When I heard that Gust was coming out with another Atelier game, I knew I had to have it. My addiction to the previous three games on the Playstation 3 had me wanting more. I pre-ordered the newest game titled Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk and eagerly waited for the day that it would be released. I had high hopes for the game based on how the previous games played, and I immediately started to play on midnight of the release date (March 5th, 2013)
Since the release, I've been playing the game for a few hours a night and have made some pretty good progress. I'm nearly into the fourth year of the game, and I have to say that so far.. I'm feeling a little empty inside. Disappointed isn't the right word since the game is still a lot of fun to play, but something about this title just doesn't quite sit right with me.
The more that I play, the less that I enjoy it. It definitely lacks that desire to play over and over again like Atelier Totori and Atelier Meruru did for me. However, it may not be fair to judge the game in it's entirety until it's finished, and so I am going to see it through until the end. I hope that it will grow on me and I can learn to appreciate it more as time goes on, although I don't think it can ever replace some of Gust's other games in my mind.
I'm no professional reviewer and I don't have the right to write a "professional" review, because I haven't even finished the game yet. However, I really want to voice my opinion on what I've liked and haven't liked so far. Because the game is fairly new to countries outside of Japan, this may give people a chance to weigh for themselves on whether or not they will be purchasing this title. Here are a few pros and cons on the game thus far. This will contain spoilers.
Pros
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1.Synthesizing items has a bit of a new spin to it, but the mechanic is very much the same as the previous games. It's fun and easy to do, and is presented in a whole new interface. Items now have elements and you can customize your item by putting the ingredients in your own order when synthesizing. This makes it easier to create a more powerful item, or to obtain a certain element or trait. This is a very useful way to do things and was very well implemented.
2. All of the environments are all very well done. They are very breathtaking and interesting, and no area feels like it's simply been copy and pasted. It makes you want to uncover new areas, and the developers had absolutely no problem making each area look amazing, I think that this game has done environments best out of the Playstation 3 franchise of games thus far. A lot of the areas follow the 'nature' theme that the game has, which has allowed for a lot of creativity. You additionally get your traditional levels like a desert, caves, mines, factories, etc.
3. All of the music in the game is amazing. All of it. I have yet to listen to a song or theme that I haven't liked. Great job to the composer(s), and well done on the placement of each song to the area in the game that best suited it. The battle music has once again been done very well.
4. Requests are much easier to fulfill. They have crazy long deadlines that allow you to bring the items that are needed without having to worry about travelling. Timelines vary from 300 days to 800 days on average, and the rewards you get are fair for the item that you are delivering. You also get 30 memory points for each request that you do, and they pile up quickly, making it easier to fill entries into Ayesha's journal.
5. Money is easily accessible and easy to obtain (in my opinion anyways), and so that made the game feel a lot less restricting. The shop system is pretty well implemented as well. I spent a lot less time gathering because I could buy a lot of what I needed. I could also register my items at any store I wanted from the get go, which was very helpful. There are many stores that you can visit on the world map, and so stores are not just restricted to cities this time around.
6. The new battle system is quite enjoyable. Although they stuck with the traditional turn based style, the player can now choose to do a back attack for more damage, or move around the field to gain an advantage. This allows the group members to work in better unison and makes it feel a bit more realistic. It's easier to form a good strategy and to make use of many different techniques. This also keeps the battle system feeling more engaging to the player.
Cons
1. Battling has got to be the most tedious and boring thing in the game, mainly because of the monsters. The battle SYSTEM is good, but that's about it. There are only a handful (maybe less) of unique enemy designs (so far), and the rest are re colored. What an absolute disappointing bore. Some areas have upwards of 10 enemy mobs, and to gain memory points, the game expects you to defeat every single mob in each area. May I remind you too that each mob may contain 4 or 5 different monsters in each battle, which equates to a sickening amount of monster fighting. This gets insanely boring insanely fast. This seems to take up a lot of your time, when you could be doing something more exciting. You don't always have to do this if you think you don't need the points, but in some areas, it's necessary to clear enemies to gain a new path. The lack of excitement in fighting the same boring battles over and over again just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Oh, and did I mention that there is not a SINGLE unique boss so far? And that "boss" battles are a pitiful joke?
2. The character development is poor. Within my first two years, I've seen nearly every "friendship" event with most of the characters, and it's ridiculously easy to get your friendship level up to 100. Most events are unvoiced and very brief. Once you learn a little bit about each character, that's about all you get. Characters who join your party seem to do so with little to no reason (in relation to your quest), and heck, Ayesha doesn't even seem to every really mention a whole lot about her sister to most of her party members. Although I like most of the character's personalities, it's hard to like them as a character entirely because I don't know a single thing about them. There's no deep story involved with each character, which makes it difficult to become deeply invested in them or their story.
3. What about the game's story? It starts out strong, but takes a hard plummet from there. What exactly is Ayesha doing anyways? Doing requests, synthesizing and gathering most likely.. because the spacing of the story is.. eh. Ayesha is supposed to be looking for clues about her sister, but that seems to take a life time. When you finally do find something out, it feels unrewarding because of how insignificant the game makes it out to be, and because the game made it so easy for you to achieve it once you got the clue. The execution of the game's story was sloppily done in my opinion, which is unfortunate, because that's one of the main reasons I bought it. I find a clue about Nio and I tell myself, "Oh yeah, Nio. Time to go waste another 4 months doing something completely unrelated."
4. The game is much too easy. It really does hold your hand, which has it's pros and it's cons. Although the game is rated T, I'm sure a younger child playing the game could figure it out very easily. It's very good about telling you what to do and where to go, but it does it in a way so that you really don't have to use your head at all to figure things out. I have yet to see a challenging or unique boss battle to this date and I'm almost level 40 (which is sad). It's very easy to level up both alchemy and your fighting level. Enemy levels scale up very slowly, and so it feels impossible to get a real challenge from the game. It's virtually impossible to fail a synthesis, because the game won't even allow you to attempt the item until you are the appropriate level. I have yet to die (or come close to) dying in the game so far.
