Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream

TENTATIVELY, yes, I recommend this. Having finished the previous game, though, many things starkly stand out. 1. NO ENGLISH DUB. For those who, like I did, started with Sophie DX because that's when they removed the time limit on the games, going from a good English dub to no dub at all is not only a shock, it's downright annoying, as I'm used to hearing the English and watching facial expressions. Now, I have to read everything, and the graphics of conversations are a total waste, because I can't see them for all the reading I have to do. If you have a problem with reading captions, this is NOT your game. This wasn't a problem in Sophie DX. 2. Significant lag in the input process. In the previous game, my XBox controller inputs are fast. In this game, I find myself having to hit a button 2, sometimes 3 times, because there's a delay in processing my input for some unknown reason. This should have been tightened up prior to release. Mind you, my computer is less than a year old, and pretty much top-speed. This shouldn't be happening. When you have to gather tons of crafting resources by hitting the A button each time, this annoying frustration builds up rather quickly. This wasn't a problem in Sophie DX. 3. Camera controls are FUBAR. I had to disable the auto-follow feature because the camera would get "stuck" at times, resulting in repeating camera jumps so bad it could cause motion sickness. I have to control the camera at all times. This wasn't a problem in Sophie DX. 4. Run speed in the open world is way too slow. Yes, you can warp to sections of the main map, but you have to find the warp crystals first and activate them. Even then, the open world maps are huge compared to Sophie DX, and the run is a LOT longer than it was previously. While the scenery is beautiful, the long time it takes to traverse a map makes me feel bored eventually. I'm used to the smaller but more numerous maps of Sophie DX. 5. You can't talk to everyone, and you can't go in most buildings. You have to look for conversation icons to talk to people, and you have to look for location icons on the map to see what buildings you can enter - and you can't enter a lot of them until the story progresses. I call this "GTA 5 Syndrome", where the majority of the gigantic map is useless scenery. I know a lot of places will open up soon in Sophie 2 DX, but it's annoying to not have them available from the start. 6. LOTS of invisible walls (especially around the Dream Tree). Also, you can't jump off of small hills in one accessible area to land in another accessible area - why even have the jump function? 7. One of the first craftable items in Sophie DX was a healing item (Berg Medicine, IIRC). There isn't one at first in Sophie 2 DX. I'm afraid to get into most battles, because I only have 3 weak characters and no way to heal them. Mind you, there are boss-class monsters on the map FROM THE BEGINNING. I ran into one, and just barely managed to run away. I've made over a dozen recipes, and still no decent heal items. Considering this is Dream Land, you'd think they'd have heal stuff available from the beginning. 8. The new synthesis process is a bit random. Your cauldron exhibits different bonus symbols that make recipes better, but they differ by recipe and probably at random (I haven't checked in detail). I've gotten some outstanding items, and then some mediocre items from the same recipe due to placement and number of the bonus symbols. If you want to understand how to make items of high quality, you will need to go over the process more than once, as the tutorial is not enough. The whole links vs. lines thing just doesn't make much sense. This was not a problem in Sophie DX. 9. The beginning of the game is running back and forth a LOT. Also, when you complete quests, it likes to teleport you back to town, even if you don't want to go yet (you know, pick up a few more ingredients on the way out then fast-travel back would be nice so as not to have to make two trips in short succession). The game drags you around a lot, at least in the beginning. This was not a problem in Sophie DX. 10. The combat system is radically different. If you skip the tutorials, you will miss out on the combo attacks that the characters now have (as opposed to the characters auto-assisting in Sophie DX). Also, the combat selection menu is a tiny vertical menu on the lower left side of the screen, and not very visible, unlike in Sophie DX. All in all, it seems from my very limited time playing this game, that this game is more like a beta-test rather than a full game. Many of the functions that were smooth in Sophie DX are clunky now, and slower to use. Problematic controls that should have been fixed were left as-is. Some design decisions should have been re-thought. It's unlikely that these problems will be fixed, based on the game's update history, so if any of these things are a non-starter for you, don't get this game. I hear the Ryza series is better, but I haven't played it yet. If you're into the story, though, the story seems as good or better than Sophie DX. You just have to suffer through all the jankiness.