Finished Astalon: Tears of the Earth!

Got the “Normal” ending and that’s good enough. I liked a lot of things about this game, but the checkpoint system absolutely ruined my enjoyment of it.

Playing Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian!

I remember being confused when this game was announced because it shares the same name as Gust’s gacha game and I thought it would be some kind of “offline store mode” for that one - but it’s in fact a brand new game, only taking place in the same world.

What it inherits from the gacha game is the concept of “wanderers”, crossover characters from other games in the Atelier franchise. You main party is the two new characters (Rias and Slade) plus four returning (Raze, Wilbell, Totori and Sophie), but you also get a ton of other cameos during quests.

The game is a return to more old-school Atelier. Low-stakes, slice of life with turn-based combat and a ton of crafting to do. The battle system is very similar to the one in Sophie 2 with characters in the front and back rows constantly switching positions while chaining attacks, and I enjoy how this lets you use your whole party in most battles.

I’m really liking the crafting system. At first it looks very simple, much like a return to the early PS3 games, but the need to “chain” ingredients based color to transfer traits and effects add some really cool puzzle-like elements.

Finally, there’s a new “shop” system where you can sell items to get money and help evolve the city, but I think this one is half-baked. There’s some customization you can do to the store but most of the time it’s just “select some items to sell (usually using the auto-select feature)”, press “Open Shop” and get a ton of money.

No progress on Witch on the Holy Night this week.

No significant progress this week, just a little bit of Witch on the Holy Night and Astalon: Tears of the Earth.

Tempted to start Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian because I think it’s a game that will work better with my current mood.