Atelier Totori ~The Adventurer of Arland~ DX

This has to be the roughest Atelier available on Steam. It's easy to notice the lack of QoL compared to what Rorona had, because that one was remade and this one wasn't. It may feel like you are playing an older game if you are going in order.
It is not possible to sort through traits. This makes the process of crafting equipment and items a bit more annoying, but I'd say that it is still at least easier to get the best traits on stuff than it was in Rorona? That's how it felt in my experience. The cost points are determined by the level of the items you are transferring, I think.
You need a guide if you want to get the true ending. It really isn't possible to get everything done on your own without one. There are a lot of missable things that can mess up your playthrough, like needing to come home with a full basket with a certain character in your party or else you'll miss every other event they have later, or needing to keep your basket full when you talk to the shopkeeper in Arland to unlock more space. I could only carry 60 items per trip for the entire game, and accidentally found the "secret" way to increase the storage limit to 100 on my second playthrough.
These are the only things I didn't like, really. There is also Melvia's entire existence, but we aren't talking about that. I'd now like to comment about the things I enjoyed.
Totori is my favorite Atelier protagonist. There is just something really nice about her that I like more than the rest of the main characters I've seen so far. Maybe it's her English voice actor, because her performance was amazing! The perfect pick for Totori.
I like the story of how she is looking for her mother, and aspiring to be both a great alchemist and adventurer at the same time. If others tell her it is impossible, she won't listen to them. She does it all anyway, and that is something great.
The returning cast in a sequel is always something to look forward to. Some of the characters have changed quite a lot, like Sterk and Rorona. It's interesting to see what happened to them. And I'm glad we also get to see Cordelia! The sister that Esty mentioned is actually in this game too. The rest of the new characters are for you to see.
As for gameplay, I think the wide map was nice, with all of the different islands and gathering locations. Even though having to travel many days for some of them was annoying, that eventually isn't a problem anymore once you unlock the Warp Gate.
There is nothing to complain about with the alchemy, other than the sorting issue. It's a lot like how it was in Rorona, and I'm sure it will be the same in Meruru as well. I like it that way!
Collecting points for your adventurers license was something I found fun. It was always nice to see those ranks go up whenever you complete any objective. That being simply crafting 30 items or slashing through 50 slime creatures, or something even bigger. There is a lot to do. Especially if you want to get to the max rank, which is completely unnecessary by the way. The highest you need to get for a lot of the endings, is Cobalt rank. Galaxy is the most you can get, and that requires you to do almost everything in the book, or maybe even everything. It's only if you're that much of a completionist.
The character portraits are great as always. Honorable mention here! I had to bring them up at some point.
And there we have it! Atelier Totori was a tough, but fun game. I had more fun on my second playthrough, because I mostly knew what I was doing for that one. After spending a while reading through all of the ending requirements, I was able to drop the guide near the end and finish the rest on my own. I went from thinking it wasn't possible to get 100% achievements, to actually having a good amount of months to spare by the time I met the criteria for everything. It is possible! I think what you really need for this game is patience. And a guide to get an understanding of what you need to complete at what timeline, but not a guide that tells you what to do throughout the entire adventure. I'd say journey, but this is about being an "Adventurer of Arland."
That is all for now. Next up is Meruru!

This was my first Atelier game on the PS Vita so it was great to revisit Totori's journey after all these years. It was hard for me back then but now after playing many other Atelier games, it was a lot of fun and not too hard.
The OSTs in this one are by far my favorite due to nostalgia.
Totori is so cute and funny!!

I absolutely love this game and it is my favorite Atelier game and will always be my favorite Atelier game.
If anyone from Gust is reading this, PLEASE GO BACK TO GAMES WITH A FOCUS ON SYNTHESIS LIKE THIS ONE. I do genuinely wish Gust pulls something like they did with the Arland trilogy and goes back to their roots with synthesis-focused games (preferably with a time limit in my opinion but I know that will scare many people)
Objectively this is likely not the best Atelier game in any regard; there are better Atelier games in terms of combat system, synthesis system, and any other facet.
But there's something truly special about the game that I can't fully convey in words.
I really love the fact that the game makes you feel like an adventurer; you're free to do anything you want, but you have to do something in order to get your adventurer rank up. Obviously you are restricted in the areas you can visit and the items you can craft by your current adventurer rank, but I think most of my playthroughs have looked very different, despite the fact that I haven't even really tried to do anything aside from playing optimally.
I know this is controversial but I even love the time limit because I feel like it forces me to be creative with some of the optimizations I make. I realized in maybe my 3rd or 4th playthrough that if I registered S rank items that came up frequently as request items and had extremely low quality and a significant amount of price-lowering traits, I could get a lot of money from requests without spending much time. I know some people are turned off by the time limit because it adds too much pressure but I think having a little pressure is good (it can be brutal though, especially if you're trying to go for all of the endings because some of the events required for endings have very weird trigger conditions and require you to be in certain locations; this should probably be fixed a bit)
The battle systems in the Arland trilogy games are very simple especially when you compare them to the Iris and Mana Khemia series, but I still love them because I think they do a good job to test how good you are at crafting. I've beaten a lot of bosses earlier than I should have because I came in with very strong items. Totori's duplicate skill just opens up so much in terms of what you can do with items.
Something about exploring all of the unique areas is just really special to me. These days there are games that obviously look prettier, but I think all of the areas in Totori are just really neat in how different they all look from one another.
And the soundtrack. My god the soundtrack is amazing. In my opinion, this is some of Ken Nakagawa and Kazuki Yanagawa's best work. A lot of the songs for the unique areas are just so good at giving the proper vibe of the place and just sound amazing. I have so many hours racked up on this game because I just use the game as a music player.
I also honestly love the story; I think it has the right amount of comfy moments and serious moments. The slightly more somber tone of the game compared to Rorona/Meruru really sets it apart for me and I think it was done well. I also like a lot of the characters in the game (not all of them unfortunately), especially Totori; I think she's intentionally a lot more normal design-wise (aside from her clothes) and personality-wise compared to some of the atelier protagonists and it works really well in my opinion.
I'd also like to shout-out Totori's English voice actor, Cassandra Lee Morris; she did an absolutely perfect job conveying every facet of Totori. Totori is, simultaneously, a cute, slightly clumsy, and initially meek character, like her dad, but she is also very stubborn and spirited sometimes, like her mother, and I think the English voice just captures this perfectly.
I think all of these things along with so many smaller things just culminate to give this game a very unique charm that really makes it special to me. Even just the tiny things like the textboxes that look like pages from Totori's book, Totori's stats being shown on an adventurer's license when you open the start screen, the fact that the game uses an anchor as an icon to indicate which enemy you're targeting; it just gives the game such a unique charm that frankly is just missing from a lot of games I've played.
This game is absolutely not perfect and I could not, in good conscious, give it an objectively perfect rating. However, I love this game to death and it holds a very special place in my heart. I would recommend the game to anyone in a heartbeat despite all of the problems that I know it has.

Steam Deck: FMVs don't work, so no opening or credits, and shop keepers crash the game ONLY if you talk them DIRECTLY after a cutscene inside their shop where you're still inside the shop afterwards (this includes Ceci in the bar). Everything else runs well.
I usually do not like these coming of age stories, but Totori's is just so cute. The music is absolutely wonderful, and I really love the dynamic of the cast. There are some very poorly aged scenes and lines, but overall, it is a fairly wholesome game that I would feel pretty comfortable giving to a kid to play through.
Combat is more involved than Rorona, and alchemy is missing a lot of quality of life additions the other two got.
My game time is a little inflated; I got all of the important endings. If I had not missed one small mechanic I would have been able to 100% my first playthrough, but I hit every pitfall I possibly could have while trying to get them. I'd hazard a guess that the game takes around 18-20 hours for a casual playthrough.

My very first Atelier and because modernization wise, this was the most primitive of the updated Atelier of the PS3 Ateliers to play and later I would come to know that Atelier Totori would be considered the hardest of the Arland bunch just because of achieving true ending is hard stacked on tight scheduling fit for salary man job and it's unforgiving primitive features even with the DX update. It takes several playthroughs of grinded equipment and money to achieve goal ending.
Superboss Dungeon, Orthogalaxen, is hard as balls, need to stack the best equipment and items to finish this. Blood Element is no slouch, it took me several days and nights to come up a strategy dealing with the Dungeon itself, conserving items to each required boss defeated and not to mentions with the large ass hallway structure the dungeon is constructed whereas the player would have to walk and spend lot of time running around just to get to each boss instead of later games they would either make the map more smaller or even better skip warp to the room when entering the dungeon. Cobalt Skull and Blood Element are the hardest boss you can play against.
The game, although a very hard Atelier game, is fun because of the characters and it's setting. Totori would become the only Alchemist who would travel far and wide compared to other Alchemists in Arland, sans Astrid Zexis of course.
10/10 would bully young Totori again.
PS
she is the only Atelier to shout Barrel when talking to a Barrel

This game probably has the most compelling story and protagonist of the Arland trilogy. Its gameplay has significantly improved over Rorona, though it isn't quite as refined as Meruru. It's a very enjoyable experience for anyone interested in the Atelier franchise.

I never reviewed this...
Well... it is good. Cute game. Sequel to Atelier Rorona, comes before Atelier Meruru.
Atelier Rorona DX is a bit better gameplay / content wise, probably due to being remastered AFTER this one and Meruru DX.
But the whole trilogy plays nice together. This one probably has the most interesting story of the three.

Anyway... I won't drag this out. I'm just trying to find the games I've completed and never reviewed...