Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea

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3rd installment of the Dusk trilogy and one of a long line of Alchemy games from Gust.
Those of us who played Ayesha and Escha & Logy are probably already looking forward to this.
If you're familiar with Atelier Iris, Mana Khemia or the Arland triogy you probably already know what to expect.

If not, check out that video above of the first 30min of gameplay.

This bad boy drops March 10th. This month is just so packed with games.

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A couple of people have asked me about the other Atelier games since I posted this thread.
Here's a handy image that was made for the vita birthday sale that was going on that explains a few things about the series.

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Launch day stream from TheMasterLL
[twitchtv]themasterll[/twitchtv]


Looks like the NISA folks are streaming it as well.

[twitchtv]nisamerica[/twitchtv]

[Yimoa]

Mana Khemia was awesome, I think I still have my ps2 copy.

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If you enjoyed Mana Khemia, I'd definitely say give the Dusk trilogy a try.
The first game, Atelier Ayesha is a bit less like Mana Khemia than the other two. Escha & Logy even have some mechanics you'll recognize like Burst and so on.

[Ayn]

Finished this last night. A few thoughts (and some things spoiler tagged).

-The Shallies weren't bad characters (I went with Shallistera first), but I think I liked the mains of the other games better.
-In terms of "World", it's a tie between Ayesha and E&L for me. Overall, however, I think the original Arland trilogy beats out the Dusk series in terms of overall environment (yes, declining world and all, but still)
-Alchemy was pretty fun to do this time around. I do like the simplified version of the Dusk series, but each game seems to have made steady improvements.
-The lack of a time limit was. . odd in some ways. I'm still mixed on it. On one hand, I didn't feel quite as pressed as I did in Arland (let's be honest; the dusk games were pretty forgiving in it).
-Played on hard difficulty all the way throughout. Don't know how normal is, but the only way you're winning things is by going into burst mode.
-Combat's a tie with Escha and Logy for me. On one hand, the support system seems to work a lot easier in this game. Characters have broader skill sets and the growth system at 50 is actually pretty cool.
-This could be me playing it wrong, or maybe by having a lack of attachment to as many of the characters, but. . ugh, most of the characters feel *weaker* in this game.
-On the other hand, if you build Wilbell right, she's an absolute monster; wish I had found this out earlier in the game.
-Odd as this is to say, I would've liked to see some characters explored more. I say odd because there's plenty of cutscenes and events that give you some nice glimpses into the characters. . but I didn't feel like much of them got closure? But maybe I missed some events.
-I prefer the dub for some characters, but that's because one of the Shallies sounds annoying to me in Japanese. Jurie's personality feels a lot different in English than Japanese, but I like both voices (though prefer the latter; she seems more mellow).
-Was happy to see Solle again. I just like the guy.
-Was not as happy to see Katla again.

Now for some other stuff:

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FUCK YEAH, Keithgriff! I thought he was a cameo character, but he joins your party!

Spoiler: show

Harry's back. The guy used to kind of annoy me, but he's comical

These speak to the ending itself:

Spoiler: show

The ending was a nice send off in some ways. Though I hated the whole 'we're going to show shots of these characters in game and them talking, but no actual dialogue'. Case in point, it was cool seeing Logy again by the ending. Seeing Nio and Ayesha together again and reuniting with Keithgriff was cool, but at the same time, I'm annoyed we never really saw Ayesha again after the first.

Spoiler: show

At the same time, I do kind of like the references they make to characters that you can appreciate if you've played the previous games; like seeing how Keith actually ..I dunno, respects? Likes Ayesha.

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I was hoping that I'd get Linca as a playable character in all 3 games. I get that Homura is supposed to basically be the replacement Linca, but eh. I'd have preferred Linca, just because of how OP she was.

And that's my take. Anyone else been playing this?