I really do hate feeling that I’m undervaluing effort. If anything, I should probably have just played a fantranslation of the original Live A Live, so that I could feel a little more as though this game’s web of genre anthologism was particularly formally impressive or functionally experimental. It’s a little personally embarrassing how much slack I’m willing to give older gens for breaking their spines over ambitious systems I take for granted nowadays, and narratives I’d find quaint in anything released now. I want to lay blame on Octopath’o’vision more than anything.
Live A Live’s cool, I won’t deny - the individual cinematic reverence to which each of these chapters are framed, the unique ways their characters express themselves thru bespoke mechanics like Pogo’s rudimentary crafting & hunting, Shifu’s already capped level & disciple training, Akira’s overworld psi abilities… I just don’t think there’s enough meat on any of this game’s bones for me to feel strongly either way about any of the stories, let alone for the final act to even feel self-justified that its cast have the capability to act as convincing anti-hate thesis statements - and not simply an extension of what Live A Live always does; falling back to the motions of genre.
Playing through Square’s library has made me feel incredibly assured in their ambitions and creativity, kindling much of what I find so mysterious and evocative about the JRPG genre. Games that spin themselves wildly into their own neuroses and bloom into an orchard of mechanics and character dynamics we’re today still only barely reaching similar heights of. To me. Live A Live feels like a demo disk or something of that mission statement, glimpses into their process but, too brief for hooks to really set in.

Pretty visuals and it's nice to see past Atelier characters in new shiny graphics but the fact it's a gacha game just makes it very time-consuming to grind your characters enough for the main story if you're F2P and eventually that just becomes very exhausting.

Not to mention while the main story seems to have promise and the characters are likable for the most part, it just generally feels dragged out for the sake of being a live service game. Also, it's very disappointing how Resleriana calls itself a mainline Atelier game but the item creation is so pathetically simplified compared to the rest of the games.

Between Resleriana demanding so much of your time to keep up with it daily and it came out in a very busy winter 2024 season, I just eventually gave up on playing the game to focus on other releases. I may come back to it one day since I did not completely dislike Resleriana but the game for now is at a very low priority to return to.

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what Reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☐ Masterpiece
☑ Great
☐ Good
☐ Not bad
☐ Meh.
☐ Playing with anything is more fun than that.
☐ Just no

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Soundtracks}---
☑ Masterpiece
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Terrible

---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Moderately Fast
☐ Spoiled-Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare Comp.

---{Difficulty}---
☐ Just press "W" for Win
☐ Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy
☐ Requires some Brain Cells
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult AF
☐ #1 Player of Dark Souls Speed-runner
☑ Nightmare Difficulty is beyond Souls like series.

---{Story}---
☐ There is a Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Background Check
☐ Good Enough
☑ Lovely
☐ Masterpiece
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short like your 8=D
☐ Average like mobile game
☑ Long like GTA
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
☐ A Scam just like Gambling

---{Bugs}---
☐ Do you mean the insect?
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Some but it's funny
☐ Can get annoying
☐ Goat Simulator
☐ Unplayable
☐ The game itself is a bug

---{Score 9/10}---