The Platinum Series: [10] Atelier Totori

Finally another Platinum to add to my growing list: Atelier Totori - The Adventurer of Arland. Being an ardent fan of the predecessor Atelier Rorona - The Alchemist of Arland, I knew I just had to get Totori, play the game, savour the scenes, and PLATINUM the game. Time for some brief platinum endnotes.

Title: Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of of Arland
Developer: Gust
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Genre: Japanese role playing game [jrpg]
Release date: June 2010 [Japanese], September 2011 [NA/EU]


Overall Platinum difficulty: 3.5/10 (easy)

What, 3.5 difficulty rating only? Compared to Atelier Rorona (which was already easy to Plat), I'd definitely say that Totori was easier to Platinum - IF you know how to handle the events, calendar, dates, scenes, schedule blablabla in the game. Trophies are pretty much similar to how trophies were in Rorona - special events/scenes, max levels, beating monsters, endings, endings and ENDINGS. Some are straightforwards and automatically obtained, like the opening scenes, character introduction scenes (Mel/Sterk/Mio/Rorona etc), while others, you had to work for it a bit. Especially the multiple endings, which made up of probably about half of the total trophies needed for Platinum. One thing for sure, things are less repetitive and tedious in Totori. No more going to the Guild/meeting friends for requests, and the world map is much bigger. Though to get 500,000 cole, you probably had to do some utterly boring task of selling liquids from Spring Water over and over and over again....

Just like Rorona, events that can trigger a certain trophy will appear within a certain time limit, or when certain condition was fulfilled. But while in Rorona you had only 3 months for 3 years interval to do your assignments and complete some character's events/endings requirement, in Totori the time gap is much wider - 6 month interval, with the game spanning over 6 years of timeline, and hence you had a more flexible time to manage your stuff, juggling between traveling/adventuring, synthesizing or focusing on characters's scenes. Though that was kinda balanced by the fact that traveling, battle, collecting items from gather points etc consumed more time than it was in Rorona.

Triggering events for each and every ending trophies (11 in total - Bad, Normal, True, Wealth, Chim, Marc, Mel, Gino, Rorona, Sterk, Mio) were obviously hard without some sort of guidance, and it was definitely impossible to get all ending in a single playthrough without following a walkthrough. Thankfully the same method from Rorona work in order to obtain all endings in one go - by loading save files near the end of the game after fulfilling conditions for each endings, ie 500k money+certain quests for Wealth Ending, Chim's pie for Chim ending, character's friendship and quests for their ending, and ALL possible events for the True Ending. Unfortunately, the True End was kinda disappointing. Predictable and way too short compared to the beautiful reunion we had in Rorona's True Ending. Nevertheless, Sterk's Ending was the best, damn that lucky bastard!!!!

Overall, I really enjoyed Atelier Totori. Most of the fun factor came from watching Totori getting teased by people around her as well as many other funny scenes in the game. At the same time, I also enjoyed the alchemy/synthesis in this game, playing around with traits to make the best possible items, foods, weapons, BOMBS etc. N/A bomb was a real killer, but I wish that Tera Bomb from Rorona made a comeback. The animation when Rorona use that bomb was simply hilarious, and the damage a finely crafted bomb dealt was.....phenomenal. But if I had to pick either Atelier Rorona or Atelier Totori, I would say that I'm enjoying the predecessor more than the sequel. Maybe because I like Rorona Frixel better than Totori Helmold, especially due to the voice of Mai Kadowaki ;p


now GIVE me Atelier Meruru this May!!!


full Atelier Totori review coming...later.

Final Fantasy XIII-2: The Impression

Finally, one of the most anticipated video games this year reached my hand. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of Final Fantasy FFXIII (due to its utterly boring story), but I enjoyed the gameplay and Mark Quests a lot that I eventually managed to Platinum the game last year. That alone is enough to make me wanting to buy its sequel, Final Fantasy FXIII-2, and I’m expecting a better impression from this one, especially in term of story and linearity. Due to my commitment to work and Atelier Totori (which I just recently Platinumed), it’s not until last week that I was finally able to start the game, and with over 10 hours into the game, I can say that so far I’m having more fun playing FFXIII-2.

Title: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Developer: Square-Enix
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox360
Genre: Japanese role playing game [jrpg]
Release date: Dec 2011 [Japanese], Jan/Feb 2012 [NA/EU]

Final Fantasy XIII-2 took place roughly 3 years after the events in Final Fantasy XIII. Lightning is no more, Fang is no more, Snow is no more, every playable character in FFXIII are no more. Now, we’re controlling Lightning’s little sister Serah, and Noel, a stranger from the future. To avoid spoiler, I guess it's better not to write about the story too much, but all I can say is that I'm liking the story because the core is about time paradox, where you’ll travel through time to unveil the mystery behind a certain person’s disappearance, the overlapped time and space continuum, changing history and future blablabla. Steins;Gate, anyone?

Although it didn't hurt NOT playing FFXIII before FFXIII-2, I do think having the experience of playing FFXIII was necessary and beneficial because a lot of the gameplay's aspects were taken and improved. Having familiarized with the gameplay of FFXIII, straight away in FFXIII-2 my finger was moving around automatically, hitting L1 to switch Paradigms back and forth while the ATP gauge is charging (you know, the full ATB gauge trick). Paradigm Shift no longer had those stupid time-wasting first-time paradigm change animation (you know what I mean), so now you got a faster battle pace. The post-battle rank didn't seem to change much, except that 5-Starring a battle gave you 200% boost in rare item drop, on Normal mode. You will also receive gil after each battle, so getting money in FFXIII-2 is essentially much easier than FFXIII. Oh, did I mention that there's Easy and Normal mode?

A lot more changes/improvements were related to off-battle features. Things like Moogle Hunt/Throw, autosave features, time paradoxes, and new mechanism of random encounter, which I'm not gonna spend time elaborating. But I'd like to comment on the new Crystarium system. The basics of Crystarium is similar to those in FFXIII, but the mechanics were somewhat different - basically all Roles share the same Nodes/Crystarium, but what's contained in each nodes changed according to its roles, with some of the (bigger) Nodes giving stat bonus depending on which role you used to activate it. Again, it was hard to describe, even I had trouble understanding the new Crystarium. I only figured out the mechanics (or more accurately, how to maximize Noel's strength's and Serah's Magic's growth) when I was like on stage 6 of my Crystarium progress. Which was kinda late, since I wasted about half of it by not manipulating their stat growth. On the bright side though, my Noel and Serah had a more balanced Mag-Str stats, meaning switching any of them between Ravager and Commando won't have significant effect on the damage dealt.

Then there's Monster crystal, which we can use as the third character in the paradigm shift. I'd say this is one of the few addition in FFXIII-2 that made the game more fun. With no more other playable character, you're pretty much stuck with Noel and Serah for almost the entire game, and who could fill the third slot in the party? A "tamed" monster, obviously. Monsters defeated had a chance to form into crystal, which allowed you to use them in future battle. They have specialized Role, and they can also be levelled up to a certain max level by using certain items that provides specific stat growth to your monsters. So you can have crappy monsters like...well, I don't know, in your party, or if you're really, really beefed up, late in the game you can have the almighty Omega (that Omega Weapon) as your third ally. Nevertheless, many argued that the best ever ally you can have is Chichu, but I haven't encountered one so I can't comment on that.

Currently about halfway through the game (and less than 20% platinum completion), I think it won't take me longer than 2 weeks to finish and platinum the game. The story was much more acceptable than FFXIII to say the least, the faster paradigm shirt and and the addition of monsters in the party made battle somewhat more enjoyable. There's a few more things that I haven't comment, but I'll leave it at that and stop here.

Spring 2012 Anime List

TV

Accel World
Acchi Kocchi
AKB0048
Arashi no Yoru ni. Himitsu no Tomodachi
Baku Tech! Bakugan
Beyblade Zero-G
Cardfight!! Vanguard: Asia Circuit Hen
Eureka Seven Ao
Fate/Zero 2nd Season
Gakkatsu!
Ginga e Kick off!!
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san
Hiiro no Kakera
Hyou-ka
Jewelpet Kira☆Deko!
Jormungand
Kikansha Thomas
Kimi to Boku. 2
Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? of the Dead
Kuroko no Basuke
Medaka Box
Naruto SD: Rock Lee no Seishun Full-Power Ninden
Natsuiro Kiseki
Nazo no Kanojo X
New Lupin III Series
Ozuma
Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle 2nd Season
Pretty Rhythm Dear My Future
Queen’s Blade: Rebellion
Saint Seiya Omega
Sakamichi no Apollon
Saki: Achiga-hen episode of side-A
Sankarea
Sengoku Collection
Shiba Inuko-san
Shining Hearts ~Shiawase no Pan~
Shirokuma Café
Tasogare Otome x Amnesia
Tsuritama
Uchuu Kyoudai
Upotte!!
Yurumates 3D
Zetman

OVA

A-Channel+smile (OVA)
Ai Mai! Moe Can Change! (OVA)
Another (OAD)
High Score (OAD)
Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple (OVA)
Kimi no Iru Machi (OAD)
Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (OAD)
Lupin Ikka Seizoroi (OVA)
Maken-Ki! (OAD)
Nekogami Yaoyorozu (OVA)
To Heart 2: Dungeon Travelers (OVA)
Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san. (OVA)

sources: fansubwiki, moetron


........................

...massive list, to say the least. Not much for me to comment about this upcoming Spring season, but I'm personally looking forward to Fate Zero S2 and Shining Hearts. Then the usual trial and error to add more into my watching lists. And for some reason Sankarea and Tasogare Otome Amnesia seems very familiar to me, I don't really remember reading the manga though. Oh hey, there's another sport anime!