How to play ?

[Goudlock]

Hello,

because of the time limit, i don't know how to play. People keeping saying it's "easy", but it's only people who have play like every Atelier time game.
so how do i play ? because i'm not to much into the game, but i'm just rushing, not doing any side quest, not visiting any cave, try to avoid combat, and don't really do alchemy since it's past time way to much.
So is this how you play ?? just rushing until the exam ? i'm not sure i'm enjoying playing like this, so i'm wondering.

[Fel]

The time limit is extremely generous.

I am among the people that likes the idea of atelier games but couldn't get into them before atelier sophie because of that timer that ticks down all the time, making me feel that I couldn't get the full experience without a guide or multiple playthrough.

At first I was like you about the timer in Firis and my first "playthrough" reinforced that feeling because I just wasted time everywhere, trying to get to every nook and cranny, craft everything and so on.
Even then, I managed to get 4 of the 5 recommendation letters (you only require 3) and have enough time to get to the last city (by slightly rushing this time).
I decided to just waste that remaining time, get a game over and try to really play the second time around.
I managed to grab all 5 recommendation letters, get the missable item for the bridge (just a personal thing about wanting to not miss anything, there is no benefit in getting that recipe if you don't need to rush the bridge itself) and get to the last city without really skipping anything.
I had unlocked a lot more recipes, even played most of it on hard to get a much higher level, and all that with about a hundred days remaining.

Granted, new game plus helped me a bit.
You get all of the bonuses from costumes without having to switch them, you carry over the star level of your recipes (you still need to unlock them), the characters keep their equipment (I didn't have anything great) and the things you placed in your atelier stay (not the storage's content but what you placed on the ground except the story-based ones).
The knowledge about the zones I had also helped quite a bit obviously.

But even without all of that, what made all of the difference was focusing on gathering items, making consumables as high quality as possible when I was low on energy (you replenish energy based on time in your atelier, so crafting is usually better than sleeping), and understanding that there is no reason to stay in each area for too long.
Most side quests are completely optional, you don't really need to explore every single place fully and in most cases you get more potent versions of the same things in later zones anyway so stocking hundreds of most items is not helpful.

The only thing that is a bit of a spoiler is that you need to make a large quantity of "metal" for a recipe half-way through your travel and you will need a lot of "wood" items as well.

As for fighting, go ahead and fight, if you want more out of fights you might want to up the difficulty but in all cases making all sorts of bombs at the highest quality possible will allow you to get through most fights without issues, that's the part that most people that are not used to the franchise tend to fail at, treating the combat as a standard J-RPG where in fact your "weak" main character is an absolute monster if you use items.


TL;DR: You don't need to rush, just don't endlessly farm each area and you will be fine.

[Razgriz]

just play it , don't let time limit ruin your experience, have fun , enter cave, do dungeons, literally the game have a big margen of doing varius things, I have 1 year and a half left, so take a breath , then when you do the exam, is only the half of the game , the time limit is gone and you can explore any you want , the best hint i can give is you need forget the time limit exist , and do alchemy because that is more important than level up the party , the lvl in Atelier games are useless

[Kotri Lv.199]

It's easy so you don't have to rush to exam.
Or otherwise if you like you can just rush the exam like this, because after exam the time limit will be completely removed so you can play freely. Just remember to get all 5 letters before exam

[Razgriz]

Originally posted by Kotri Lv.199:

It's easy so you don't have to rush to exam.
Or otherwise if you like you can just rush the exam like this, because after exam the time limit will be completely removed so you can play freely. Just remember to get all 5 letters before exam

you only need 3 , 5 are optional and dont change anything