YMMV / Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream

• Awesome Ego: Olias will constantly remind everyone that he is the number one bodyguard in the world and uses "Ore-sama!" to refer to himself. What makes him awesome is that he can and does back it up multiple times, especially in having the highest natural attack power in the game.
• Even Better Sequel: This game is widely considered an improvement over the first Atelier Sophie, and Atelier Ryza 2 (the previous Atelier game). The combat, alchemy, and story are seen as some of the best in Atelier history, and the game presents a tough but satisfying challenge on higher difficulty levels, compared to the Ryza games which are criticized for being too easy by long-time fans.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Plachta's unique item, the Twilight Prism, can be ridiculously broken if you max out its Light element for the Wild Rainbow effect. This effect does have a nasty drawback, burning all of Plachta's MP when activated, but the results are well worth it: for every point of MP consumed, the item's 200 power is increased by 1%, so if you have, let's say 400 MP (which isn't a very high number), you get a 1000 power attack; you can get even more ridiculous by giving Plachta as many MP-boosting traits as possible. Slap on a few other good traits, and you can easily take off more than half of the Final Boss' health in one blow. Then, you just have to get Plachta's MP back to full (for example, with Sophie and Ramizel's Dual Trigger or a Lebestrahl) to do it again.
  • Ramizel's unique item, the Primal Storm, is at the bottom of the recipe idea list, but it's worth getting there. While its potential damage isn't quite as ridiculous as the Twilight Prism, and it's a single-target attack, it makes up for this by creating up to 3 time cards when used (depending on its first effect), meaning that you can use it once, and get its effect four times over the next few turns. As a cherry on top, one of its other effects gives it a chance to not lower its remaining uses, potentially letting you use it more liberally in the Boss Rush where your item uses don't refill between fights.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Weather Manipulation tools each have limited charges, and must regularly be recharged by crafting them again. This doesn't add any challenge to the game, it just wastes your time by forcing you to go back to the workshop and use up a few materials. Thankfully, you'll eventually be able to give them enough charges to only rarely need refilling, but this just makes one wonder why they didn't just make the charges unlimited in the first place.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The song that plays on the title screen sounds very similar to the main theme from Shenmue.
  • Olias' theme starts with a riff that's almost identical to "The Seeker" by The Who.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Weather Manipulation in combat sounds like it could open up all kinds of possibilities for interesting enemy encounters. Unfortunately, the ability is only available during a small handful of boss battles. And if it sounds like this could lead to some interesting Puzzle Bosses, think again: all the weather really does is apply a passive buff or debuff on the boss. You just have to spend one turn (or half a turn with a Twin Attack) and a bit of MP at the start of the fight to make the weather suitable for you, and maybe do that again a bit later if the boss has the ability to change the weather back.