justarandomdegenerate

[justarandomdegenerate]

Volcano Princess, Thoughts!

So! Volcano Princess. basically, i was doing a discovery queue on steam and this got suggested. And it just looked to cute and i had to try playing it. So i guess I'll get into what this game is. Volcano Princess is a game where you basically guide your daughter into becoming whatever kind of person you want her to be. Be that an evil overlord, or the gayest princess who gets with every lady in town. however i thought of it as less guiding the daughter, and more of you ARE them. because i didn't like that the player character was a dad. Would be cool if it could have been a mum, but whatever. Thinking of the daughter as your character works well anyway because the father has basically no impact on gameplay and you really do just play as the daughter. Anyway! What you do in this game isssss; Make your gay princess stronger, smarter, more creative, and more in touch with her emotions. These are the different ways you can boost your stats and attend better courses at school. Which can also affect other things you can do such as horse racing, theatre performances, and combat. You have limited turns do everything you need to do, as when you graduate, it's the end of the game. However with even a little planning, it's pretty dang easy to get the ending you want. I called the game complete when i had married every lady available, or gay%. Which took me 33.1 hours! There's really not a whole lot to this game, but it's pretty charming, even if the English localisation is FULL of spelling and grammar mistakes. Which honestly, i don't care about, but i know that'll bother people when they're spending money on something.

Something that did bother me is that i found an exploit to basically get unlimited money and therefore energy, through taking advantage of sale days and resale prices. What i did not notice is buying lots from the blacksmith makes him like you a lot, and i got stuck into a romance ending i didn't want because he was like 800 romance points ahead of anyone else. Which is stupid! But hey. I shouldn't be exploiting, I know. Anyway yeah. Pretty simple game. Pretty charming storylines, lots of nice ladies to be gay with. Oh and i guess there's boys too if you want to do that. For some reason. Pretty cute artwork too. Made me want to go for as many career endings as possible to see all the different illustrations they do of your player character. This is probably one of my roughest posts but eh! i just wanted to say i had fun with this game and recommend it.

#Volcano princess #steam #game #dating sim

[justarandomdegenerate]

Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists ~ateliers of the New World ~ Thoughts!

So! I just finished my 100% playthrough of Nelke! literally less than 5 minutes before i started typing out this post! So let's get started. So Nelke (I am not typing that full title out every time!!!) is a town building style JRPG following an original set of characters led by Nelke, an alchemist obsessed Noble lady out to look for a magic tree and prove herself to her father back home who sets all these time sensitive tasks for her that she must complete, or come back home. This style of time sensitive tasks will be very familiar to people who have played the older Atelier games, however the overall gameplay is otherwise very different. As Nelke, unlike every other Atelier protagonist, has 0 alchemy proficiency. She instead relies on other alchemists to get things done. Which brings us to the main pull this game had for me.

For some mysterious reason, and these alchemists from other worlds are teleporting to this seemingly random location!! So you'll see familiar characters from all atelier games up until Atelier Lydie & Suelle (Which is my favourite), including side characters, such as my favourite Corneria from the Mysterious games! I basically 90% bought and played this game just to have another game that has Sophie, Firis, Lydie and Suelle in it. Didn't really care for most other character simply because i don't know them, but that's on me, not this game. So i won't fault it for that. Basically the more Atelier games you've played, the more little enjoyable character interaction moments you'll find fun.

Okay now let's get into the actual gameplay shall we? So there are 10 main aspects to this game you need to keep track of. Town building, Synthesis, Sales, Production, Dispatch, Requests, Tasks, Visits, Research, and Investigation. Town building. The main part of this game. You need to build facilities for your alchemists to synthesise, your merchants to do sales, your workers to produce materials, and you can't just place at random either. It's good to have districts, as different things you can build have bonuses to specific things, and even specific types of sales. Plus everything needs to meet a road, so efficient usage of space is needed to actually place all the buildings you need. Synthesis. This one is straightforward. You have your alchemists synthesise things you need to sell, things you need for research, or things you need to construct better facilities. Makes sense that in an Atelier spin-off game that Alchemists are your most important and useful people. Alchemists can also perform any role, but only alchemists can do synthesis. Sales. Also pretty straightforward. You sell the things your alchemists make. There's also several categories of items. General, Grocery, Weapon, Boutique and Drug (Sounds weird and illicit. Guess it's an american translation. If it was translated her, it would be called a pharmacy) Now this can be a little annoying to manage, and certain building can only sell certain things, and if you don't have fairly balanced sales, you can lose support in the town. Production. So for this one, you build things like Flower patches, veggie gardens, orchards and ranches, all to produce materials every turn. Definitely don't ignore this one. If you just forget about it, you'll suddenly find yourself using, say, way too much vegetable oil for what you're trying to make, and your whole production>synthesis>sales line will quickly break down.

Dispatch. You can send your people to areas you have cleared in battle investigation, and gather materials each turn. this one is also super important for the same reason as production. You can dispatch at most 5 people to each area. Requests. These are mostly optional requests you get each turn that ask for things to be done within a specified time limit. Like.... "Product 20x of Y item in 4 turns" And you'll get a money reward, or sometimes you'll get a population boost from it. ALWAYS do those ones, as you will hit a point in the game where if you don't have at least 50,000 population, you just lose, and have to start over. Which happened to me. Keep on top of requests! Tasks. These are your main directions for the game. Time limited tasks that if you fail, it's instant game over. Visit. You can visit and chat to all your town members, which consist entirely of characters from the mainline Atelier game. There's a limited number of these you can do each day. Research. This is how you unlock more land to develop, required items for advanced synthesis, and even resolve random time limited disasters. Make sure you're checking the materials you need for things, as past a certain turn number, research locks. Investigation. This is how you unlock new areas for dispatch, or level up characters. It's super super basic turn based combat that is so easy that as long as you don't neglect levelling up, you can win every battle on auto.

So overall i thought this game was.... fine. If it wasn't for the fact that i was playing alongside my favourite characters from the Mysterious games, I probably would have given up, and if it wasn't so short, I probably would not have gone for the 100%. Speaking of. If you go for the 100%, it was super grindy. I beat the game in about..... 30 hours? and then the next 8.4 hours were grinding out the like, 10 achievements I had left.

I think if you're a fan of the Atelier games, and you like town building games, you'll probably have fun here. And that's my thoughts! Thanks if you read this far.

#nelke and the legendary alchemists #atelier #sophie #firis #suelle #gust #koei tecmo #jrpg #game #lydie

[justarandomdegenerate]

The Executioner and Her Way of Life LN thoughts!

So I ordered this book series (6 books released and translated at time of posting) basically on a whim because it looked like a somewhat serious fantasy story with yuri. But it turned out to not be too bad an idea to act on that whim! I'm going to try not get too spoilery when I do my summary, but that is a little unavoidable, so I apologise in advance! That said, I am going to go into stuff of a spoilery nature at the end. And hopefully I remember everything well, as I only finished this series 2 weeks ago. To to sum up, The Executioner and Her Way of Life is about our protagonist, Menou! The world is your typical Isekai fantasy world with it's own (Kind of weird honestly) power system. Except unlike most isekai, our protagonist is a native resident of this world. She's an Executioner! (Duh..), who's main job is to hunt taboo entities, which largely consists of otherworlers! Yup! this world has a whole profession dedicated to taking out this OP isekai protagonists before they get to cause any trouble in this world. Which has happened on numerous occasions, being disasters leaving large portions of the world uninhabitable. When an otherworlder reaches this point they are called a "Human Error". Which honestly i think is a pretty cool term. Obviously, things are not quite as simple as "all otherworlders are bad guys, and our protagonist is a hero." She herself is constantly calling herself a villain. Not to mention that executioners are trained and employed by this world's leading religious church group, The Faust. That NEVER means good things in a fantasy setting.

So our main characters areeee; Menou, obviously. The self proclaimed pure, proper villainous priestess. her only real stand out quality is that she is a massive unwitting yuri magnet, that basically every female character in this series thinks is beautiful and some more subtly than others are always trying to come onto her. Beyond that she's a little bland. However without going into spoilers, that's not without reason. Momo. Menou's psycho girlfriend. Uh. I mean, Menou's extremely capable and eager assistant. A young girl who is basically a berserker with 0 skill but game breaking strength. Her only interest in the entire world is Menou. Which can be entertaining but sometimes gets repetitive. Ashuna, the knight princess. Who... for a paper thin fanservice reason of a deep love for the human body in peak form, basically always dresses in clothes that really don't cover much more than undies. She's kind of cool but at least by book 6, is as fairly one dimensional as Momo, in that she mostly just likes Momo. Akari. The otherworlder with powers revolving around time. Has literally no interest in the world besides Menou, who is trying to kill her, but is unable to because any time she doesn, her time powers activate automatically and revert her to a state where she was not dead. Her main role in this story is for Menou to get attached to her, becoming unwilling to kill her, and questioning her place in the world, or you could even say... Questioning her way of life? Ha! No that was bad. There areeee more characters but most aren't in it too long. The one exception is Pandæmonium. An all powerful full chaotic evil immortal little girl. She's super freaky, but fun to read. She's the one thing that makes me disappointed that i can't watch the anime anywhere. So things i like aree..... An interesting take on the isekai genre. A sort of villain protagonist. A cool antagonist in Pandaemonium. The occasional art pages by Nilitsu were pretty cool. Half an interesting power system. Why is spoilery though. Sort of yuri vibes. But that leads me tooooo Things i didn't like. Vague yuri vibes that don't really ever go anywhere. There's just lots of girls being all hot for Menou. It's pretty out of nowhere and unsatisfying because there's not even any romance to it, and it's entirely one-sided in every case. So it's kind of yuri bait. Again, the power system. Any time someone uses a spell, there's a load of weird fantasy jargon to read that means very little, and is kind of just space filler on the page, and i started to just skip over it because it was mind-numbing to read. And the whole power system with the earthen and astral vein feels very hand-wavey to me.

So a lot of what i did actually enjoy about this is kind of spoilery, so it might seem like i have more negative to say than positive, but i swear, i did enjoy it enough to buy volume 7 when it comes out!!! It wasn't like, mind blowing or genre changing, nor did it have particularly unique characters, but it is a good time. I'd give it a solid 7/10.

Now! I'm going to try something different here so i can talk a little about what actually happens, so FROM HERE ON IN, THERE WILL ABSOLUTELY BE MAJOR SPOILERS! Just this way i can go into more details about what i do and don't like. So i found the idea of pure concepts being basically added to the world's accessible skill list whenever an otherworlder gets to Human Error status. That's the part of this series' power system. That's very interesting. However with how many different abilities are used, it kind of makes it super iffy how many otherworlders were summoned and then made to lose themselves just so the world's skill list could be increased (yes, i am simplifying this process.) But it's even worse when you consider how many otherworlders are just immediately killed off after their pure concept is deemed worthless, despite them being summoned against their will. But I mean, that's kind of the point. The Faust be super shady. Anyway, definitely an interesting concept. Another thing i really liked was Pandæmoniumin general. Her whole concept of original sin is actually written as genuinely horrifying, like her ability to sacrifice herself to summon herself. So anytime she dies, she just bursts out of the old corpse. It extreme detail. Super gross, but super interesting. I love a villain who is bad for no big grand reason. She's basically driven by the need for entertainment. I like the idea of this. Very cool.

Now some stuff i didn't like. So i said before Menou's character is kinda bland. And they keep going on about how her whole existence was bleached white and all that. Which really makes the whole reveal that she was created by Ivory become more like a "Yeah duh" kind of reveal. Like as early as volume 2 of the LN, i had suspicions that she was at very least, ivory with amnesia. Which isn't that far off the mark.

Okay! That's it for spoilery stuff. Like i was saying, not particularly genre changing, but for sure a fun read. Especially any parts with Pandæmonium. I'm not into gory stuff, but i do love me some unhinged baddies.

#the executioner and her way of life #anime #ln #light novel #menou #pandaemonium #isekai #Mato Sato #nilitsu

[justarandomdegenerate]

I'm back!...... Maybe?

So! It has been a while! I have been wayy too busy with work for the last.... 10 months or so, to even think about trying to write some of these between work and my hobbies. However! That shall now change! I'm not going to promise and regularity like last time, But i will make posts when i have the time. I've played a lot of games and read a lot of books since last time, so I should have a bit to share!

#jrpg #atelier #game #anime #light novel #manga

[justarandomdegenerate]

Well those didn't happen.

So i should just not state what I'm going to do, as it clearly doesn't happen! I said i was going to Play FF4 and re-read yuri is my job for a post. I played FF4 for about an hour and disliked it. I just... Active turn based... I do not like. I will finish it later though... Eventually. So instead I started playing Skyrim again (About 30 hours in now), and decided I am currently not in the mood to read!

So from now on, i shall not give anyone any expectations! I'll just do stuff when i do it. End!

#FF4 #skyrim #yuri is my job

[justarandomdegenerate]

Next stuff I am doing!

Next game shall be FF4 pixel remaster. I was going to replay Skyrim for the first time in like 10 years but quickly lost motivation. So We're doing this instead!

As for a book series, I recently got Yuri is my Job 9 in the mail, so I'll do that next. I was going to do Kuma bear since Kuma Bear 11 arrived recently, but I only re-read that a very short time ago. So instead I'll do a full re-read of Yuri is my Job. Besides, that's getting an anime soon to I think, so I'll be able to have it fresher in my mind for comparisons. End!

#ff4 #ffiv #final fantasy 4 #yuri is my job #game #manga

[justarandomdegenerate]

Well that sucks.

Looks like the NG+ in Blue Reflection doesn't really carry anything over. So I probably won't go back for that one missing achievement.

#blue reflection #game #jrpg #gust

[justarandomdegenerate]

Blue Reflection thoughts!

Okay! So! I spent the last few days playing Blue Reflection, and finished it about 2 minutes before starting this post! Took me 23.5 hours to complete. Well almost complete. I missed exactly one achievement because I accidentally completed a chapter without doing a specific sidequest. Maybe I'll do it later in a NG+. Anyway, let's get into it. Blue reflection is... Well from what I have heard about Persona, it's a similar concept. People have strong emotions, and you have to go in and stabilise those emotions by.... Killing demons I guess! Except unlike Persona, there's no time limit, and the game isn't remotely hard. Oh and it has Magical Girls too. And ballet. For some reason. Can't say I was too big on seeing the same 10 second ballet dance like 20 times across the game, but that's a minor complaint. Anyway.

So let's get onto gameplay. Combat up first. Blue Reflection is a pretty typical turn based JRPG, but with some atypical elements. For typical it's just wait your turn and attack, X is good against Y, Y is good against Z, and Z is good against X. That kind of thing. And it's extremely easy. You only have 3 playable characters and they're with you the entire game. And once Yuzu gets a move called Grape Wave, all battles, except bosses, are pretty much over in one attack, even playing on hard. Regardless of type advantage. The atypical thing about combat in this game, is that aside from particular parts to progress thee story, and sidequests, the only point fighting monsters and combat has is to get your items for crafting. You do not earn EXP at all in this game. Which is probably why this game felt so short. I usually spend so much time grinding for fun in JRPG's, but in this game, there is absolutely no point. Especially after I found out I missed a single quest that made getting items have a point. (The crafting achievement)

So the other side of the game is school life. Well, sort of. There's absolutely none of the actual schoolwork part. It's really just making friends, going on... Dates? And dealing with bullies. Most of the playtime is here, reading all the dialogue. I say reading, because only the main story is voiced. Which is disappointing. Speaking of reading through the story, minor complaint, but there are so many typos. But yeah not too much else to say here. Except why are bullies in games so one dimensional? Also they all have the same face!! Lazy!

So next is.... Characters I guess? The characters in this game are really not complicated at all. Their entire character is all based around one or two things. Your main character, who is an ex ballet dancer, is all about ballet. Another character, who has a crush on someone, that crush is their entire personality. A character who is in the track club is all about running. Pretty basic stuff. Not much there. And I DID do all the character story achievements, so I did see all there was to see! Now the biggest disappointment about the characters was... This is a Gust game. The people who do the Atelier games. It takes place in an all girl's school. There are literally no male characters in the whole game. So why is the cast less yuri than a typical Atelier game?! It makes no sense! The only actually gay girl in the game is just there to be a bit horny and make the main character uncomfortable! I've included some examples below. And again, like all the other characters, this is almost her only character trait. Liking cute girls.

It really annoyed me that the one lesbian character they included just makes the main character uncomfortable. I actually did not really like the main character. I say how you go into peoples emotions to stabilise them, right? Well half the time you have to stabilise them because the main character is a jerk and set them off in the first place! Annoying!

Okay moving on from that. I did have another complaint, but this seems to apply to all recent Gust games on steam. Meaning this game, Both Ryza games, and Sophie 2. For whatever reason, despite being a pretty basic looking anime game locked at 60FPS and 1080P, it absolutely makes my GPU and CPU really hot (Well. Hot beyond what I'm usually comfortable with. I know some people absolutely abuse their computers. I personally don't like the coolant to go above like, 34. I even have more extreme custom fan settings for it.) for no reason. I've attached below what my parts were doing for one part, and what was happening on screen at the time. It makes no sense.

These GPU and coolant temperatures are higher than when I was playing God of War in 4K, 165FPS at ultra settings, during a hotter time of year. It makes absolutely no sense. While I'm on this rant, in Sophie 2, for whatever reason, when I was in the Menu, which has no animation, and might as well be a PNG, the GPU is sitting at 100% utilisation. I just don't get it. Is it just a bad version on steam?

Anyway moving on... My overall thoughts on Blue Reflection is.... It's fine? It's not a bad game, but I definitely had some expectations that were not met. It being a Gust game, the promise of yuri, and the expectation to be able to grind like most JRPG's. Was a bit let down. But hey, if you don't have these expectations, maybe you'll like it a lot! The overall story was nice, but the gameplay just got so boring and repetitive in every way. Combat, going to the same 6 places with every girl for the achievements... Just... Eek.

Anyway, that's my thoughts. I'll be doing Blue Reflection 2 at some point soonish too! End!

#Blue Reflection #anime #gust #jrpg #game

[justarandomdegenerate]

Next game!

So to break up all the FF games, I think I'll play Blue Reflection next. It's a JRPG made by Gust, who do the Atelier series that I like, and I hear there's some major Yuri vibes. So i should enjoy it! Based on other Gust games... Could take a while to complete.

End!

#blue reflection #jrpg #gust #yuri #game

[justarandomdegenerate]

FF3 Pixel remaster thoughts!

Okay so finally got around to playing and beating FF3! So let's go over it. FF3 is a return to the more classic JRPG style of Exp and levelling up that 1 had, as opposed to.... Whatever FF2 was trying. Which is nice. Love it. I can grind again! And I sure did grind. But even with me grinding so hard to the point where every boss was a joke, and none of my party members ever died once, and even getting the 100% completion, this game, like FF1, only took me 14.6 hours to complete. So we're still not at the long FF games! So plot is.... I mean. We're still nowhere exciting and engaging for plot. Warriors of light, blah blah blah, world of darkness, blah blah blah, save the world. Okay, sure. Why not. Let's do that. I'm looking forward to getting to the FF games that have actually engaging stories. It's not like I'm just skipping over the story either. It's just not engaging or memorable. It's was actually to the point where stuff was so undeveloped that at the end of the game (Spoilers? I guess?) Where you say goodbye to various characters, your player character keeps doing this one last longing turn back to see them before they leave and It's like... Huh? We met this dude for like 2 minutes, 8 hours ago. who cares? It felt awkward watching it. Like they're forcing this connection that isn't really there. Anyway, enough on that.

Gameplay! So as i said before, this game plays almost exactly the same as FF1 as far as levelling goes. Spells are based off a MP per magic level system again, which is nice. They did change some stuff however. So they added Jobs. Which would be called Classes in any other game, but whatever! So you level these jobs along with your characters. Which is pretty easy. You don't really have to think about it. Now a gameplay change i did find annoying, which I bet was introduced for exactly one reason. The airship can no longer pass over mountains. No, for that you need a very slow bigger airship, which can hop over small mountains, which I'm pretty sure this mechanic only exists because someone though it would be cool to have a maze of things you had to hop over. I didn't like it. Really this is all that changed though.

I don't really have anything else to say. I enjoyed the game a bit more than 1 and a lot more than 2, but it's still just... Fine. An inoffensive JRPG experience. I appreciate how it helped to get us to the kinds of JRPG's we have today, but yeah. A little dated. End!

#ff3 #ffiii #final fantasy 3 #final fantasy #final fantasy iii #square enix #jrpg #game

[justarandomdegenerate]

What I'm up to.

So I'm currently playing through FF3, and then I'll be reading the new volumes of the Tanya LN, so that's likely what my next posts will be about! Unless I choose to re-read a short series for a post before then.

#final fantasy 3 #final fantasy iii #final fantasy #square enix #jrpg #the saga of tanya the evil #tanya #幼女戦記 #light novel #ln

[justarandomdegenerate]

Whoops!

So I'm dumb and all my previous posts were written across like two days, and I kept thinking "You'll write more! You'll increase your draft backlog! Surely you wont get busy and run out before you write more!" Well, I did. It'll take a bit but I'll do some more, and MAYBE I wont post once a day and blow through everything again. Oops! End.

#Whoops

[justarandomdegenerate]

Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Dream. Thoughts!

Okay so onto the most Recent Atelier game, in both terms of release, and me playing it! Atelier Sophie 2 takes place, surprisingly to me, in between Sophie 1 and Firis. I, for whatever reason, assumed it would take place after Lydie and Suelle, and we'd get a Sophie protagonist game with her as an adult. Which would be cool! Now that isn't the case, but I still liked it. Lets get into what the game is about. I will probably have a lot to say. If Tumblr doesn't let this be one post, it may have to be a two parter. I'll also somewhat thoroughly go over the plot, because I actually really liked the story of this one a lot. So.. Spoilers.

After leaving Kirchen Bell at the end of Sophie 1, Sophie and Plachta are on a journey for a few things! Mostly because Sophie wants to become a licensed alchemist, just like her grandmother, Ramizel was. And also, both Sophie and Plachta want to get Plachta out of her temporary doll body, and into a real human body. Spoilers! Neither of these things happen in this game. They do happen in Atelier Firis and Atelier Lydie and Suelle though. So along this journey, they encounter this big honkin' tree, which in a sense leads to this dream world. Which while it's called a dream world, everything that happens there actually does happen. It's just a world manifested by people's dreams. I did spend the whole game wondering if at the end of the game Sophie would wake up and remember nothing. Not the case. Actual world, just manifested by dreams. So Plachta is getting pulled into this dream world by a very interested goddess, called Elvira. Now Sophie, not wanting to be left behind by her life partner, holds on tight to Plachta, and is pulled along too. She loses consciousness and wakes up alone. No sign of Plachta. Which freaks her out. She is helped out by some of the residents of this dream world, namely Alette and Pirka, who help explain to her what this world is. This dream world, is actually a world where everyone that has some sort of ambition, or a dream, comes to hone their skills and succeed, while time is stopped back in the normal world. People from all time periods are here. And It's all willing, as the Goddess Elvira invites people in their dreams. However Sophie is an anomaly, as she just ended up there because she held onto Plachta. Who by the way? Still super missing. Not even slightly anywhere to be found... Except... Sophie says that's she's an alchemist, so they show her to a nearby atelier, owned by someone named.... Ramizel. Not that she's there right now. But you know who is? Plachta! Well sort of. It's a Plachta from a time before she became a book and a doll, and before she ever met Sophie. So it's young, super cute, sassy, VERY COMPETITIVE Plachta. who ends up joining your party in this game! Sophie still wants to find HER Plachta though. Nawwww. So they recommend she hits up the town leader of sorts, who turns out to be Ramizel. Her grandmother. But as a young woman, before she had any children, let alone grand kids. Sophie chooses to keep this to herself for now. Ramizel is super cool though. Turns out Ramizel is best buds with Elvira, goddess of this whole world, and takes Sophie to go ask what the heck happened. So Plachta, not having a real body, just being a soul in a human shaped doll, has been separated from her doll body upon being pulled into this world. So Sophie naturally sets out to go gather Plachta's soul, no matter what. And luckily, she's already got a bit of experience with soul manipulation from making Plachta's doll body, and transplanting her soul into it back in Sophie 1.

So Sophie manages to get Plachta back into her body after quite a bit of searching and synthesis. And Plachta. Well. Her Plachta, ends up becoming the mayor of this dream town, While Sophie and the team start investigating (I don't recall what they were actually called) Nightmare creatures that had begun popping up in this dream land, to bring it back to it's peaceful state. Which obviously they do succeed at on some level. This is an Atelier game. We don't do bad endings. So let's get into individual plot points about this i really liked, while also going over characters. So a few things come up across this game. Such as Plachta's missing memories in Sophie 1. Why doesn't she remember this dream world at all? You'd think she would have told Sophie about it. As even the young Plachta because quite good friends with her in this dream world. So at the end of the game, Young Plachta asks Elvira to erase her memories of this world, because she wouldn't want to return to the real world with this knowledge, and change things accidentally in a way that means she never meets Sophie 500 years later. Which... Aww! So sweet! What a cutie.

Another thing that is brought up later, is Ramizel finds out that Sophie is her granddaughter. And she's just like "Granddaughter?! I GET MARRIED?! I HAVE KIDS?! WHO? WHEN? Also this is now kind of awkward." And it was a little awkward, but they both get over it, and Sophie is really glad to get to know her grandmother as a young lady. But to me, it's also very very sad. At the end of the game, when everyone goes back to their real worlds and time periods... Ramizel says goodbye to Sophie, knowing she'll get to see her when she's born, and will get to spend a lot more time with her. But for Sophie, in her timeline, Ramizel has already died. For her, this is the last time she will see her, ever. Actually made me cry a bit! I FEEL A LITTLE TEARY JUST TYPING THIS! But stuff like this is why I think Sophie 2 has the best story of an Atelier game.

And right at the end (Still spoilers) when everyone starts leaving the world, and fading away after saying goodbye, I really got Angel Beats ending vibes. And cried again. Stupid feelings. I have a lot of fun with the story. Which brings us to the gameplay....

The combat system is very similar to Lydie and Suelle, with having back line attackers and such, which is good. I like it. Oh and a cool detail is that at the start of the game, Sophie's level is 20, and her alchemy level is 50. Which was the max for Sophie 1. I really liked that detail. Good job. Synthesis is a bit different though. As you have two alchemists, Sophie and Young Plachta. And both have individual alchemy levels and there are also some things that only one or the other can make. Honestly a little annoying. That's not the only change about synthesis either. You now have different catalysts that affect synthesis in different ways. But unlike in Lydie and Suelle, these catalyst are required to make items at max levels, instead of being merely convenient. In fact they're inconvenient. Before you get one, synthesis works the same as it used to, and you can synthesis to the max level, but once you get them you HAVE to use them or your synthesis will suck and be limited. Using them also blocks out a bunch of the synthesis grid. I think this was for sure a negative.

So gathering is more or less the same as it was in Ryza. Y'know, having different tool and whatnot. But they also added this mechanic of changing the weather, which results in different enemies and resources. Which is kind of cool at first, but honestly, mostly it's just annoying. I think this whole weather thing is the one thing i truly disliked about this game. Especially since there is a bunch of puzzles around different weather in different areas, and you also have to keep recharging this weather stones. If it wasn't for this, and the change to synthesis, this might have overtaken Lydie and Suelle as my overall favourite.

So for the characters we have... We've been over Sophie. Sweet, cute girl with a thing for slightly sassy 500 year old alchemists. Both Plachtas, who we already know. Ramizel, Sophie's super cool young grandma. And Elvira. The super shy, super Not confident goddess of dreams who kind of oversteps her bounds and creates her own enemy. Those are just the ones we've mentioned so far. We also have Alette, the money hungry merchant girl who... I guess also fights? I barely used her in battles. Olias, the super confident, self proclaimed "World's best bodyguard" which is actually overcompensation for how he feels he let his family down in the real world. Diebold, the ex knight, who actually goes on later in life, unbeknownst to him, to be a great hero of legend that many people, including out next character, Pirka, looks up to in her time. So the final character I'll get into is Pirka, who just gets honourable mention for being from the same tribe Corneria is from in Sophie 1. Overall, a good fun cast of characters. We have no Oskar-tier characters here.

Now to finish this off, I really enjoyed this game, mostly for the story and character interactions. As i said, there were a few gameplay aspects I took issue with, but they didn't take away from the rest of the game. Definitely recommend this, but go play the other Mysterious games first! Or at least play Sophie 1 first. End!

#atelier sophie #atelier sophie 2 #atelier #sophie #gust #jrpg #game

[justarandomdegenerate]

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy thoughts!

Okay so here we go. Ryza 2. This post will likely not be that long, as the story was a little whatever, and it didn't change much from the last game, plus the new characters are also kind of.... not that interesting, for the most part. So Ryza 2 is a few years after the first game, and everyone has moved on with their lives, except Ryza, who is still on the island. She ends up with this shiny egg thing and goes to see Tao, her nerd friend who is now studying at the academy in the big city on the mainland, along with Bos. Nerds. So Tao is now less of a nerd, and has a Tsun aristocratic not-girlfriend and I guess he feels more up to adventure now, as he goes along with you with significantly less whining this time. So basically that egg had this fairy thing in it that is from that other world from the last game, and you end up with this spirit compass that lets you see these spirits left behind in ancient ruins. Honestly this is really all I have to say for the plot. I kind of just... Didn't care? I mean it's just go in, explore the ruins, find the next ruins, explore those, repeat until the game ends. For gameplay, I don't remember the combat being that different from Ryza 1, except that they made items even more slightly annoying to actually use, yet again. Gust probably realised most people just bomb their way to victory. I mean you can still do that, but less simply. If I recall right, the combat becomes a little more turn based than Ryza 1, and less active, which... I'd normally like, but overall I still felt it was lacking. Yeah I just loaded it back up again. A little clunkier feeling than Ryza 1. Synthesis and gathering is more or less the same as Ryza 1, with your required items for gathering and whatnot, and synthesis chains. So I can't really add anything here either. Oh, right. They also had this new skill tree I didn't like, which is how you unlock most things. Was not a fan. For the most part, you get points for this skill tree from exploring ruins. For the characters, you have, yet again Ryza, who still has a big 'personality'. Tao who is now slightly less of a nerd, but also not really. Lent who was starting to become just like his jerkbag dad, but got talked down into just being himself again. Klaudia is still around, still being lonely and wanting friends. as for the newbies, we got... Patricia, who is this little tsun. Really not much to her other than being a mildly defiant aristocratic daughter. She doesn't even go "OHHH HO-HO-HO!" or nothing! Clifford, who when I first saw in the game, thought meant we were getting a tall buff lady character, only to be immediately disappointed 5 second later when we can see them properly and I realised they weren't. Still disappointed about it. Probably the only somewhat interesting new character. He's a treasure hunter who is less about making muns (Thought it would be nice) and more about the adventure of doing it. And finally Serri. Who had very little to her character, but like Lila in 1, she was a good attacker. Overall, I don't think Ryza 2 was bad. It was just fine. Fun even! I think it would have been better served being a DLC for Ryza 1, as it just didn't feel like there was a whole lot to it. To me at least. If you liked Ryza 1, this is more or less, more of the same, so you'll probably like it too. Only got one Atelier game to do a post on after this one! End!

#atelier ryza #atelier ryza 2 #atelier #ryza #gust #jrpg #game

[justarandomdegenerate]

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout thoughts

So! Atelier Ryza time. I had a lot of fun with this game. I 100% completed it even! Though I did have a couple issues with it, however minor they were. So let's get into it. Let's do a basic overview of the plot. You play as Ryza! She lives on an island in the middle of a large lake I believe it was, and is the daughter of two farmers. However! She has no interest in farming, and she gets bored of just being on a random island, and wants some more excitement in her life. So she goes on little 'adventures' with her friends. (Which I'll get into more going over the characters in a bit) On one such adventure, she encounters this random girl in the forest, and is promptly attacked by a monster. Things seem grim, but a mysterious man and woman show up to save the day! Turns out this man is an alchemist, who is going around investigating old ruins, and the idea of both alchemy, and exploring ruins sounds like a blast to Ryza! So obviously being an atelier game, turns out Ryza is super talented at alchemy, and picks up on it fast. You know the drill. So this man and woman, Empel and Lila are investigating these gates to another dimension, and closing them, because in this dimension, which by the way, Lila is from, are these creatures which overrun everything, and dry up all natural resources and whatnot. Which would be. You know. Bad! They attempt to appeal to the head dude of the island, but he's like "I have too much money to care about such things" until stuff starts negatively affecting him and he's like "Oh noes! please help!" Okay maybe not quite like that. He's kind of a jerkbag but he does help, eventually. Well. His son does. Who's also kind of a jerkbag. Really there's not a whole lot of actual drama in this one besides this, and the fact that you can ignore this more for most of the game and just do it at your leisure really kind of takes away even more of the drama to the point where you're doing the final boss fight and it's not like "Yeah! I'm saving the world!" It's just "Wooooo! Boss fight!" But honestly in my opinion, the main plot is a little weak. It's the side stories and gameplay where this game is good. So let's get on gameplay next! Ryza switches things up slightly in a few ways which I'll go over. So for combat, Atelier Ryza moves from the classic, pure turn based combat to a more active turn based combat, where stuff like timing and switching control of characters and building up combos is a thing, and managing the combat gauge for more effective battles. Which... I mean, I personally prefer classic turn based, but i actually found this one pretty fun. Good job team. They also changed up item use in combat. Which is.... Fine. Just means you can't use as many, but it doesn't matter, because items in general feel stronger.

Another change was synthesis, and I think this was a REALLY good change. I mean don't get me wrong, i still love synthesis in Lydie and Suelle, but in Ryza, it's just so easy. So instead of the classic "Choose stuff with high quality and big sizes and try to tetris it into a grid" synthesis that the Mysterious series had, Ryza instead assigns quality and point values to things. And instead of a synthesis grid, you're working on a synthesis chain, and as you fill up each link to a set value, you get the bonuses on that link, and unlock the next link for use. It just works really well, and makes a lot of sense. Love it. Cannot complain at all. And the third and final main thing they changed up is gathering. So in the Mysterious series games, you walk up to a gathering point and essentially just hit the gather button and you have it. Ryza introduces gathering tools and such that will affect the quality, and types of items you can get from each gathering node, and also make it so you need specific tools for specific things, and this is a pretty huge change, considering it remained how they do it in Ryza 2, and even in the most recent game, Sophie 2. Now I don't mind this change, but.... Just walk up to a thing and hit the gather button sure was simpler. Maybe it's just a me problem. Though in the late game, they add a thing that makes gathering super easy, where you can create pocket dimensions that have just specific things in it. Now that part was very cool.

Now that's it really for the big changes that stand out to me. Lets move onto the characters. -Obviously we have our protagonist. Ryza! I mean, she's a nice girl. To just say it bluntly, she's the boobiest Atelier protagonist so far. I mean I'm not complaining... I have a few figures of her ordered.... Not much stands out about her though. She's your classic nice girl, who's kind of just good at stuff, but that brings me onto a point that annoys me that I'll get to shortly. -Next up on the squad is Tao. Let's be honest. Tao is kind of an annoying whiney nerd in this game, though he gets a bit better in Ryza 2. I don't have anything else to say about him. -We also have Lent. The big muscle man great-sword user. Actually a decently developed character. Want's to become a great adventurer and to help people, but most of all, doesn't want to end up like his abusive, drunk, has-been dad. Which leads to some decent character development in Ryza 2. -Next is Klaudia, who is just a merchant's daughter who really just wants some friends. That's the whole reason she's there. -Empel the alchemist, who is mostly there to give exposition to Ryza. -Lila who is there to be a sick attacker and always on my team, and to also, have some rather large shapes. I... Can't say she has a whole lot of personality though. And that's it for our main cast! Oh. Should also mention Bos, who's that jerkbag son I mentioned earlier. Well turns out he kind of just wants friends and for people to respect him. he gets a lot better. So if I was to have any complaints for Ryza, it would just be how short it is? like my 100% completion run took 39 hours. And I faffed around a lot, grinding and just leaving the game open to go have lunch and stuff. That completion time is for sure inflated by at least 5 hours. Another complaint is some parts just felt a bit lazy. Unlike the Mysterious games, basically everything that isn't the main story, is not voiced. Another thing that really annoyed me is Ryza's parents getting annoyed at her for not helping around the house and just playing around with her pals and messing about with alchemy. Like dude? Literally saving the whole world with alchemy and her buds. Thanks very much. Just a slightly annoying bit of writing. Made her parents seem kind of dumb. I was considering making Ryza 1 and Ryza 2 as one post as honestly, Ryza 2 didn't really change things up much, the characters are mostly the same, and the story is kind of whatever, but Even if it's a small post, I'll do one for Ryza 2 as well. Plus it would make this post way too long. Anyway! As a whole, I think Ryza is a very fun game. Cute style, fun to play, and also very easy. It's a great entry point to the Atelier series, especially since none of the other atelier games are needed to understand this one. For sure recommend it. End!

#atelier #atelier ryza #ryza #jrpg #gust #game

[justarandomdegenerate]

Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland DX thoughts!

So onto Atelier Rorona. This was the fourth Atelier game I played, fresh off finishing Lydie & Suelle of the Mysterious series. And yes. It has been about half a year since I played this game, and it didn't leave much of an impact on me, but I'll still share what thoughts I still had on it. Lets go over the plot. You play as Rorona. An apprentice alchemist to this older lady who is definitely, absolutely not in any way a lolicon. Nope. Not at all. Not her! Anyway she's kind of useless and makes you do all the work. Makes sense I guess. Playing a game where someone else does everything wouldn't be much of a game, would it? Anyway, some scummy noble wants to put you out of business so they can build a factory in place of the atelier. Which is where these 8 tasks you have to do across the game come in. Do the tasks to a certain level and within the time limit and you prove the value of the atelier, and it doesn't get shut down. The end. Everyone, except noble dingus, is happy. Pretty basic plot. You also have a tsun-tsun bestie and she also is probably into Rorona. The atelier games do like a bit of light yuri. The gameplay..... I mean. It's basic turn based combat, innit? Plus your usual alchemy synthesis crafting that’s present in all atelier games. But it just feels lacking. It's not enjoyable. In all other atelier games I played, I always liked doing synthesis as best as I could, making level 999 items with cool traits on them. In this game, whenever I had to do synthesis, I kind of just made sure whatever I had to make was of the bare minimum quality because i just didn't enjoy it. It's both a good thing and a bad thing that I played this game after Sophie, Firis and Lydie & Suelle. First I'll start with the bad. This is actually a step back a generation or two in Atelier games. It.... felt a little dated. Some stuff wasn't as refined, and synthesis in particular I did not enjoy at all. And of course. The time limit. Everything in this game takes time, and the 8 tasks in the main story, which each also have a time limit. And those tasks aren't the only thing that are time limited. Various sidequests are also time limited, which means I honestly didn't get to experience much of the story and the characters in this game, and the general gameplay didn't really leave me wanting to go back and play it again to get more of the story. If I recall right, even the post game had a time limit! Now for the good thing about playing this game after the mysterious series. I probably only completed a single playthrough of this to begin with because I was hoping for more after playing the other three. if I had played this game first, I would have enjoyed it even less, and probably never have gotten to play the other 6 atelier games that I do enjoy. (Three more after this one) But I really don't have much more else to say about this one, sadly. It didn't leave much of a positive impression on me. The plot was whatever, the gameplay felt inferior (Yes I know it's older than the other ones), and I just wasn't interested in the characters. My recommendation on this one is you go start with Atelier Sophie or Ryza instead c: Much nicer starting points for getting into the series. I kind of felt like I didn't have anything nice to say on this one, but hey. It's really just my opinion. End!

#atelier rorona #atelier #rorona #gust #jrpg

[justarandomdegenerate]

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings DX thoughts!

Okay! We're now onto my favourite Atelier game by far. Like to me this is peak Atelier. I love the characters, I love the gameplay, just all of it! I did this game 100% and played it for 68.7 hours. I'm even thinking of replaying just for funsies! So lets get into why.

So let's start off with our setting. Lydie and Suelle are doing their best to run their pretty poor atelier, while their (Not exactly) loser dad kind of just wastes their muns and paints. Oh and their dad is voiced by Takehito Koyasu by the way. Their dad is Dio! I just think that's neato! So yes. Twin sisters Lydie and Suelle running the place. Their mother passed away when they were younger too. So it's really just them! But oneeee day they hear this voice from the basement they're not supposed to go into. Which naturally, they go into. The voice is coming from a MYSTERIOUS PAINTING! Heh. No really. That's what they're called. So they approach this painting and find themselves inside the painting world., seeing all sorts of things they haven't seen before. But also something quite familiar… Perhaps, their mother? Surely not(!) As they're ejected from this painting they tell their dad about it, who laughs it off saying that a painting he made couldn't possibly have such power just with his skill. Don't be so hard on yourself Alchemist Dio!

So without getting too into specifics, the main plot for Atelier Lydie and Suelle is to make a name for yourselves as alchemists in your own way (For which there are numerous endings), to battle thunder gods with your friends. Some new, some quite familiar! But I'll get to that. And of course finally, to investigate those Mysterious paintings, and to try and meet that woman they saw in the first painting again. Along the way, Both Firis and Sophie both show up. Both of them adults now too. Sophie is so famed in series now that she's actually an optional boss battle, but she can also be on your team. Rad!

So this is getting a bit spoilery here, so choose to skip ahead a paragraph or two here if ya want. Why I like this story so much, is that there actually is a story, unlike say… Atelier Firis. And it's a nice story too. The girls want to get their names out there as alchemists and make their way into the world, but also, here's the spoilery part. The woman in the painting was their mother. Their father painted it and his feelings towards her caused part of her soul to become attached and wander the paintings. Something fun too is that as you explore these paintings, it becomes clear from their inhabitants that you're not the first ones doing it. In fact, your mother has had a very similar adventure in the past. Now sadly, while Lydie and Suelle do get to see their mother again, she cannot leave the paintings. and whats more, she's starting to fade away. So the sisters do everything they can to stop that by restoring the painting, which of course, means getting Alchemist Dio his confidence back. Which works! Now the girls can go visit their mother in the paintings any time they want and make up for all the missed time. Which y'know. Is very sweet i think. There's also a whole plot about black ink monsters destroying the painting worlds…. But i think that's kind of secondary to the whole "Daughters desperate to get as much time with their dead mother as possible" plotline. Even if the ink monsters are like, the conclusion to the story.

So this also falls under plot, but the sidequests in this game also really add to the experience, in just being fun stories, and building on characters. From Corneria's plotline of accidentally becoming a little too big and destroying a house (Pictured below!), to Firis's sister being maybe a little too into Firis! But there's also my favourite of (Spoiler) Sophie finally giving Plachta a real human body again, so she no longer has to live inside an unfeeling doll body anymore. That was just… Nice. Sophie is very dedicated to Plachta.

I must really like this game because I've typed all that and it's just the plot. Heh. Let's move onto gameplay shall we?

So gameplay is yet another reason why this is my favourite entry in the Atelier series. The combat is just more turn based combat, sure. But now you also have backline attackers, they can fire off some mad combos that if you set them up right, can basically one hit a literal god postgame optional boss. Plus they added combat synthesis, so that depending on stuff you've gathered while out or brought with you, you can create extremely powerful one use items to help you, or severely hurt the enemies. It's super cool!

Synthesis I believe is also a big improvement from Firis and Sophie. So we now have these things called Catalysts, which can greatly improve the ease of synthesis, and even the potency, It's wild. Not only that, but the way it works now, you don't erase materials on the grid by placing over them. You only cover the exact squares you place over, instead of removing the entire shape of the material like in previous games. Making filling a synthesis grid really easy now. It all just…. works. So well.

We've also move back to fast travel to fixed closed locations like we had in Sophie, instead of big open empty zones you have to navigate through slowly and manually. Your fast travel zones are even the hub town. So you don't even have to run around manually in town if you don't want to, on top of quick travel to the various overworld locations, and the mysterious paintings. And to top it all off, if an event is on in an area for the main story or a side quest, there's even a little indicator on that location, and if it's a sidequest, it'll even have a little face of the person the quest is for. Love it. Such a good QOL improvement. I understand they were trying new things in Firis, but this is really just the best way to do it.

So that's it for gameplay, let's move onto the characters, another thing I love about this series. So obviously we have Lydie and Suelle. The cheery, cutie, twin protagonists. Who are kind of selfish and money driven, but also very caring, and give their all to help others. We have Firis and siscon sister, which I actually like in this game. Firis is basically a half drunk who just eats everything now (And also a mad backline attacker if done right) and Siscon sister is just all about making money to buy Firis nice things. There's the battle alchemist couple (Possibly headcanon, but you cannot say they don't give you yuri vibes) Sophie and Plachta. Who are so strong by this point they when they show up in the story, it's to save your whole team from getting killed by literal thunder god. You go Sophie! We have Alt. Which is a reformed Luard from Atelier Sophie 1, who now wants a quiet life and to just help people out, as a playable character in your team. He's pretty good too. Also nice to see him and Plachta finally get to put their past behind them. There are many many others, but the last one I'll mention is Lucia. Who is my absolutely favourite type of character. short, red hair, haughty attitude complete with a "OHHHHH-HO-HO-HO!" laugh. She's a massive Tsun for the twins, and just wants them to like her, but she's too much of a tsun to just tell them how she feels. Tsun Tsun!

Gosh what else is there left to say…. Obviously like the other 2 games, all lines are voiced. Which I still think is rad. But I think I've covered everything! Atelier Lydie and Suelle was a lot of fun to play, and I definitely want a replay in the future. I think it does everything that Atelier games have to offer, the best out of the series. I highly recommend it, but you should at least play Sophie 1 first so their stories and characters have more impact.

Still got 4 more Atelier games to do posts on! But if you read this far, thanks! I know I dropped an absolute mountain of text for this one.

End!

#atelier #atelier lydie and suelle #atelier lydie & suelle #Lydie #Suelle #Sophie #Firis #Mysterious #gust #Jrpg #game