'll see what happens when I finally get back to the storyline. The Harvest Never Rests!
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Mixin' It Up
The Atelier Iris 2 campaign is going quite well. I'd forgotten that it could be an absolute joy to play through.
Regarding the last post, I had meant to make a contrast between Iris 2 and the "traditional" Atelier series formulae, and why some fans understandably abhor the Iris series. Traditional Atelier tends to have low-fantasy, small-scale stories, where the protagonist maintains a workshop, fulfills NPC requests and rarely ventures more than a week or two from home base. Iris 2 has a focus on a pair of protagonists, one venturing forth to a whole different world, triggering a grand quest to save everything with a band of colorful RPG characters; the second does the usual workshop schtick, but eventually does the same thing. Traditional Atelier might have no real villains (the closest Rorona had was just a watered-down more-pragmatic-than-evil chancellor, and he was mostly letting off steam from dealing with the king's murderhobo antics), at worst having big nasty demon to be put down. Iris 2 has an evil empire, the local branch run by a foolish yet dangerous fop, with access to some nasty magitek gizmos. This empire is being manipulated by a powerful swordsman seeking the power of alchemy, who is being in turn manipulated by Talking Sword Sauron out to take over the world.
But it's still Atelier, and a lot of the fun comes from going out there and hunting down recipes and materials to make cool stuff. There's some crazy stuff like a potion that turns wimpier monsters into stuff like Rubik's cubes and CDs, a cookie that lets you talk to certain critters, tiny hammers that immediately turn ore veins into usable stones, and three grades of potion that at like Miracle-Gro on crack to give you all sorts of flowers and fruits and things (some plants even become elemental crystals, how does that even work?). This game has 12 different elements, each with a elemental embodiment known as a Mana (with a 13th Mana representing the ultimate force of creation). The game's combat system only acknowledges four damage types (plus physical and non-elemental magic), but that's ok; we'd wind up with the kookiest type system outside of Pokemon otherwise.
Fun fact: While you don't wind up with a lead-into-gold formula that most people think of when the word alchemy comes up, you do wind up with a semi-secret, indirect method to make infinite cash: the Holy Evergreen. It goes as follows: Once you get the Wonder Grow and Huffin Water recipes, synthesize a Wonder Grow substituting in Huffin Water instead of the Ailhie Fungo. This results in unlocking the Holy Evergreen, a salable Alchemy item. You can do the same thing with Huffins, but they have to be harvested, using the water instead means you can use Mana Synthesis to make the ingredients. Use Mana Synthesis to crank out lots of Heal Herbs and Huffin Water, and make tons of Holy Evergreens for 70 cole a pop! In game terms, one Wood element (to make the Heal Herb) plus one Water and one Aroma element (the Huffin Water) equals 70 cole. These are all ridiculously easy to find and farm (Marmel Forest, I'm looking at you), so producing and selling this in bulk is the easiest way to crank out tons of cash. It's practically required if you want the recipes in Riesevelt before you get kicked out and have to wait until much later in the game to get. I know I covered this in a Wreckonomics post, but it bears repeating and amplifying.
Regarding the last post, I had meant to make a contrast between Iris 2 and the "traditional" Atelier series formulae, and why some fans understandably abhor the Iris series. Traditional Atelier tends to have low-fantasy, small-scale stories, where the protagonist maintains a workshop, fulfills NPC requests and rarely ventures more than a week or two from home base. Iris 2 has a focus on a pair of protagonists, one venturing forth to a whole different world, triggering a grand quest to save everything with a band of colorful RPG characters; the second does the usual workshop schtick, but eventually does the same thing. Traditional Atelier might have no real villains (the closest Rorona had was just a watered-down more-pragmatic-than-evil chancellor, and he was mostly letting off steam from dealing with the king's murderhobo antics), at worst having big nasty demon to be put down. Iris 2 has an evil empire, the local branch run by a foolish yet dangerous fop, with access to some nasty magitek gizmos. This empire is being manipulated by a powerful swordsman seeking the power of alchemy, who is being in turn manipulated by Talking Sword Sauron out to take over the world.
But it's still Atelier, and a lot of the fun comes from going out there and hunting down recipes and materials to make cool stuff. There's some crazy stuff like a potion that turns wimpier monsters into stuff like Rubik's cubes and CDs, a cookie that lets you talk to certain critters, tiny hammers that immediately turn ore veins into usable stones, and three grades of potion that at like Miracle-Gro on crack to give you all sorts of flowers and fruits and things (some plants even become elemental crystals, how does that even work?). This game has 12 different elements, each with a elemental embodiment known as a Mana (with a 13th Mana representing the ultimate force of creation). The game's combat system only acknowledges four damage types (plus physical and non-elemental magic), but that's ok; we'd wind up with the kookiest type system outside of Pokemon otherwise.
Fun fact: While you don't wind up with a lead-into-gold formula that most people think of when the word alchemy comes up, you do wind up with a semi-secret, indirect method to make infinite cash: the Holy Evergreen. It goes as follows: Once you get the Wonder Grow and Huffin Water recipes, synthesize a Wonder Grow substituting in Huffin Water instead of the Ailhie Fungo. This results in unlocking the Holy Evergreen, a salable Alchemy item. You can do the same thing with Huffins, but they have to be harvested, using the water instead means you can use Mana Synthesis to make the ingredients. Use Mana Synthesis to crank out lots of Heal Herbs and Huffin Water, and make tons of Holy Evergreens for 70 cole a pop! In game terms, one Wood element (to make the Heal Herb) plus one Water and one Aroma element (the Huffin Water) equals 70 cole. These are all ridiculously easy to find and farm (Marmel Forest, I'm looking at you), so producing and selling this in bulk is the easiest way to crank out tons of cash. It's practically required if you want the recipes in Riesevelt before you get kicked out and have to wait until much later in the game to get. I know I covered this in a Wreckonomics post, but it bears repeating and amplifying.
Monday, April 18, 2016
Mad Science Skillz
Welp, that was hilarious, but I forgot to actually bring up the contrast in the last post, in the paragraph making the contrast about Atelier Iris 2 and traditional Atelier games. Suffice to say that Iris 2 is a typical JRPG adventure with Atelier crafting mechanics tossed in, while your traditional Atelier game is all about running an alchemy shop, chilling with buddies, and maybe wandering off to a nearby dungeon for materials. Makes you wonder what sort of insanity and hijinks are in store when I finally pop in Mana Khemia.
Anyway, things are progressing pretty well. Exposure to Rorona gave me the impetus to fiddle with the crafting system now, and it's yielding some good results. Potions heal better, debuffs are actually somewhat consistent and reliable, and alchemically produced bombs wreck more faces now. Combat items are now worth it. It was a source of minor frustration that offensive items were obviously supposed to be a big part of the combat system, but suffered from the traditional problem of not being particularly better than stabbing things the old-fashioned way. Other games in the series didn't have the problem (hell Rorona made them borderline broken relative to normal techniques). I guess is that without that exposure, we just have a fairly normal RPG on our hands.
But I must go for a while. All Hail Flashbang Poe!
Anyway, things are progressing pretty well. Exposure to Rorona gave me the impetus to fiddle with the crafting system now, and it's yielding some good results. Potions heal better, debuffs are actually somewhat consistent and reliable, and alchemically produced bombs wreck more faces now. Combat items are now worth it. It was a source of minor frustration that offensive items were obviously supposed to be a big part of the combat system, but suffered from the traditional problem of not being particularly better than stabbing things the old-fashioned way. Other games in the series didn't have the problem (hell Rorona made them borderline broken relative to normal techniques). I guess is that without that exposure, we just have a fairly normal RPG on our hands.
But I must go for a while. All Hail Flashbang Poe!
Thursday, April 14, 2016
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!
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!
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