>ask Atelier thread If I should buy Sophie >"Nah. everything after Meruru is shit, play Arland" >"Nah. Arland is shit, play Iris" >"Nah. Iris is shit, play Mana Khemia" >decided to play them ALL
>Mana Khemia and Iris gameplay are ok >Arland is better than Mana Khemia and Iris, more polished gameplay and Crafting >Dusk is better than Arland, funnest crafting in gaming ever, best combat in the series so far
>the series is basically got better with each installment. >people will say whatever they play first is the best
Sophie objectively lacks a lot of features from previous games though and the battle system got dumbed down hard.
I won't say the series tanked after Meruru even though it's my favorite, but Shallie and Sophie are the weakest entries by far, not counting the original Rorona.
Juan Young
I played Mana Khemia first and thought it was shit. Arland was much better. The only Dusk game I played was Escha and Logy and it had pretty terrible gameplay. I don't know if Ayesha or Shallie were any better. I do know that the overall story went nowhere so they totally wasted the setting though, since everyone seems to agree on that. That doesn't seem very good.
Lincoln Allen
>the series is basically got better with each installment.
It depends on what you want from the game. If you compare Arland and Dusk, Arland had better characters and better, more severe time-limits. Dusk had a better setting, but more forgettable characters and too much freedom. You actually ended up with free time and nothing important to do with it. I think the series topped with Totori and Meruru.
Mana Khemia is a bit too different from the Atelier series to really compare. I really liked it, but I can see why some would prefer one over the other.
Oh, and people should play Atelier Annie. She's the best protagonist.
James Ortiz
Escha crafting is more fun than Arland. Combat is more fun more flashy than Arland Arland girls are cuter.
how is it terrible?
Brayden Thompson
How much is Firis going to cost on Steam? I don't want to pay $30 for Sophie and then be forced to pay $60 for the sequel.
Ryan Young
I found it bad just because it gave you an insane amount of time and practically infinite resources. You never have to worry about what to do since you have enough time to explore everywhere and do every side task and also make as much equipment as you want, and still have like a month left over for sleeping. You never have to worry about wasting items since they get instantly refilled for free whenever you go back to town. You never have to worry about wasting rare ingredients since the homunculi can just clone them for practically nothing. Atelier without resource management just isn't very fun. The alchemy system was kinda fun but it also got really old when you were trying to make a lot of items at once. Going through the minigame using powers and balancing elements takes a long time, so doing synthesis chains trying to pass traits along can take forever. That's not so good, even if it is a lot more fun when you're just making one item. I don't know if it's better or worse in the end. Pretty much the only good part was the combat, and that can't hold up the entire game. Especially since it's only really fun in the special encounter boss fights, and if you cause them too much you get too high level and too well equipped from drops so no other fight in the game is any fun. And that just leads to you causing more since that's the only good part of the game, so you get even more overpowered, so it just gets worse and worse.
Parker Lopez
every "flaw" you listed in the first paragraph is a positive, basically make game more fun and less annoying.
and Alchemy mini game always fun to me
William Price
>never have to worry about wasting items since they get instantly refilled for free whenever you go back to town.
best part about Dusk.
Juan Clark
I guess we want different things out of games then. You apparently want a game where you don't have to think about what to do at all, and need to spend months sleeping because you can finish everything super quickly and new areas are unlocked based off time instead of progress like in Totori/Meruru. I find that weird, but ok.