its too late for me atelier stole my heart and i cant go back to who i was anymore and while im actually playing ryza 2 rn i just wanted to explore some other installments in the series and i just got a damn interest in playing rorona because this was probably the most famously difficult one of the bunch because of the strict time limit and the profusely abundant lesbian sex scenes so i understand that people got really scared about this

now what im gonna say is that i actually found this pretty “easy” in the gameplay sense but god FUCK was it so stressful to have the time limits every 3 months just in front of my eyes constantly reminding me that time is relentless and death is a real thing

that to say that its not really too difficult to complete the tasks if you know what youre doing but its gonna be a damn chore to see everything in a single playthrough and i honestly dont know if you can actually do that like i had to concentrate on the events of a single character or else i would go fucking wild and not tackle a single flag for the little SoL scenes

anyway this is probably (for now) the game that emulates the most the gameplay flow of the original atelier marie and it honestly has a lot of different mechanics that are basically lifted from the original game the alchemy system is mostly the same the combat has some new tweaks here and there to make it more complex but the skeleton is the same and exploring is actually more complex than just pushing a button and seeing loots coming up

while marie actually had just a single final test they actually made this game have 12 assignments so that you could actually be guided to a good ending instead of being left with yourself and fuck around until you get a bad ending at the end and youre left with a sense of failure and regret and you wont ever play a single atelier game anymore in your life so yeah im half/half on this assignment system i gotta say it IS pretty stressful i gotta be honest with you here

so before getting in the meat of the stuff i gotta say the combat system is pretty fun you got normal RPG stuff but the main focus is item use and chain attacks which is so FUCKING fun compared to the first game and having different characters to use makes for a lot of customizing and experimentation and while they still overuse the recolors of some monsters the designs are pretty good so i can give them that

the alchemy system as i said is pretty simple but not without some challenging aspects here and there the final items in the repertoire will make you go fucking crazy for all the requirements they have im not joking some stuff is BUCK wild but i didnt care that much since i just cared to finish the game im a simple man

apart from this you got all the other juicy stuff some shops some side mechanics side quests and all that stuff but whats really fun for me is still the exploring and the gathering the different biomes and places youre gonna explore are just GORGEOUS and most of the time going around is just the best thing to do in the game (im not really a fan of the big stones just blocking your path but whatever this cant be a perfect game)

theres such a huge amount of items you can get from gathering and fighting monsters that its no surprise how many different tools and weapons and potions and shit you can make with all this stuff and rorona makes the good decision to just make pies i kinda get her

so whatever the game is pretty simple in that regard BUT what makes it 100% better are the characters most of the dudes in this game are super fucking charming and have a lot of great interactions with rorona who herself is probably one of the most fun atelier girls i got to know till now shes just the perfect balance of goofy and clever and this all makes for some great gag scenes that put a smile to my face not gonna lie

that being said most of the side characters has some kind of shtick going on and most of them are pretty great to interact with you should be the ones to decide with whom make 90+ friendship but my faves of the bunch were definitely lionela (i love her being shy around rorona shes the greatest schizophrenic fella i got the pleasure to meet and shes hot to boot in that esmeralda notre dame attire and shes also the one i had the most friendship with so you know how much i love her) then you have gio whos super hot but i didnt have the opportunity to get to know him more i wanted to get in his pants and shit but couldnt then you have sterk who is also pretty fucking hot but i decided to substitute him with the daddy im so sorry cutie if i ever replay this game youre gonna be my first option then . pamela is an highlight she has some pretty hilarious scenes hom is pretty interesting with the whole homunculus with emotions storyline iksel and cordelia were my favorite at the beginning but they were soon been kicked in the ass by other characters and to this day i have no idea how to hire tantris so theres that

i have some weird sentiments about astrid as a character and her predatory relationship with rorona i actually like her bayonetta lesbianism showing through her lazy master first impression but i dont think most of the puns actually hit for me they were too strange for me to actually enjoy but one of the main traits of her character is the fact that shes never present for rorona so i love the fact that i related with that missing parents aspect <3

moreso this game has a HUUUUUUUUUUGE amount of endings and of course getting all of them in one playthrough is impossible another reason to actually replay it and see what ending youre gonna get and i gotta say i got the lionela lesbian adventurer beggard ending and honestly ??? pretty happy with that i love for rorona to have a girlfriend and travel the world in poverty dont @ me

it was mainly because I did all the assignments right but my popularity was abysmal because I could not understand for the life of me how to make it increase and yeah there's a lot of things I still dont understand about this game let's be real but at least I breezed through it without getting too much angry thats already something

so ughhhhh what else to say oh yeah the music is pretty goated but at the same time a mixed bag mainly because the town tunes werent my thing and i didnt vibe with the 4 different shop ost arrangements of the same song but some battle themes fuck ASS god i have no idea who is composing these tracks throughout all the atelier games but theyre making a DAMN good job in the battle themes department good lord

so UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH theres that rorona is an interesting beast but i wouldnt recommend it as the first atelier game ryza is still the most beginner friendly of the bunch for me till now and im glad i actually got to know the time limits from atelier marie OG/remake so that i could be prepared to the type of gameflow i was gonna meet here but yeah its such a good game what the hell and im glad all these installments are pursuing the most evident aspect of the atelier series as a whole: lesbianism

when you finish the game theres some overtime where you get to know totori and meruru through some time traveling mess but ughhhhhhhhh i dont think im gonna get into it for now i played like 5 minutes of it and i decided that i dont want to spoil myself those characters (I think~~~ it's a plus/DX exclusive which means it probably has the preconception that players actually played totori and meruru too so that you could havr some good old fanservice so yeah) but im gonna be sure to check out the story events on youtube maybe theres actually some great interactions between the three idk i have no idea if someone is knowledgeable about this please come to my rescue i want to know if theres a threesome in here or something because as with marie after a while i just got tired of the same gameplay loop over and over again i dont know if i can go on with some time limit - less action now i just want to move on with the new installments lets see what im gonna do next stay tuned happy new year

side note this PC port was great all around but for some reason it didnt make me able to take screenshot both with nvidia overwhateversitsname and normal screenshots so umh i was actually suffering because i have to take screenshots of EVERYTHING be advised