i started playing atelier marie. not the remake but the ps2 version that released with the second game, because it got a translation patch 5 years ago i recently learned about. although already i'm feeling like i'm going to have to buy it on principle to find out what they did with this game to make it palatable to 2023 audiences
for one thing you can buy books on the first day with alchemy recipes you can't craft yet. i'm not sure what the entire logic behind things is but you have to do something for most of the recipes to even show up in the list. also i started it like 3 times and what happens even on the first day seems to be incredibly rng. not even getting into the rest of the first few months where it seems like you kind of have to balance "efficiency" of certain actions versus talking to townspeople all the time. what areas you can go to, and what party members you can use, which combine to define what items you can get, and subsequently craft...are based on triggering events? or something. i honestly have no idea. it's amazing
this game really is some kind of hyperfixation simulator. you're like "i want to make this, but i need some of these items" so you queue up a bunch of copies of 3 different crafts and then you're about to do more when you suddenly think about how you haven't even answered the door in three weeks, much less gone to the bar to see if anybody wants to pay you for stuff you already did. a fairy will sometimes knock on the door asking if you'll pay him to clean marie's room. i don't know if this does anything non-cosmetic, but the shiny newness of the room goes away by the time you've done one or two crafts. game really hits a weirdly realistic nerve for me where i legitimately get the same feelings as i do about myself, especially when i spent all day doing shit and then realize i never ate. at least she has spinach, so i assume she eats. she's a little bit like popeye
2 out of 5 years in i've got things kinda rolling, with enough money to employ multiple fairies to handle annoying gathering tasks and extremely timewasting basic material crafting. actually some of them can make bigger things, which i assume is going to come in handy at some point since i already tried having marie make five giant bombs. she locked herself in her room for 6 1/2 weeks and when i saved after that her portrait looked desperately crazed because she was at 70 fatigue. there's a sign at alchemy school telling you not to use bombs in town. i took the bombs to the waterfall to fight some kind of spirit boss, but it only dropped one kinda-special item and a "golden salmon." which i was informed was stolen by bears when i left the waterfall and i had to play a minigame to steal it back from them without getting caught, which i failed at. so i reloaded. i might want those bombs for something more obviously useful later. what a game
