Crafting - 10/10

Tetris fun in crafting to add traits and effects. So much fun with this system and even fun puzzle from the start figuring out what grid to start on. This was one of the better crafting systems in an Atelier game.

Characters - 9/10

The sisters were great. Their interplay was really funny most of the time, and occasionally touching as they talked about their dead mom and deadbeat dad. The cast kept growing with Mysterious series regulars and they all added soemthing to the story. Some were playable, some just shops or help. Alt was pointless.

Pacing/Gameplay Loop - 10/10

I really liked this. There was a chapter system, but even the pacing in the chapters was great. First you would need to do some checklist stuff to raise your reputation. Once that was high enough, you'd get an Exam to rank up the Atelier. Also, a new painting and new overworld area would appear. Nice loop.

Battle System - 8/10

It took a while to get more powerful and not feel so helpless against random mobs. Wish it'd have started a bit better, but ocne Firis joins, you can start feeling very powerful. There's a repeateable EXP quest that helped level up and fell better. Turn-based and nice follow-ups from Firis were the best.

Crafting - 8/10

This was definitely a prototype that got better in Firis and then L&S. Eventually it got OK, but was very limiting early on and I hated having to do so many upgrades to get the ability to rotate my pieces. Interesting to have so many different alchemy pots, but they kinda rang together after a bit.

Characters - 7/10

Just too many. You could only battle with 4, I didn't need 8 and really left some completely untouched for the vast majority of the game. Fat guy was uninteresting. Puppet guy was too late to care about. Gun guy was a complete dud. His voice acting sucked too.

Pacing/Gameplay Loop - 7/10

The game did drag at times, but it was interesting how it was all about the alchemy. The way to open new recipes, which kinda drove the whole plot was interesting, but so so many were ridiculously obscure. Thank goodness for GameFAQs, I'd not have figured out so many myself. 

Exploring/Battle System - 6/10

Both of these were quite basic. Exploring was go to place and collect, very few systems there. And there were far too many little places. The battle system was kinda basic and with such a large cast, limiting to 4 stunk. It was fine, but didn't really have clear ways to do extra damage, or I wasn't smart enough to consistently activate it.

Cut Content - 0/10

So many things didn't make it to this version: Job-specific outfits? Gone
Some islands? Gone
Monster job classes? Gone
Party chat? Hacked to bits

Fun - 5/10

I had to stop. The game is an absolute beast, but I've always absolutely loved it. This was just an inferior version and I didn't feel like playing it anymore. 

Maribel - 0/10

This character sucks. I've hated her for 25 years. The things she says are so rude and dumb. Can't stand this character, and can't get rid of her in this version.

Graphics/Sound - 9.5/10

It looks absolutely amazing. Perhaps the BEST looking DQ game ever...? Could be. Love the voiced dialogue but really kinda wish everyone wasn't always British. Also, some NPCs didn't quite match what I thought (kids sounded too old), and the accents sometimes were a bit much. Didn't like the doll astetic, but really barely noticed it in-game.

Characters - 9/10

I enjoyed all the people in this game. Sophie got to know her grandmother, who was pretty kickass. Old version of Plachta was great. The people in the town were 

Plot - 8.5/10

Was surprised this was a midquel, right after Sophie 1. Took place in a Dream World and Sophie gets to meet her grandmother and young Plachta. They deal with a benevolent goddess and the problems that come with having a "perfect" dream world that needs saving. It dragged a bit towards the end, lots of new places to go later on, but was pretty excellent. Maybe 5 hours too long.

Battle System - 9/10

This was super fun. I felt strong most of the time and there were lots of little things to add. There were follow up and team attacks and people could freely switch in and out of combat. Using the items I made felt great, those helped feeling strong also.

Alchemy - 10/10

The Mysterious games had really good ideas and methods of alchemy, and this 4th title was just perfect. Totally spent hours and hours doing the alchemy, and it was TWICE as good because both young Plachta & Sophie got to do separate alchemy, sometimes both could make the same thing, many things only were made by each. So many awesome catalysts and awesome add-on things.

Town Building - 8/10

I loved the early story centered around this and how I could recruit people. I wish it gave me more space or more capacity for building earlier on, I was recruiting more than I could house. 

Battle System - 9/10

Thing game flew by, and that 

Villians - 9/10

Found each of the first 3 villians that I had to take care of to get the rings of power back incredibly unique and quite horrifying.

Graphics/Sound - 9.5/10

I have a hard time playing this in bed at night because I ALWAYS want the sound up. Music and voice acting is amazing as always. The visuals are stunning and amaze me to this day. Octopath Traveler started these type of graphics and they still are leading the way with making them look amazing.

Town Building - 7/10

This was a pretty decent building system. I enjoyed putting down different places and assigning characters to them 

Characters - 5/10

There were far too many. The characters showed up far too often. There were far too many of them to talk do and do requests for as you only got like 8 slots of time per day. Honestly, after a little bit I just skipped any talking anyone did. I was in it for the gameplay, and was meh.

Exploring/Battles - 5/10

Dumb. This was just on rails. I let the battle play on AUTO they were so basic and pointless. The most I got to do was speed up and slow down their walking speed so I could make it to the end before time ran out. 

Limits - 3/10

The time limits didn't start off as a problem, but early on, I knew what would lead to my Game Over. You have X amount of days to do big Decrees, but if you do it in X-5 days, you lose those 5 days to do other stuff, it jumps to new stuff, and that's what did me in sure enough 20 hours in. I finished a tough job early, and didn't get those extra days to start working on the next quest. I knew for almost 10 game cycles I'd lose, because I was already too low a population to win. Strict limits suck, what sucked worse was being punished for doing exceedingly well.

Alchemy - 7/10

It was pretty basic. Menu-based and just click what you wanted, it shows the recipe and you pick how much of stuff you want to make. I did appreciate the flagging of things you could/couldn't make, the clear percentages showing success and the labels of things you sold. All very transparent & obvious!

Gameplay Loop - 8/10

Pay explorers to go get you ingredients. Make stuff with those ingredients. Go sell stuff at the store. This was a simple, but effective loop that I enjoyed! It was interesting how they tied game progression of the story to how many small milestones you did. Easy enough to look up and see what you're closet to completing, and then do it!

Other Characters - 6/10

The people were mostly tropey. Like Handsome here, the loud-mouth annoying son of the Mayor. This game definitely wasn't helped by the supporting cast for the most part. They played their bit parts. Did like the miner that had a connection to one of the other characters.

Other stuff - 8/10

There were plenty of rewards popping all the time in this game. Loved the small rewards along the way. There was rarely a moment when there wasn't something to go do or make or sell. At the risk of repeating myself, it was all so obvious and shown to players, zero hidden agenda or data.

Story - 10/10

Excellent. Perfect even? The whole story was based around a season 1 episode from TNG about a race that controlled the galaxy 100,000 years previously. Much like Discovery Season 5, it took that as a jumping off point and ran. This would've made an awesome season of Star Trek itself.

Characters - 10/10

I really liked the two characters you get to play as. They were interesting, felt like they were their own people even though I was the one making the choices. The crew was excellent and I enjoyed interacting with them and 

Graphics/Sound - 9/10

I had no problems playing this on my Switch. Everything looked really good, but obviously not HD. That really wasn't a problem as I was fully immersed and didn't care too much about this. Sounds were pure Trek, and every damn line was fully voiced acted amazingly well. Only had a single crash and one scene where a character looked different than she did because of my choice. 

Choices - 8/10

I did appreciate all the choices that were in the game, but I wish I could've made more save places to go back and try some stuff. My son even asked after watching a bit if I'd go back and do this game again, making different choices. I won't do it all again, but I wish it was easier to test things out. Also, I was confused a few times because all the responses seemed exactly alike, no obvious differences, as opposed to some things that made HUGE differences. I once had a character get injured and she showed as that the rest of the game, that was cool.

Story - 10/10

It was the entire cliffnotes version of all of Voyager! I loved how the little sidequests played out just like specific episodes, but I could make different choices and recuit people I met along the way and technology and they'd be part of the entire game. The whole game was just one big nostolgia trip, but also kidna trippy becasue I could do what I wanted and things worked out differently.

Management - 7/10

This game was HARD. Heck, I played it on easy and still had a difficult time keeping everything running and everyone fed! Inside the ship management wasn't always easy to balance. Janeway must've really known her shit, beucase this making it across the galaxy was not easy, even on easy! Lots of dice rolls and that 5% chance of bad things happening does indeed happen, and can cause catestrophic events!

Graphics/Sound - 9/10

DAMN, this looked and sounded great. I just loved pausing sometimes on the screens where the Voyager theme was playing. The space images were all freaking amazing. Characters looked so-so depending on where they were, I swore Tom was just some old dude at the con. 

Choices - 8/10

Ouch. I lost Harry to a wormhole accident because I didn't have certain things built perfectly and the odds weren't in his favor. Seven left me because I did what I needed to do. I loved how the choices could affect things even hours and hours later. Was sad when things just didn't work out, but it wasn't too bad to go back and reload.