Has the alchemy been simplified?

[Walrus Beard]

I haven't had the chance to play a lot of the demo yet. So far I have seen that recipes require a specific material for one slot, maybe a material with a specific element for another, and then some slots there seems to be no restriction on the material whatsoever. Seems to be quite an emphasis on resonance instead. Maybe it gets more complex later on? It feels like there just isn't much to it.

[Algester]

Originally posted by pkmis007:

now I only have 4 cores and you should activate all 4 cores for better result. For some reason I feel this take time more than most complex ryza loop.

it takes less time than Ryza its just "quite clunky" as you go back to the core selection menu once you are done with 1 core rather than just switch 1 core for another which I get on a design standpoint "telling the player hey this core is done here's the next one you can do"

but once you know what you are doing crafing weapons and gear should be about 2-4 minutes

[spike86]

I actually like this synthesis miuch better than ryza's "dump a milion ingots to break the game" and it's closer to what was in dusk, where you get one ingot or neutralizer right and use it everywhere.

many complains that it's too simple to just make synthetisers items (ingots for atk, cloth for def, other stuff for bigger resonance) but that's EXACTLY how it always worked before mysterious!

And I'm extremely grateful that tetris is gone!
I love sophie 1 and 2 and Firis (yet to play L&S) but i always LOATHE the tetris mechanic.
You have the perfect items and.... nope, back to the beginning becouse ONE item doesn't fit and it kills the trait combo you set up! Horrible design I don't know how it's possible that people love it.

Ryza is another kind of time consuming beast: start with the basic recipe, morph all the way to the top dumping ingots and clothes everywhere you can for broken and massive stats bonuses (which between initial synthesis of those and duplication and gem reduction for duplication and gathering for gem reduction takes FOREVER) until last recipe. Then keep dumping ingots and clothes until 0. Go to rebuild (and maybe another round of gems reduction!) and activate all the nodes you missed, aiming this time at traits as well....

It's NOT deeper.
It's just LONGER!

in Mysterious you keep try and error until you match accettable traits combo on top of the tetris system (where you have very little control on the shapes) to unlock item effects. rinse and repeat a lot for each item until satisfaction.

In Ryza you spend 60% of you atelier's time dumping stuff on the evergrowing need for gems, and duplication. And 40% on morphing recipes for maximum brokeness.

Both are far more time consuming, with little benefits, compared to lulua (which is top arland) and Shallie (which is top dusk).

Envisioned seems to finally takle on that and streamline it in a good way.

Each effect is a Core. No tetris. You unlock and level up recipes (which incentivate exploration, it's an open world game after all!) instead of morphing 4 items into the final fifth one or just buying books (how's that even considered "deeper"?) and you use your synth items (ingots, neutralizers, salt etc.) LIKE YOU ALWAYS DID unless that core wants something specific.

How's that a bad system?
You can rebuild stuff once you unlock new levels.
You can keep dumping stuff in specific core nodes for better effects/quality once you have better materials.
NO GEMS NEEDED for rebuild.
Later you can both duplicate materials and synth items.
The third level of ANY recipe (including attack items and healing items) increase the number of things made, making eccessive duplication unnecessary.

How's it's a bad systems?
And I've not yet spoken about TRAITS BLENDING which is superior to mysterious trait combo, since you can do it AFTER making the item, saving you a lot of headaches!

There are only three VALID critics for this game:
1) performance and crashes issues
2) game gets too easy too early
3) following 2) most people don't get deep in alchemy because the game is too easy.

Alchemy here is not the problem.
BALANCE is!

The rest of bad reviews are the usual complain of butthurt old fans of ANY game series that hate changes for the sake of hating changes.
We got them when Gust moved from Iris and MK to Arland.
We got them when Gust moved from colourfull arland to Dusk.
We got them when Gust moved from good story pace of dusk to slice of life Mysterious.
We got them when Gust moved from instance world of S1 to Firis semi-openworld.
We got them when Gust moved from "back to root" L&S to Ryza's new-way.
We got them when Gust moved from "back to root" Ryza2 to Ryza3.
And finally we get them now, complaining for all the wrong reasons (when balance and technical stuff should be the only real complains)

If anything Yumia is closer to both Dusk and Iris, more adventure, easier to grasp systems that CAN be as deep as we want (if only they got the balance right it would have been a stellar release!). So it's really another "back to the root but looking forward" kind of release.

And I'm loving it!
haters gonna hate anyway!

[Washing Machine]

It's a bit straightforward and I ain't a big fan of how long it takes to fill all the rings, but I don't think any of these have been too difficult. The big plus side is I didn't end up running into storage limit like every other Atelier game. Hate that. I think this game has way simpler materials so the storage limit can't realistically probably be hit as a result, since the S rank and A rank mats are all basically identical.

Basically the time it takes to do alchemy in this is my biggest cripe. It's just way too time consuming to do an item. All I do anyway is bash more rainbow puniballs in there.

The tetris minigame in Sophie was always peak though. I absolutely loved it because it felt mad rewarding when you got something nice out of it. And endgame you got new alchemy perks that just negated the whole system anyway, since it allowed you to smack piles on top of each other and whatnot.

[larcek]

Originally posted by nbutler_5557:

Would anyone be able to tell me if trait level actually even matters? Reading the descriptions of the individual traits it seems like the boost you get doesn't actually increase with level.

trait crystals relate to their own trait crystal level. if you have a 10*ATK with a Lv2 Trait Crystal, you get 20 more ATK.

[spike86]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

No it is not. In Arland and Dusk there are two key distinctions. The first is that any synthesis required material items relevant to the item in question, eg. using water items in potions or ore items to make ingots, whereas Yumia is the only game in the series where outside of the one specific item used for each recipe you can just use any material item anywhere, material types are no longer a factor.

I think you're looking at that from the wrong prospective:
in alrand and dusk you used ONLY 2-4 items per craft.
And aside from a single SPECIFIC raw-material or synth-item, the rest was more or less free in X "cathegory" (water can be ANYTHING with water quality, thus puniballs, raw water, holy water, neutralizers with water traits ecc ecc, basically 1/3 of your inventory for EACH cathegory!)
You still have the specific item for EACH CORE, thus 4 VERY SPECIFIC materials for each recipe.
Then you have some nodes that requires specific materials too, and others where you can dump anything.
But it makes sense to dump only what makes sense, so ingots for equipments, salt for triangle resonances etc etc.
There's still a rationale, but you are more free to play with it if you lack something specific or optimal at the moment. And it's not much different if you sit down and let emotions go away for a second.

90% of the time, when it's "X cathegory" in past entries, was better to use a synth item than a raw material anyways thanks to better quality and trait transfer.
Different neutralisers could fit in a gazzilion different recipes, since each was 3 cathegories (red was: neutraliser, fuel, gunpowder, blue was neutraliser, water, gases etc) and in ryza they added even more "cathegory" to each neutralizers.
Ingots too, they were ingots, metal, so it is clothes etc.
Synth items were the preferred way, only TIME LIMIT made it different.
Given ulimited time, in both arland and dusk you would have made a gazzilion synth items and used them anywhere in place of raw-materials wherever would have been possible.

So I really don't get the difference.
It's SLIGHTLY different on paper, but ALMOST identical in execution!

The other is that passing on traits from material items to the finished product is no longer an element in Yumia, when this was the defining element of Arland's alchemy in what made them complex, as you had to figure out what path to take to transfer a trait from material A to final item B, and those games also had traits that would combine with other traits to make different traits.

trait combining is a thing that ONLY mysterious did (secret had traits "summing up" but not combining, dusk had nothing like that, traits where fixed and you HAD TO GRIND THE HELL out of the post game to get the best traits!)

Also the "path" you had to "figure out" was just neutralizer or zettel. The end. Soooooo deeper than this aye?
here you have trait blending, which is similar to trait combining but less time-consuming than using it on top of tetris. That's the ONLY differce, since you would put good traits on ANY zettel or neutralizer or, late game, philosopher stone and you'll throw this stuff in 99% of the items you craft and don't require ingots or threads, the only other stuff you'll ever made in previous entries to make a difference....

Levelling up items with currency found in the open world also contributes to the dumbed down alchemy by taking the potency of created items away from the alchemy process and putting it into unrelated overworld grinding instead. This sort of thing could've been tied to alchemy level like it used to be but they got rid of that.

Sure, then go back in game, level up luft to level 10 using said currency, and build it up USING ONLY RAW MATERIALS, then tell me if it's the same as using high quality crafted items, with big resonances and bonuses attached to them, tell me if the power, quality and traits slots would be the same.
Spoiler, it's not. They would be two very different lufts, just like in ANY ateliers you have to spend time in alchemy to make the maximum out of it.
Then add more time to trait-blend and stick 3 GREAT traits on top of a VERY POWERFUL luft.
That's not dumbing down, you still need effort IF YOU CARE about making the perfect item.
It's just LESS time consuming but does still require the same brain-power as before.
Just LESS GRIND. Maybe you like grinding then, and you have the time for it.
Other people don't have time to grind and enjoy a streamlined approach that still doesn't remove anything from the satisfaction of figuring out how to make the perfect item. But in less time.

[Algester]

counter arguement with Bells and Item rebuild you can keep duping an already gimped craft and just take the trait crystals you already want

so just max out the trait crystal amount core (once you have enough resonance for 3 traits unlocked stop and craft the item) there's some grind basically to acquire all basic traits then just keep duping via item rebuild

[spike86]

Originally posted by Algester:

counter arguement with Bells and Item rebuild you can keep duping an already gimped craft and just take the trait crystals you already want

so just max out the trait crystal amount core (once you have enough resonance for 3 traits unlocked stop and craft the item) there's some grind basically to acquire all basic traits then just keep duping via item rebuild

but that's still grinding, you had to figure out how to do it, and you still need to craft stuff for enough resonance.

in firis and sophie you can very easily and early make one-hit-ko bombs that will carry you all the way to the end, while on ryza you can create end game equipment (as in stats) already after 10/15 hours without even knowing how exactly (i did it in ryza 1 and it was my second atelier after ayesha).
in ayesha I finished the game 1 year earlier than deadline without understanding much of the synthesis system)
how were those systems 'deeper' it's beyond me...
secret and mysterious take more physical time to do stuff, that's grinding, not deeper.
dusk and arland have time limit to gate what you can do as far as synthesis go, that's strategic, not deeper.
yumia have you explore a huge world to make better stuff, again that's intended, but not deeper.

unpopular opinion, alchemy was never 'deep' in atelier serie, it just need to be discovered and played with.
you can finish any game in the franchise (I'm talking about no time limit ones) by just mindlessly dumping high quality stuff in the cauldron, building just the minimum synth items required and using raw stuff of high quality to finish the craft.
and picking the best traits available at the end.
wonder what? it will work for anything not postgame.

and postgame hardships and big health on enemies are the only thing truly missing in yumia.
the rest is as good as any other entries (some did character arcs better than others, others had better combat systems than others etc etc, atelier is not a monolithic thing)

[Shylaar]

Originally posted by spike86:

I think you're looking at that from the wrong prospective:
in alrand and dusk you used ONLY 2-4 items per craft.
And aside from a single SPECIFIC raw-material or synth-item, the rest was more or less free in X "cathegory" (water can be ANYTHING with water quality, thus puniballs, raw water, holy water, neutralizers with water traits ecc ecc, basically 1/3 of your inventory for EACH cathegory!)

Yes... that's what item categories are. Different items were much more restricted than others in what they permitted. And personally I don't think adding 20 additional junk materials to every craft is a fun system over hand picking a few.

trait combining is a thing that ONLY mysterious did (secret had traits "summing up" but not combining, dusk had nothing like that, traits where fixed and you HAD TO GRIND THE HELL out of the post game to get the best traits!)

Blatantly wrong, just look at all the combinations listed for Rorona Plus: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IoDJqkrAD0m5hhTjjz8fn8AdxwO4z4X9MdR9oNI6EMw/edit?gid=0#gid=0
If you wanted to get the trait Deity Power, you needed to combine Spirit Repel and Spirit Power, the latter of which required combining Red+Blue and Green+Gold, which each required their own combinations, and so forth. Combining traits was a massive part of alchemy in Arland, it wasn't something that only Mysterious did at all.

That's the ONLY differce, since you would put good traits on ANY zettel or neutralizer or, late game, philosopher stone and you'll throw this stuff in 99% of the items you craft and don't require ingots or threads, the only other stuff you'll ever made in previous entries to make a difference....

This is also wrong because traits were restricted in what class of item they could be applied to, so there wasn't a one item fits all approach in Arland. Obviously Zettel and Neutralisers were good for starting as a base but with any item you had to figure out what route to take in synthing layers of ingredient items for the final product.

The rest of your post trying to posit Yumia as somehow being less grindy than older games is so incomprehensible I'm not even going to bother.

Also, Item Rebuild was a mistake.

[spike86]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

walltext

For trait combining I meant Mysterious as in "2+2=5" In arland is more similar to Ryza approach of "1+1=2" "2+2=4" "4+2=9"
Sure you have trait combining, but FOR THE MOST PART is just more of the same, with exceptions. you have seven levels of cost increase, and it's CONVOLUTED to get to the last one, but it's still cost+++, it's nothing mindblowing like "half critical + critical finish= one hit ko" massively changing the effect.
in arland you have things like that, but only sparingly (for the most is same as ryza summing up).
That's why I said only mysterious (man how much cherrypicking you're doing here! it's exhausting talking to you) do traits combo. And I still stand by that because in arland YOU DONT HAVE TIME to do all this freely. So it falls flat.

And again you're missing the point. "figuring out" zettel or neutraliser or alchemic clay" (here I covered 60% of the recipes across several games in the franchise) it's not any deeper than "use whatever synth item is better suited for this crafting".
I WILL STILL use ingots on weapons (for atk bonus) and neutralisers on synth items (for resonance bonus), as much as I did in previous entries. Here I'm not FORCED to do it, but it's in my interest to do. What's the difference?

Look at Flamme, basic fire damage item. You need Igneo Stone, Popshell and (Gunpowder), to activate the three effect cores plus another thing for quality and another for traits.
If you stop there it's the same amount of SPECIFIC materials as any other entry in atelier serie.
You then have a SECOND LAYER where you dump better suited materials to INCREASE the effects. But this is the SECOND layer, think of tetris from mysterious or dumping traits items or ingots in secret or recipe morphing.
I'm glad tetris is gone and also glad I don't have to start with staff 1 all the way to staff 5 like in ryza. Both are time consuming for the sake of being time consuming.

If trait tranfer is not directly zettel or neut. in Arland, Dusk or Mysterious, you just use THOSE VERY ITEMS on another synth item, PROVING MY POINT.
you waste more time (doing one more tetris!), but end up in the same point. You'll use a synth item to transfer traits. whether is first level (zettel, neut.) or just one more level (pure water, ingot) nothing really change and you don't need a PhD to figure out either, you just open the recipe and check what synth item you can use there.
Just more time than dumping ANY synth item. But still dumping a synth item you do in the end.

Here they simply moved the trait system allowing full blending without wasting time, and stramlined (which is very different than dumbing down) the normal synthesis, by allowing more flexibility (and thus wasting LESS time: if you miss just ONE item, normally you'll have to go back to synth that and then returning to the original recipe, and that's not deeper, just more time consuming)

Dumbing down would have been "use whatever raw stuff you have, and the effect of luft will be the same", streamlining is "use whatever stuff you want, but IF you use high quality, good effects synth items, this item effect is 1+10x".
It's not the same.
Also "trait blend to your heart conent and slap your creations on your item freely"
That's freedom not dumbing down. I dont' think you know what dumbing down is at this point.

Finally your last lines prove that you do indeed are one of those grumpy old fans (the ones that kill franchises) that hate ANY innovation or change for the sake of hating them.

Yumia is less grindy , and I wrote that in plain english. You grind nodes and gems in Ryza 2, you grind tetris shapes in Sophie 2, you grind best-traits in post game Escha&Logy, you grind time, mana and alch.failures in Rorona.
Yes you grinded a lot.

Grind can be fun. In Yumia you grind paricles. The only difference is that you do that outside of the atelier. But ONLY the grinding. The alchemy and trait systems ARE in the atelier, like before. They just moved the grind outside.
It's neither better or worse, just different implementation of the same identical core stuff since Iris' time (or even before, dunno Iris was my first atelier)

I bet you also hated any entries post meruru, right?

[Shae]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

Originally posted by jclosed:

Hmm... Even if you call the Alchemy "simplified" for me it's fun. I really like that you can make simple things like bullets "in the field", so you don't have to travel back and forth to the Atlier to restock. The Alchemy system itself is just fun to do.

Frankly given the completely negligible secondary material cost to make those field items it hardly even makes sense for them to exist in the first place. What's the point of having a limited supply of bullets in my inventory when I can make more anywhere, at any time, and by the time I'm an hour in I already have enough materials to make a thousand of them? It's pointless busywork.

People complaining about that animation have probably forgotten that in older games you also had a short animation when you do Alchemy. I clearly remember that raising bubbles and more of that stuff. So why complaining if it is also present in other games in this series? Are people have become that impatient? It's less than a second ffs...

No it isn't. It's around 8 seconds. There's an 8 second unskippable cutscene every time you start to make an item. Start making an item only to realise you don't have as many neutralisers as you wanted? Now you need to back out, go to make a neutraliser, sit through the animation again for that, then go back to the item you wanted to make, and watch the animation AGAIN. No previous game in the entire series ever had ANYTHING like that. In Arland synthesis was lightning fast. Just look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1ku4NPr40
Everything there is instant, the only delay is the 3 second long completion animation, which you could skip.
You can see Sophie is the same too, the only delay present in the entire process is the short completion animation which was skippable; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpZISjUSNJs
And that's not even counting all the smaller transitional animations present in Yumia's system. It's just plain badly designed from a functionality standpoint and it's all the worse because the series was smart enough not to add lengthy unskippable cutscenes to a process you're doing hundreds if not thousands of times throughout the game before.

You can 3d print items you make with alchemy at a building without a cutscene, just takes some wait time.

[Algester]

Originally posted by spike86:

Originally posted by Algester:

counter arguement with Bells and Item rebuild you can keep duping an already gimped craft and just take the trait crystals you already want

so just max out the trait crystal amount core (once you have enough resonance for 3 traits unlocked stop and craft the item) there's some grind basically to acquire all basic traits then just keep duping via item rebuild

but that's still grinding, you had to figure out how to do it, and you still need to craft stuff for enough resonance.

in firis and sophie you can very easily and early make one-hit-ko bombs that will carry you all the way to the end, while on ryza you can create end game equipment (as in stats) already after 10/15 hours without even knowing how exactly (i did it in ryza 1 and it was my second atelier after ayesha).
in ayesha I finished the game 1 year earlier than deadline without understanding much of the synthesis system)
how were those systems 'deeper' it's beyond me...
secret and mysterious take more physical time to do stuff, that's grinding, not deeper.
dusk and arland have time limit to gate what you can do as far as synthesis go, that's strategic, not deeper.
yumia have you explore a huge world to make better stuff, again that's intended, but not deeper.

unpopular opinion, alchemy was never 'deep' in atelier serie, it just need to be discovered and played with.
you can finish any game in the franchise (I'm talking about no time limit ones) by just mindlessly dumping high quality stuff in the cauldron, building just the minimum synth items required and using raw stuff of high quality to finish the craft.
and picking the best traits available at the end.
wonder what? it will work for anything not postgame.

and postgame hardships and big health on enemies are the only thing truly missing in yumia.
the rest is as good as any other entries (some did character arcs better than others, others had better combat systems than others etc etc, atelier is not a monolithic thing)

but take note once you have the 3 trait resonance ANY ITEM will just work sure its some more menu digging but thats just that want to dupe the item 10times? just rebuild the item 5 times by inserting 1 item ANY item at that point and its not like you arent swamped with low rank and quality items at that point again this is for trait crystal abuse nothing too "general" I still take a stand on my viewpoint of Yumia's synthesis same complication as Sophie/Mysterious but simplified in the lens of Ryza

there's always room for improvement/complication but each to their own considering this maybe just the first entry for a duology or trilogy or "saga"