The 6th Atelier game I've played and comes a close to the Mysterious Trilogy.
[h1]Story Telling[/h1]
The story follows a very simple loop. Get reputation -> Take rank up exam -> Explore a painting -> Repeat. We get a few returning characters to play with from Firis and Sophie while also closing out a lot of arcs of the previous characters this game. It's the finale after all. Firis has become an even greater blast as it seems like all of the endings were canon in the previous games.
I find the new main cast characters, aside from Lydie and Suelle who are brimming with personality and teasing everyone [strike]these brats[/strike], are overall less interesting compared to the previous 2 titles.
In the overworld, you can only control Lydie or Suelle. You can swap them out at the Atelier and I find has no impact in the story on who you control.
There are 4 different endings. I only achieved the normal ending, I want to go for the true ending, but I'm getting conflicting information on how to achieve it where I might have to NG+ due to missing some earlier requirements.
3/5
[h1]Combat[/h1]
Combat has taken a dive. The positive thing is that, on hard difficulty, enemies don't just 2 shot you from the very beginning... the downsides are everything else.
The structure of combat is now a 3 front line, 3 back line set up, where the back line can't take damage, but you can switch out, or perform certain actions for them to perform a follow up action. Some of these follow ups are 1 time use per battle, which they can be strong, but also incredible boring for it to occur only once per battle. If it weren't for the DLC, which adds Illmeria and Lucia to your team, you only have 6 characters to play with, which is the lowest of the trilogy.
Lydie, despite using a staff like Sophie and Firis, doesn't get access to magic attacks, and you run into physical immune monsters early in the game, which they take 1 damage from, forcing you to use bombs.
You unlock newer mechanics as the game goes, but they can come so late into the series. The earliest mechanic let's you synthesize an item while in combat and use it, however, they're inveitable weaker than what you can synthesize back in the atelier. Eventually, you unlock being able to synthesize "super items" which you can consume all the uses of it's the given item, like a bomb, for 1 big hit.
The last mechanic you unlock, Combination Arts, which is like the chain attack in the previous games, except you need specific pair of front line / back line to use. They charge up slowly, underwhelming in power, and unlock so late into the game
Item damage and skill damage are pretty equal in this game with skill damage is able to outscale item damage later in the game... though against mobs, having one hit kill bombs is pretty useful.
2/5
[h1]Synthesizing[/h1]
Once again, they made minor changes compared to Firis and Sophie. The base mechanic with the grid stays the same, many things got streamlined. Synthesize breakpoints are now in levels, each point on the grid increases the level by 1. Overwriting areas now only consumes the overlapped area instead of the entire original component, however overwritten areas trades their levels, meaning the max levels is determined by the grid size.
Catalysts makes a return from Firis, however it's no longer constrained by the item, so any item can use any catalyst. Just like Firis, Catalyst provides some bonus like conditional extra levels or extra trait slots. Thankfully we don't have to increase proficieny of individual items like Firis.
Item duplication makes a return 💖 Corneria. Some synthesized items are catalysts themselves, some with generally powerful effects, so you can have no shortage of them.
Weapon making has an interesting change. You no longer attach traits upon making them, instead you synthesize weapon cores, which you can attach or detach them from the Smithy. I actually like this as it allows you to move traits around or change them later for better ones without have to make the weapon again. It's kinda of like Ryza's item "rebuild" mechanic. Sadly you can't do the same for accessories and armor.
There's a new enhancing agent mechanic which provides effects like changing the color of components or changing bonuses. You can only use 1 per synthesis, but it provides a nice tool in being able to make an unusable ingredient to something useful.
4/5
[h1]QOL and other stuff[\h1]
/ Some reason the dialogue history button is different from Firis. I went through the first few chapters without it
- Maps are large enough to warrent being able to pull up a view of the whole area, but we can't do that unlike in Firis. The game is still playable without it, I just want to have one.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Overall, I find this series finale pretty average. It provides good endings to many characters' journey, but the new characters just aren't as good as the previous ones. Combat sucks, but I'm fine with the bare minimum tools compared to having the synthesizing mechanics be bad.
