My 4th Atelier game, and the start of my second Atelier sub-series. Story is almost non-existant in this one, world isn't built up at all compared to the world of the Dusk, but Sophie and Plachta are very strong and lovable characters. The combat in this one doesn't have the swapping with the back row characters anymore, and instead has a new Defense and Offense stance system which I never felt as fun or engaging as the combat systems in the previous games and as the game went on, and in most battles can be mostly ignored. The Mysterious games have added a grid system to the crafting, where the grid represents the space in the cauldron, but the glowing bonus nodes aren't taught as well as they could be. You can acquire and swap out different cauldrons for different effects too, but the EXP gain when using anything other than the EXP cauldron feels too low. EXP gain is lower than previous games when using anything else and the exp cauldron boosts it up to around what they were, so using anything else feels bad. Sophie is the weakest entry I've played so far, but I did still have a lot of fun with the crafting despite its annoyances, and the characters and music were real nice. During the back half of my playthrough, my grandmother was taken to the hospital so the focus on what Sophie's grandmother meant to her as a person really hit me in a way.

Generally fun game even if it takes a fair bit to click and give you enough options to actually get around to messing with its systems, and surprisingly for the more open-ended games without proper time limits in the series, the general story and event progression is very natural. Sadly the endgame is bogged down by the rumor mechanic. While not much, some key materials (and recipes that are unlocked by gathering those materials) are locked behind getting specific rumors to trigger in the café, leading to situations in which you can basically spend 4 hours just fishing for a rumor to gain access to a material that would let you finish specific event chains. The idea for purchasing rumors being tied to actually spawning what they're about instead of just nudging the player in the direction of a nice secret in general feels completely wrong. Thankfully the postgame is its entire own thing, so you can ignore having to deal with that.

On a more positive note, this game has some of the best tracks in the series, and considering how good the music in GUST games tends to be, that's saying something.

This is one of those strong cases where the characters singly handly carried the game.
The gameplay loop is too tedious and outdated for it's own good.
Having to play Where's Waldo for 40+ hours just to trigger characters events, recipes and story stuff isn't fun at all.
The mediocre and directionless storyline doesn't help much at all, as it's just the typical JRPG stuff that you seen before.
It's just unnecessarily padding for the sake of it.
The game really needed the event/quest markers.

Barring the characters, Alchemy system is excellent and arguably better than the Ryza Trilogy, due to being more complex and rewarding.

Fortunately, Sophie has a decently compelling cast of characters with Sophie, Julio, Corneria and Plachta being the standouts.

Oskar and Monika were okay, but they felt more typical best friend/childhood characters that you have seen before with not much depth to them

Overall, Atelier Sophie is a decent game, that is held back by jarringly outdated gameplay loop and meandering padded storyline.

The characters and alchemy system were the saving graces of Atelier Sophie that ulimately prevented the game from failing for me.

I played about a dozen hours of the original, shelved it, came back for the DX version, and it was like seeing an old friend. This time I managed to complete it.

Main gripes: No time limit is nice for people (like me) that would normally be scared of it, but with it comes never knowing where I'm supposed to be "at" level or alchemy wise. Lots of areas are unlocked long before you can visit them all and so you can be vastly over or underleveled without realizing (not knowing the main level cap was a mere 20 before I got there was. surprising to say the least)

Mixed: "Story" is also kind of disappointing and barebones-y whenever it tries to go beyond "Sophie is doing alchemy." Could use a lot more show, less tell. But the main cast is pretty endearing and likeable (if not necessarily that memorable).

Good: Music is great. Tetromino alchemy never gets old, and it can be fun to experiment with. There are lots of locations, but not too big to get lost in. Quest and craft system kept me engaged enough to go to the finish. Sophie and Plachta are just really cute and easy to support, so I think they carried the game.