I can see why people think this is the best or worst Dusk game. Its synthesis is much weaker than it was in Escha and Logy, with now there being a stronger focus on exploration. I only felt satisfied playing around with it towards the end, but it doesn't allow you as much freedom as it did before. They also dulled the difficulty too much and simplified the combat by removing the positional system. It was actually TOO easy.
However, everywhere else, I think it does a great job of merging the strengths of the past two games while having a story with stakes. It has the best atmosphere, having the adventure of Ayesha and the homey town feeling of E&L. The story ties all the loose themes and character arcs in a way that stays true to its slice-of-life approach while being more serious than it has ever been. The only complaint I have about the writing is the way the Shallies' relationship could have used more time to bond like Escha and Logy. But, it's not narrative-breaking and it has the best supporting cast to make up for this.
Overall, I think despite having a story with stakes and finality, it ended up being the least stressful experience in the trilogy. In many ways, it took a couple of steps back but landed gracefully.

Third entry in the Dusk series, probably my favorite overall. Crafting mechanics are just as addicting as Escha to Logy, with a new means to attach skills to items added on top. Combat did away with positioning around the enemy for benefits, but instead party skills have a lot more interesting mechanics to them with some unique time cards, buffs, and level manipulation. Music got upgraded, the best soundtrack of the three imo. I enjoyed the cast of characters and the overall plot of this one more than Escha, and it does a good job of tying in characters and story from the first two games without them overshadowing the story of the Shallies. The Dusk gets a lot more focus this time around, and because of that it still can't quite match the vibes that came from it being so out of focus in Ayesha, but it gets closer than Escha did and the exploration of it is still interesting. Shallie makes a return to the very imagined locales of Ayesha that I was missing in Escha as well. The ending still leaves room to explore this world more, but it does a good job tying up the stories and makes a nice conclusion to the trilogy

great wrap-up of the dusk series, cuts down a bit on the individual story of this game to leave room for the arc to end - though that's just kinda how it's gotta be, it feels a bit shallow at times

retains some of the more unpolished or unnecessary bits of the previous entries but never enough to really break anything and the major annoyances are reworked

basically if you like dumb lesb- i mean if you like atelier, you'll like this

Gameplay: Really good
Story: It gives a good closure to the Dusk subseries and is really good
Music: Very good
Replayable: Totally yes
Streamed: Nope

while it is an enjoyable enough end to the dusk trilogy i feel like shallie was the weakest entry when it comes to the story. i loved the fanservice of getting to meet so many characters again we had grown to love in ayesha + escha&logy, especially how they changed after their respective games but by the final chapter i just wanted it to be over. it's not a very satisfying ending, it doesn't.. "feel" like we did much at all.
gameplay wise this one is a banger though, the fighting system works well and even as someone who always struggles making good items/armour i managed to make it through most fights without much trouble.

overall: solid entry, glad i played it and thank god no more time limit yippie

Moved back to the backlog for awhile. I like the relaxed pace of the game, but it feels like the trade-off is that some stuff takes substantially longer to do.

More importantly, the lack of polish in this is magical. The first load screen says "Loadning" and I've also been able to complete some of the side goals in Life Tasks by doing the wrong things for them. Every time I collected Water from the City Water Source location, my "Break X Barrels" count went up.

At one point, I finished a fight and it updated my info to tell me I had completed 50 jumps and was on track to complete 100 swings outside of combat, so I proceeded to jump around for awhile to try and get more jump counts (since there's no penalty for doing so), only to note that each time I jumped, the "X swings" value would update in real time and kept updating until I completed the "100 Swings" goal. Haven't tested it further, but that's kinda bad.

Currently in Chapter 3, will update someday if/when I go back to it.