YMMV / Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book

• Game-Breaker: The "One Hit Kill" trait (Critical Finish + Always Critical) makes an attack item 100% guaranteed to instantly kill pretty much any non-boss enemy in one hit. Alchemizing it onto items which hit multiple enemies means that you can easily kill Mooks that are far above your current level in a single turn. It doesn't work against bosses, but killing mobs will be so easy that you'll have no problem getting the items needed to make high-level equipment.
• Ho Yay: Sophie gets a lot of subtext with just about every female character in the game. (Except Tess, because Tess and Sophie actually go out on a date, removing them from this trope.)
  • Plachta and Sophie are pretty clearly treated as an item, particularly after Sophie decides to make Plachta a lifelike doll body, leading to an involved arc that Sophie puts more effort into than any previous venture, and ends with Plachta showing almost I Owe You My Life levels of gratitude, not to mention continuing to live with Sophie afterwards. The ending clinches it, where Plachta challenges Sophie to surpass her as an alchemist, and they finish by saying how much they look forward to "spending more time with each other."
  • On her first meeting with Sophie, the cafe singer calls her "cutie" in a very sultry voice.
  • Sophie thinks Elise is really pretty without her glasses.
• Magnificent Bastard : Luard is an alchemist from 500 years ago whose original goal was to use alchemy to help people. After discovering Ablation Alchemy, which is more powerful than normal alchemy but damages the ecosystem when overused, Luard abused this power, causing his friend Plachta to turn against him and split his soul in two artificial beings known as Meklet and Atomina. 500 years later, Meklet and Atomina befriend Sophie, helping her restore Plachta's memory while plotting to betray her. Once Sophie and Plachta find the Cauldron of Knowledge, which allows the use of Ablation Alchemy, Meklet and Atomina steal it from them, using the Cauldron to regain their true form as Luard before disappearing so they can continue practicing Ablation Alchemy. After his defeat, Luard tries to make amends for what he has done, notably assisting Lydie and Suelle on their adventures, showing that his alchemy skills have improved to the point where he no longer needs Ablation Alchemy, while also trying to reconcile with Plachta.
• Mentor Ship: Plachta is Sophie's teacher, and the two have more subtext together than any other characters.
• Porting Disaster: When Koei-Tecmo ported the game to Steam, they barely gave keyboard users an afterthought. You can use any controller you like, but the keyboard layout is unconfigurable, unintuitive, takes three hands to use properly and isn't even mentioned in the game's manual. Thankfully, the DX version allows the keyboard controls to be configured.