My Rorona Can't be this Cute-

Pardon the title : >

After roughly 3 weeks of playing, I finally managed to Platinum [ie, 100% trophy completion] Atelier Rorona: the Alchemist of Arland. Well, not exactly 3 weeks considering I did take about a week off from gaming due to SMM and other stuff. This made it the secondPS3 games I've Platinumed so far, after Last Rebellion. Speaking of 100% completion, I'm not exactly a Completionist, but for some reason I really had the urge to get all the trophies in Atelier Rorona because of...well, let's just say, various reasons :) And the irony is, often I managed to 100% complete a game which I initially weren't impressed with. Like when I first play The Last Remnant, I was slightly turned off by the random gameplay, but month later I decided to give the game a serious try, and eventually ended up getting 100% completion... The same thing happened with Atelier Rorona, as I initially wasn't really favor the gameplay, but various other thing made up for this and in the end, I still manage to Platinum the game.

Anyway, my overall thoughts of Atelier Rorona: the Alchemist of Arland-

Appealing and interesting characters.

Each characters in Atelier Rorona had unique personality that I just can't stop smiling and laughing at their act and humor. Rorona especially, with her cute, clumsy behaviour and tendency to get teased by everyone, really made the game much more enjoyable. Then there's her childhood friend Cordelia, who is concerned about her height, DFC, and total tsundere. Nothing more to add. Rorona's lazy, genius, humorous, yet caring master, Astrid added even more depth to the character list. Other character includes Sterk the hardworking knight, Iksel the chef maniac, Gio the...[secret], Tantris the wandering bard, and Lionela the "bouncy" dancer, each with interesting personality that endears you to them. Then there's also NPC to add more variety - Tiffani the widow shopkeeper, Hagel the baldy weapon dealer, Pamela Ibis [she's sure popular huh] the smexy ghost, and Rorona's assistant Hom [I kinda regret not choosing the female Hom lol]. I could easily say that the character depth is one of the biggest positive point of Atelier Rorona, one that could easily made you feel attached to the game.

Great voice acting, relaxing light-hearted music

As I've previously mentioned in my first impression post, Atelier Rorona's voice actor/actress were superb, simply one of the best I've listened to in recent years. Mai Kadowaki truly brought the clumsy, moe personality into Rorona, I totally love her voice whenever she complained for being teased. How I wish she was given more role in anime, one that similar to Rorona :3 Eri Kitamura also voiced Cordelia [aka Cory] perfectly, I guess because her voice fits a stereotype tsundere anime character. Anyway, I've once tried switching over to English voice, unfortunately I feel that they weren't good enough. Not as bad as the Star Ocean 4's, but definitely not that great. Speaking of the music, I love the folk music used throughout the game which fits well with most of the settings. Sometimes repetitive, but I don't really mind listening to them over and over again :3

Time Management, Time Management...

When I first play the game, I mentioned in my first impression post about how crucial time management is. Well after playing to the end, getting all FOUREEN endings and Platinum in ONE PLAYTHROUGH, I'd personally say that the game wasn't really time-constraining as I feared it would be. Official roadmap thread in PS3trophy stated it would take 3-4 playthrough to get all endings, which is totally untrue. The game can really be platinumed in 1 playthrough if you know what you are doing from the start. The game wasn't really time-constraining because keeping up with friend/front request, while maintaining sufficient alchemy/adventure level weren't that difficult if you know the crucial date in each passing month [eg 15th for Cole, the date to get Pamela etc]. And then the ending trophies, it's all about maintaining good star rating for each assignment so that we can save and reload in the final month, or reload in the final year to go for the rich ending. So the keys to perfection - be modest with the Kingdom Assignment, and use every passing time efficiently. Oh, and SAVE OFTEN, and make a lot of different save file, especially in the final year. Loading from different save file in my final year gave me much freedom to control which character flag I want to trigger, and eventually the ending that I desired.


Tera Bomb breaks the game
What really matter in the game is item synthesis and completing the kingdom assignment to keep the Atelier alive, but to achieve that aim, Rorona still need to gather the necessary ingredients. And that's where dungeon exploration, aka turn-based combat system was added to the game. Generally most of the battles were easy. Well it's a bit challenging early in the game, when you lack proper healer or healing items while going to tougher dungeon [hello Ster Highland], but proper preparation and item synthesis can make the game much easier. Early in the 2nd year, a new shop feature called"Wholesale" were introduced where we can register our own synthesised item to their respective shop, and the shop will then mass-produced the exact item. This way, we can abuse this system to create many high quality items for completing quest, or to create goodies for battle. And one thing that come to mind - the ultimate destructive nuke in the game, Tera Bomb. Simply put, this bomb is so much destructive that it can kill even the strongest boss in the game in 1 hit, and if you don't put proper trait in the bomb, you'll end up not only killing the monster, but also yourself. Not to mention, the animation scene when Rorona use the bomb is...totally exaggerating : 3

some funny cutscenes in Atelier Rorona, which also include the destructive [yet funny] power of Meteor [at 5:00], and Tera Bomb [at 9:40], although this is a less modified, self destructive Tera Bomb lol

Glitch and bugs plagued the game..
Atelier Rorona really is one of the most entertaining game I've ever played in recent years. But one thing that keep me frustrated is the high frequency of glitch/bug in this game, in particular game freezing which happened at least once in a few hours of playing. I'm not that familiar with previous Gust's games, but apparently this is a common occurrence in their games. Other glitch include item in basket not showing up when we try to sell them, but it's not a big deal I guess. I wonder if the game developer ever made any serious QC before they release this game...Anyway, this drawbacks are in no way drag the fun factor of the game.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed playing Atelier Rorona. Those who aren't familiar with jrpg might not find much interest in this title, but for jrpg fans, and especially Atelier fans, this game is worth a try, especially considering this is the first Atelier that made it into 3D.

p/s: I want Atelier Totori English Version ;____;