Teach me about this game!

[Player 2]

Despite having played many convention JRPGs this game has some unconventional elements that I'm not sure what's going on

1) Is the combat system meant to be an arcade style? The attacks and damage nos are flying so fast I'm not sure what and if there is meant to be an effective combat action to take. I see monsters have weaknesses and resistances but there doesn't seem to be an effective way to consistently select an attack option that exploits a monster's weaknesses?

2) Consumable items. Given how much 'effort' relatively speaking to craft a consumable item, I'm guessing they are meant to be crafted to slotted in attack weapons instead of to be used like normal consumables in a JRPG games is that correct? Also having a cap of only 10 CC charges for using items, I'm guessing items are to be used sparingly or am I meant to stock up on a bunch of consumable items to be spend on recharging CC's.

3) Is there a specific strategy to the first mini-boss to progress in the main story quest in the cave? I'm around level 10 and it doesn't look like I can craft much new gear to make my team more durable. I've tried the fight 3 times and just get rekt, I can't even heal fast enough to keep up with the damage from the monsters.

4) Is using alchemy to create gear more of you're not suppose to know what you're getting kind of thing? Usually in games I know the base stats of the gear of exactly what I'm crafting and what the specific stat improvements I'm getting with the modification or quality I'm adding to the craft

Non-technical questions

5) Is Ryza around age 15 or something and just sneak out of her parent's house to go outside to play everyday? How does Ryza given the setting possess a staff capable of doing magical damage when her parents are farmers and she lives on a village island and there's no mention of magic being a thing by anyone else?

6) Is it common in an Atelier game that you can't tell if a monster in the "open" world is too strong above your level before you get into a combat with them?

In most of RPGs I've played, I'm used to getting into the nitty gritty of character stats, skills, elemental stats, gear stats etc on how to "optimise" my team for combat but in this game it seems to me I'm almost winging things most of the time as I go...is that the typical nature of an Atelier game?

[Lawtonfogle]

1. Combat is fast paced for the most part, with two characters being AI controlled. It takes some skill to leverage them (as you can freely swap at time), but often you can just craft better gear and focus on your main character using a few items on bosses and that's it. Harder difficulties require more knowledge, but if you are playing top difficulty then you should already know all the moves by heart or else you will get destroyed before you can even read what an ability does.

2. When crafting with an item, that item is consumed. For combat, it is not. Each character can equip a number of combat ready items (different per character, max any character allows is 4). Items have a cost in CC that depletes that much CC each time you use it. CC is refreshed when you go back to base. 'Sacrificing' an item also restores CC, thought you don't actually lose the item, you just are unable to use it (even if you have enough CC) until you go back to base. You can reduce the CC an item costs to use with crafting. CC is pretty low even at end game, so reducing the cost of CC is important (though Ryza can learn an ability to regain 1 CC per battle in the late/post game).

3. Even if you can't craft new gear, just crafting a better version of your current gear can power you up (even getting the same stats at higher gear quality will make you stronger). Otherwise, make sure you craft a few items to throw as well.

4. A few traits aren't explicit enough in what they give you, and some of the mechanics aren't well explained (like how much equipment quality boosts stats), but in general you should know what you are getting as you craft it. I think quality is done by combing the quality of weapon, armor, and both accessories. It starts at a 1 times multiplier for 0 quality and goes up to a 3 times multiplier for 999 in all four. So if you make all items 50 quality, you are effectively 1/20th of the 2 times increase from x1 to x3. So that roughly equals a 10% boost. So roughly for every 5 quality points (across all 4 gear pieces, so 20 quality points on a single piece of fear) you get a 1% boost in stats. Not large, but it could be worth 2 or 3 levels worth of stats even in early game. In late game this becomes a major factor.

5. The power of alchemy isn't well explained. Even Tao uses a magic staff. Extremely weak without being powerful up by alchemy. In general, even at level 99 everyone is still extremely weak compared to what their equipment gives them. In universe it seems to be that alchemy provides far more power than what level or personal skill can provide.

6. Haven't play enough other games to be able to answer this one.

[Black Hammer]

1. You control one character, while the other two are AI controlled but react to your actions. You can also set them to use AP or not. Exploiting weaknesses is as simple as selecting abilities or items that do the desired damage type, or switching on the fly to one of the other characters with the attack type you want.

2. I haven't felt items being used sparingly. You might not throw bombs every single chaff fight, but considering even your "consumed" items to refill your CC aren't actually gone, just unusable until you rest, it's not much of a problem. I've rarely felt like I'm running out of item charges. At the same time, access to better ingredients or crafting techniques gives me a reason to build new and better items, too.

3. Get a couple more levels while focusing on getting ingredients to improve your armor. Also build a bomb (not an explosive uni). I went after the wrong golem there (the miniboss one, not the quest one), and did a bunch of grinding and crafting before I fought the quest one, so I just one-shotted it at level 16. Levels are deceptive, because there's apparently some multiplicative relationship between base stats and gear, as opposed to just base stats + gear.

4. You do know pretty much exactly what you'll get, provided you understand the system, which takes quite a bit of doing. The key factor, as Lawtonfogle pointed out, is usually quality, unless there is a specific trait you're gunning for.

5. Ryza is 17, I think, and there is actually dialogue addressing the magic to some extent. Implication is that magic isn't all that useful if you're not boosting it with something else, usually a mix of alchemy and artifacts.

6. Yes. It's a Gust (the developer) thing and usually works that way in their other games as well. Usually goes along with the sense of exploration they want, but you can usually escape or just die with minimal penalty. This is a game where you're supposed to run into things and find out for yourself that they'll kick your butt, not be informed they are level 18 beforehand.

You're still in the beginning of the game. At some point, once you understand the crafting system, you'll have a lot more ability to make items do exactly what you want to boost people in specific ways, as opposed to just sort of throwing things together.

[DD The Pumpkin King]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaH30d-tRmk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A26DPOVO8uA&t=303s

I'd give these two videos a watch too. They were a huge help to me personally since the in game tutorial was incredibly unclear.

[Jack The Stripper]

Hey just wanna say that the first boss (the golem in the cave) smashed me up in seconds when I first fought him. But when I did some alchemy and created some bomb type items I brought him down with no difficulty at all. I came out of that fight thinking it was really kind of a tutorial on the usefulness of creating strong battle items. And whilst yes, you have limited uses, they are extremely potent when used at the right time. Also as it was said, resting restores your uses to max, or sacrificing some purposefully equipped junk items does it too.

[Osamaru]

1) Combat is fast paced, and End game involves carefully managing your tactic level, CC and buffs, while switching between characters.

2) There are items that can raise your CC to 15 later in the game, and most end game items have ways to lower the CC count.

3) Equipment is 99% about the trait and effects you have on it. Even a Mid game armor/weapon with good traits and effects will blow a end game "Raw" armor/weapon out of the park.

4) When in doubt, look at the Stars.

[Gin-chan]

seeing as everyone has explained almost everything in detail just wanted to point out a bit more detail on point 6.

6)In general areas that are unlocked later will always feature higher level enemies, As for bosses/minibosses and special enemies these can usually be identified from distance by looking if they are moving or not, their sizes, and if their model colouring is different from every enemy you have encountered in that area. An enemies that is not moving are usually guaranteed to be minibosses or special enemies that will require more effort than normal, same goes for most enemies that have the same model as enemies you have fought but are bigger or have different colouration compared to others .Best way to identify special enemies is to first walk around an area and see what type of enemies are common in that area and then note which enemy seems to be unique compared to every other enemy that you have seen there. All 3 variations of guarding/ different size/different colours for special /minibosses have pretty much been used in most previous atelier games that i've played especially the recent ones.