Revisiting Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX: Fine if you like alchemy and hate RPGs.
Got all of the Atelier games (except Nelke...ugh, and Firis as I had already played that on PS4) for a really good deal. $150 for 6 of them. Wanted to play them for a while, could never justify the price.
It's not that Rorona is a bad game, it's not. Certainly worth $20-$30. But what drew me more to Firis was that it felt like an RPG that happened to have alchemy aspects. The others are heavier - MUCH - on the alchemy than the actual RPG-ness.
EDIT: 2021
I actually sat down and (with the help of Cheat Engine) made it through to one of the endings. I wasn't pleased with that ending at all, but apparently they thought it necessary to "slog it up" in order to earn a proper ending. This game isn't interesting enough to be worth doing that.
What I Liked
✅ I'm a fan of English voice acting. I don't care if it's Shakespearan flawless. I don't want to read text to understand what's going on.
✅ It's not a long game, so it may make sense on Switch, for example, for train rides.
What I Didn't Like
⛔ Like I said, it's a slog. You get plenty of time to do every assignment; that's not the problem. The problem is the game itself is just not fun to do what's necessary. The "dungeons" are linear garbage and you keep getting interrupted by random nonsense like kittens and whatever.
⛔ It feels like they just didn't care with the story - you're an apprentice to a Master that gifts you the shop, then you get hit with quests. I mean, there are mobile games with more depth.
⛔ When you start, the enemies are already overpowered compared to you and EXP is not easy to come by.
⛔ The alchemy UI is clunky and not user friendly at all (this has been fixed in later games).
⛔ As I also mentioned I prefer RPG first, alchemy second. I can't even really call this an RPG. You could literally go through the majority of the game without seeing battle.