Atelier Escha & Logy is out and i've jumped on it like a ravenous dog
so far it's pretty eeeeeeehhhhhhh,the introduction is really long and boring and full of tutorial's,the plot is that somewhere on the world a new city has been created which stands on a bunch of ruins so marion has been sent there to investigate,as such she ask for the help of two alchemist,loli escha and tough dude logy
and when you put their name together they make for a branch of theology about how we are all going to die and you get to pick who you play with,i picked logy because i heard it translated into a more rpgish game but so far it doesn't really feel much different from ayesha
so unlike ayesha and totori this time there are no missing family members to rescue and you work for marion instead so the game plays more like an improved version of rorona,every 4 month you are assigned a task and you have to clear it otherwise you game over,on top of your big task you also get a bunch of smaller task like "explore this place" "fight this monster" and the like,doing these give you point which increase your rank which in turn translate into a better salary and also gives you extra item and power ups
items are now infinite,when you make a consumable you set it in a preparation menu and it automaticaly get restocked for you to use again when you get back to town which make me a lot more comfortable about using consumable's, the catch is that each item has a number of slot and the more powerfull the item,the more slot it consume so you can't bring a shitload of elixir like in the previous game... you also pay a money fee for every item you use
delivery and slaying quest are still there but this time they reward you with candy,apparently later on you use this candy to control homunculus and give them the task you don't want to do but i haven't got so far
another feature is that as you gather item and slay monster you fill a bar,the bar goes up to 200% and when you get to at least 100% you can summon a special power like improved item quality,finding treasure or fighting a rare mob,when i picked a fight with a rare mob i actualy got in a pretty tough fight and it was the easiest choice i could pick so i was pleasantly surprised
the alchemy system has been reworked once again,everytime you add item you get point into any 4 element and then you can use those point to use your skill where in ayesha you could use your skill freely... so for example here you have a skill to improve item quality but if you want to use it you need to use at least 1 earth point so you can't use it if you don't add any earth based item
apparently later on you also get the ability to create new armor/weapon where you couldn't in ayesha but it's not something that you can do in the first few hours of the game... which is annoying!
the new character aren't really that interessing, escha is your average cheerfull girl, logix is as square as an rpg main character can get and the party is rounded by a guy called awil who uses a giant hammer and really feels like he's here just so that you can have 3 party members battle... NPC include this little girl who sells oddity and try to scam her customer and a muscle guy owning a bar
there are a lot of returning character from ayesha including wilbell and nio,it's nice to see them here but they don't serve much purpouse other than making some reference to the previous game and acting like they did in ayesha... the battle system is identic to ayesha (well i guess you now have 2 item users for what it's worth)
i'd say the thing that really bothers me the most is the music,it just doesn't have the same catch,ayesha music was awesome but i just don't feel this one
