The alchemy system in this game confused me. It wasn't very well-explained, and I was almost to the end of the game before I finally realized what a lot of my special abilities did, or what the difference was between properties, attributes, score, value, etc. There was just..... a lot. I missed the simplified systems of later games.

But the story in this was actually incredible?? Let's be real, you don't usually play jrpgs for the story. But this one was well-done and subtle in a way that drew me in and made me want to uncover the mystery for myself.

The atelier games have a somewhat open world style, where you have a home base and can explore out from there. And this one is no exception. You encounter the plot through random events in areas with your companions, completing their quest lines in any order you choose, plus following a main plotline with the central characters. But... those side quests all had little clues to what was going on, and I found myself trying to piece together what had happened to my sister through those more than by what I was told in the main plotline. It was very well-done!

Combat was painfully easy, with no way to adjust the difficulty in the settings menu. Most of the battles were tedious... I basically just did other things while hitting the X button on my controller until they were over, lol. But in the late stages of the game, when we encounter actual boss battles, the battles went from zero to sixty and became a ton of fun. I wish there had been a difficulty setting so I could have made the combat more challenging.

Of the Atelier games I've played, this one has my favorite story so far, but Sophie still wins for character and alchemy puzzles. ;) I'm starting the next int he Dusk series after this, though, so we will see!!