So I came into this game having played through the much later Mysterious trilogy but with the DX series making this much easier to load up, I wanted to take a dive backwards and start playing through the first entry in the revival series.
And I immediately understood why people become so attached to the Arland series. The characters are so memorably goofy that it's hard not to fall in love with them (though sometimes I just wanted to... punt Astrid into the sun...). The main storyline is very light
- Rorona needs to save her home. She eventually does and earns her community's respect. They don't toss a final boss in, the kingdom of Arland is not facing down a terrible threat, they just told you to be a productive member of society and you either become one or you don't.
No, Rorona's story is more of a structure to string together the many character storylines of both our unlucky protagonist and the people in her life. Rorona's cast is a lot more broadly cartoonish than I noticed in the Mysterious series, but they all have very well defined traits and the writers know how to make use of them for high comedy. Grab any two characters and toss them in a scene together and watch the sparks fly. Rorona is the unlucky chew toy with an unhealthy pie obsession. Sterk is a man so stoic his default facial expression causes women to scream when they meet him. Astrid is a mad genius who wants to troll everyone and sleep with Rorona. I got so attached to these characters I was genuinely sad to move on to the next game and leave them behind (though some of them stick around for repeat appearances in other games.)
How'd I handle coming from three games with no time limits or structure to one that's highly structured? Well my first reaction was to panic and think I'd fail out. No lies, I had to play with a guide because I didn't want to have to replay it over and over. I eventually realized this wasn't as necessary as I thought - despite the game giving you a regular goal that you must achieve or lose the game and start over, the regular objectives weren't so tough and I never got to a point where I thought I'd game over. I can't say honestly that I would have figured these out on my own though - so I'd warn new players to at least glance at a guide to know what the main objectives will be and prepare accordingly.
Really the big problem with having a time limit is that it means I don't get to spend as much time as I'd like on the entire reason I play through these games - lots and lots of crafting. You either need to look up the ideal ways to craft, or make a save and screw around until you know what you want then reload that save and do it right to reduce the amount of time all this alchemy takes.
Which is a little frustrating when I did legitimately love going on crafting sprees in the Mysterious series and while Rorona has a comparatively simpler crafting system, you really do have to have a strong plan if you're creating something like an ultimate item or piece of gear so you don't blow all of your time. Which is a shame because I did like the crafting system and it always feels satisfying to work out how to make a really powerful bomb that blows up everything in its path or a super weapon that deals hundreds of points of damage and now you realize that special boss that was giving you trouble is going to be dusted when you take another swing at it.
It also means there's less time to spend gathering and more of a need for save scumming if you didn't gather the traits you wanted - because every gathering location takes up time to travel to, then more time to travel between each part of the map. There are items you eventually craft to reduce the hit to your overall time consumption and make trait gathering easier, and these thankfully carry into a new game plus. But it does force your actions to be more deliberate in a game that has systems that seem to want you to explore without limit. You'd like to go gathering until you get the trait you need, you'd like to figure out how to get a really good trait to transfer from a piece of grass to your new accessory, but you can't take too much time on it or the game ends. Sure you can make a save file and carry over your money and gear, but then you have a lot of time to kill until you get back to where you left off last time.
Because Rorona has the additional issue of a bad balance of time distribution - you always have three months for each assignment. If you finish early, you still have to wait for the next one to clear to unlock more of the game. You can't really get farther ahead, you just have to wait, and on new game plus this is a lot more painful since you're already able to zoom through the objectives in far less time than was originally intended. The Bingo Board does give you some extra objectives to complete that benefit you and at least those grow enough in complexity that you can really only do them in new game plus, but it does mean there's periods where you're actually wasting time just to access newer areas.
All that said, I did really enjoy this game - but I came in with previous experience in the series and I also knew it was a much older game that would get better over time. I would still recommend it as a starting point for Atelier because there really is nowhere to go but up - the item crafting is still as much of a hook as ever and the characters are worth experiencing at least once. I actually see myself eventually returning to this game even with its early quirks just to experience the setting again.
VideoGame Oh god Astrid, noooooo
So I came into this game having played through the much later Mysterious trilogy but with the DX series making this much easier to load up, I wanted to take a dive backwards and start playing through the first entry in the revival series.
And I immediately understood why people become so attached to the Arland series. The characters are so memorably goofy that it's hard not to fall in love with them (though sometimes I just wanted to... punt Astrid into the sun...). The main storyline is very light - Rorona needs to save her home. She eventually does and earns her community's respect. They don't toss a final boss in, the kingdom of Arland is not facing down a terrible threat, they just told you to be a productive member of society and you either become one or you don't.
No, Rorona's story is more of a structure to string together the many character storylines of both our unlucky protagonist and the people in her life. Rorona's cast is a lot more broadly cartoonish than I noticed in the Mysterious series, but they all have very well defined traits and the writers know how to make use of them for high comedy. Grab any two characters and toss them in a scene together and watch the sparks fly. Rorona is the unlucky chew toy with an unhealthy pie obsession. Sterk is a man so stoic his default facial expression causes women to scream when they meet him. Astrid is a mad genius who wants to troll everyone and sleep with Rorona. I got so attached to these characters I was genuinely sad to move on to the next game and leave them behind (though some of them stick around for repeat appearances in other games.)
How'd I handle coming from three games with no time limits or structure to one that's highly structured? Well my first reaction was to panic and think I'd fail out. No lies, I had to play with a guide because I didn't want to have to replay it over and over. I eventually realized this wasn't as necessary as I thought - despite the game giving you a regular goal that you must achieve or lose the game and start over, the regular objectives weren't so tough and I never got to a point where I thought I'd game over. I can't say honestly that I would have figured these out on my own though - so I'd warn new players to at least glance at a guide to know what the main objectives will be and prepare accordingly.
Really the big problem with having a time limit is that it means I don't get to spend as much time as I'd like on the entire reason I play through these games - lots and lots of crafting. You either need to look up the ideal ways to craft, or make a save and screw around until you know what you want then reload that save and do it right to reduce the amount of time all this alchemy takes.
Which is a little frustrating when I did legitimately love going on crafting sprees in the Mysterious series and while Rorona has a comparatively simpler crafting system, you really do have to have a strong plan if you're creating something like an ultimate item or piece of gear so you don't blow all of your time. Which is a shame because I did like the crafting system and it always feels satisfying to work out how to make a really powerful bomb that blows up everything in its path or a super weapon that deals hundreds of points of damage and now you realize that special boss that was giving you trouble is going to be dusted when you take another swing at it.
It also means there's less time to spend gathering and more of a need for save scumming if you didn't gather the traits you wanted - because every gathering location takes up time to travel to, then more time to travel between each part of the map. There are items you eventually craft to reduce the hit to your overall time consumption and make trait gathering easier, and these thankfully carry into a new game plus. But it does force your actions to be more deliberate in a game that has systems that seem to want you to explore without limit. You'd like to go gathering until you get the trait you need, you'd like to figure out how to get a really good trait to transfer from a piece of grass to your new accessory, but you can't take too much time on it or the game ends. Sure you can make a save file and carry over your money and gear, but then you have a lot of time to kill until you get back to where you left off last time.
Because Rorona has the additional issue of a bad balance of time distribution - you always have three months for each assignment. If you finish early, you still have to wait for the next one to clear to unlock more of the game. You can't really get farther ahead, you just have to wait, and on new game plus this is a lot more painful since you're already able to zoom through the objectives in far less time than was originally intended. The Bingo Board does give you some extra objectives to complete that benefit you and at least those grow enough in complexity that you can really only do them in new game plus, but it does mean there's periods where you're actually wasting time just to access newer areas.
All that said, I did really enjoy this game - but I came in with previous experience in the series and I also knew it was a much older game that would get better over time. I would still recommend it as a starting point for Atelier because there really is nowhere to go but up - the item crafting is still as much of a hook as ever and the characters are worth experiencing at least once. I actually see myself eventually returning to this game even with its early quirks just to experience the setting again.