My 5th Atelier game, straight after Sophie 1, and this is the best one I've played yet. The grid crafting is so much better than it was in Sophie 1 (I haven't played Firis or L&S yet, they are next) and it's both much easier to understand the bonus and much easier to see what element everything is. There's a catalyst system in place of swapping out cauldrons, but serves the same purpose and does not have the frustrating exp one. Combat is much closer to what we saw in Shallie, but polished up, faster, and with new two character team up special moves with different effects. Some team ups are pure offense, some are buffs or healing. There's only six party members this time, meaning you will always use everyone, and they are all active members of the story. And all these gameplay improvements are on top of the most emotional story I've played from the series yet, with some amazing character relations/dynamics/interactions. As I mentioned in Sophie 1 review, my grandmother was taken to the hospital towards the end of my play through and was still there as I started this one, so the way Sophie and Ramizel's relationship developed in this game was extra potent for me, and made me tear up a good number of times. There are some very good stuff between Sophie and the young Plachta as well, and some very good stuff between past and future Plachta too (this game''s story takes place in a dream world time bubble inbetween Sophie 1 and Firis). Best combat and crafting both of the games I've played so far, best/most emotional story, great music and some great characters. The only problem is the use of in-game models for the opening song instead of 2D animation, a soulless practice that apparently started with Ryza

My 4th Atelier game, and the start of my second Atelier sub-series. Story is almost non-existant in this one, world isn't built up at all compared to the world of the Dusk, but Sophie and Plachta are very strong and lovable characters. The combat in this one doesn't have the swapping with the back row characters anymore, and instead has a new Defense and Offense stance system which I never felt as fun or engaging as the combat systems in the previous games and as the game went on, and in most battles can be mostly ignored. The Mysterious games have added a grid system to the crafting, where the grid represents the space in the cauldron, but the glowing bonus nodes aren't taught as well as they could be. You can acquire and swap out different cauldrons for different effects too, but the EXP gain when using anything other than the EXP cauldron feels too low. EXP gain is lower than previous games when using anything else and the exp cauldron boosts it up to around what they were, so using anything else feels bad. Sophie is the weakest entry I've played so far, but I did still have a lot of fun with the crafting despite its annoyances, and the characters and music were real nice. During the back half of my playthrough, my grandmother was taken to the hospital so the focus on what Sophie's grandmother meant to her as a person really hit me in a way.