Reviews

• gamedeal user

  May 24, 2021

  So far, I'd recommend this. If you know Japanese well enough. A machine translation being worth it or not, I can't comment on. The story might get a little lost in translation. The gameplay is very easy to follow and should be much less problematic, especially because the game makes it very easy to see where to go, and what to make. The protagonist is an alchemist, who comes to a tiny village in search of a new cauldron, as her old one unfortunately broke. She is accompanied by someone, kind of part of her family, that helps her out. While at first not very much welcomed, and the village seems to be not quite what she imagined, it turns out there actually is a cauldron around. Though the villagers considered it a.. bath tub. Oh well. With this cauldron she's able to help the villagers out with their troubles, to slowly become more trusted. All the while new characters come to this really tiny villain, and about everything and everyone seems to have a secret behind it. The village itself, as the villagers don't make it a secret that they HAVE a secret, our main alchemy girl herself getting assaulted by a weird flashy lightning similar to when her previous cauldron broke, and new traveler that seem to know a bit too much about their handiwork for just being a random traveler. The story manages to make your curious well enough, and it's easy too root for MC, as she lives by "better do something instead of waiting around" and likes to encourage a young girl in the village as well, to be more self confident and honest about your interests. Nothing wrong with that, sometimes a girl has to grow past all the protective guys around. And they really ARE protective. Overly so. Now about the gameplay. This is actually surprisingly fun. Alchemy in this game works a bit like chemistry. Everything consists out of certain elements, to certain percentages. MCs helper is able to analyze the structure of things, so she can eventually create it with that help. However it's only basic material, nothing else. So to actually get use out of it, you need other people, like from the village. Like this you can create weapons, armor, usable items for healing or attacking, tools for gathering and so on. You can memo anything you want to create as well as how much, and your alchemy creation menu will nicely list all of the things you need to make. As you then let these people create it, the memo automatically adapts. It's a great comfort function. So where to get material for alchemy? Obviously by going into dungeons. They are "map" based, with several nodes on, that linearly progress till it branches here and there. Every node has an encounter or a gathering field on it. Most encounter nodes you only have to do once, though can repeat if you want to, some limited ones however have to be done once per dungeon dive if you want to pass them. Usually so you have to fight once before being able to gather, as gathering fields also respawn when you re-enter a dungeon. Battles are in a simple 2 row based battle system of up to 3 vs. 3. Once you have more members, you deploy them at the beginning of a battle. There's a lot of typical stuff around, but also some interesting gimmicks. Like you can shove enemies around (they can do that with you as well), you may "summon" objects onto the enemy field, like something that draws attacks, or a bomb that explodes after 2 turns or taking enough damage. Likewise a magic girl can create a catalyst before or after her, that amplifies her spell dramatically as long as it exists, though every spell cast lower HP of the catalyst by 30%. There are also interesting attacks that grow in power depending on how many enemies there are. Like higher status triggering chance, single target damage, or a hit all attack that has bad accuracy unless there are a lot of enemies. Objects you place on the enemy field also count there (!). This is all even more fun, when you realize that enemies have conditional drops, as you may know from Etrian. One is generally a high chance, though can be made guaranteed when killed with a specific ability. Two are conditional, stuff like beating the enemy with a specific elemental attack, or on a specific row (remember showing enemies?). The drops all stack, so you can get all 3 at once. After beating any enemy 3 times, you also get told these conditions, even if you didn't get them yet. Only being able to equip up to 6 skills on each character also means, you have some customizing to do. That includes stuff like using items. Yes, not everyone can do that. It.. works. There's plenty to play around with, to not get bored, and the story being somewhat mysterious and interesting is also nice. Plenty of comfort functions, auto save on returning to the village, save anywhere (outside of combat) and easy to use menus help. Sidequests reward you with actual combat skills for your characters and are as such super worth it, and it's just generally.. fun? Seems to be fairly decently long as well. My highest damage of a buffed up spell on a weakness was barely above 200 damage after 5 hours. There's an achievement for 30000 damage. Curious how that's going to end up.