Atelier Rorona was a cozy little game! Not as individually good as Ryza was, but I'm excited to keep going through the Arland saga and see how her presence continues to influence the world that develops. Wanting to fully appreciate the sweet feelings of Lulua from the fourth game being Rorona's daughter was low-key the reason I decided to play the first three in the first place.
Felt a little soured right at the end because the game apparently has multiple endings with very strict criteria for the true ending. Which, I dunno, just isn't fun for me. I've never been a fan of multiple endings.
The pre-Sophie games in the franchise get criticized often for the deadlines and time limits. To me the time management aspect isn't a bad thing for the gameplay in and of itself since it makes planning out your journey an important part of the challenge (though Atelier Rorona using time simply to move between areas in each dungeon was a very iffy design decision), but despite that component being fun I'd argue it is still quite a bad thing overall because it makes it virtually impossible to see the entire story in a single playthrough. When you have 90 days in each segment, each gathering area is 2-8 days away, moving between individual sections of each area takes 1-3 days, returning to the workshop takes 2-5 days - most of your allotted time disappears in a flash. There's such a limited window to actually take the cast out and build up your bonds that unless you use a perfect guide right from the get-go you are not getting all the character events in your first run-through. Which then leaves me hesitating on what to do now, whether to just look for scenes on Youtube or move on with the experience I got (since I don't plan to immediately play the whole game over again).
Felt a little soured right at the end because the game apparently has multiple endings with very strict criteria for the true ending. Which, I dunno, just isn't fun for me. I've never been a fan of multiple endings.
The pre-Sophie games in the franchise get criticized often for the deadlines and time limits. To me the time management aspect isn't a bad thing for the gameplay in and of itself since it makes planning out your journey an important part of the challenge (though Atelier Rorona using time simply to move between areas in each dungeon was a very iffy design decision), but despite that component being fun I'd argue it is still quite a bad thing overall because it makes it virtually impossible to see the entire story in a single playthrough. When you have 90 days in each segment, each gathering area is 2-8 days away, moving between individual sections of each area takes 1-3 days, returning to the workshop takes 2-5 days - most of your allotted time disappears in a flash. There's such a limited window to actually take the cast out and build up your bonds that unless you use a perfect guide right from the get-go you are not getting all the character events in your first run-through. Which then leaves me hesitating on what to do now, whether to just look for scenes on Youtube or move on with the experience I got (since I don't plan to immediately play the whole game over again).