Atelier Totorii've defeated evil face (yes that's his name before you ask!) which basicaly count as the game final boss,like ayesha at the end of the game you get an item that fully heal your party so you basicaly turn invincible as long as you can use it... totori has a skill that let her use an item (albeit at reduced power) without consuming it so you are pretty much done with combat once you create it... basicaly all i need to do now is make the last 9 in-game month pass and collect all the ending and then i'm done (in fact i've already done rorona ending because she's the best character ever
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i really really really like the atelier game,as i said a lot of times i play rpg mostly for the characters and the story and it's been a long while since i found a game where i liked a cast of character so much,in fact i'm excited to play meruru mostly because it feature all the character from rorona that were too cool to appear in totori
like i said totori is a better game than rorona,it looks better,there is less stupid fetch questing to do,the combat is more involved and takes a longer time to break the game,not to mention (unlike ayesha) you actualy get to fight stuff well before you can make nuclear bombs and the like... if there are problems with the game those would be
1) a lot of the new character aren't up to par - okay i like filly,but then you have gino who is an annoying brat,mimi who's basicaly cordelia v.2.0,mel who seems to be there only for fanservice purpouse and marc who's so bland i actualy forgot he even existed for a while... it's not a big problem because 80% of the amazing cast from rorona is all there but it's sort of bothersome... totori itself comes off as a little bland too,she's just not interessing and most of the funniest moment with her seems to happen when she's either with rorona or sterk
2) the game gives you too much in-game time,this is made worse by the fact that you don't have any sort of specific objective,just go and wander around and gather point... i literaly spent like 3-4 hour just waiting for time to pass while leveling up and getting more point and it made the game feel like it lasted an eternity! even now i've already finished the game and i still have so much time to burn,and the only reason i don't have even more is because i didn't know how to make the super healing item and had to waste some extra time to fix that
3) i can't believe they made a port of this game on vita without doing a port of rorona first,this game biggest (and HUGE strenght,i can't stress this enough) is continuity,playing this game without having played rorona is a fucking sin,it would be like watching a tv show starting from season 2
4) i really like the battle theme
but most of the other tune just falls flat,they also killed all of the different version of shop jig,that's super sad
ayesha still remain the best atelier game i played,ayesha cast is not as strong as rorona but it's still host to a bunch of cool characters,it also has all the improvement collected from previous games and it has a plot to follow so you never find yourself without nothing to do unlike totori... but the real kicker is the world,the arland games are set in this generic fantasy world but ayesha? ayesha is in this amazing sort of post apocalyptic world,there is a city in ayesha which is on a lake but since the lake drained all that remains is a huge canyon so the city has now hot air balloons instead
ayesha also has the best alchemy system,in totori and rorona leveling up just increase your odd at success but in ayesha as you level up you get new skills which let you modify or rework items to your pleasure and as a result it feels a lot more involving,i've heard some people saying that ayesha "dumbed it down" because they removed the trait system from the arland games but the trait system is a huge pain in the ass to deal with and involve lot of farming so good riddance i say!
anyway it's a good thing they already announced escha&logy! anybody who cares about character driven rpg should check these games out
