My first Atelier game, and a really good, comfy time. Great music, great characters and a decently good story. Crafting mechanics got better in the sequels, but was still fun to learn in this one. Set on a backdrop of a slowly dying world that exists just out of focus, while the focus is on a more personal journey creates a vibe unmatched by even its sequels. That setting is also full of really imagined, creative locales. There's a time limit to the game which isn't communicated well to the player, and there's no way to know how well you are on track for it as you go, creating a little bit of stress in an otherwise relaxing game, but it was actually fairly lenient and I ended up with a lot of extra time left over. Combat is turn based by with enemies in the center and your party's positions around them mattering significantly. The two sequels were much easier over all, but Ayesha was able to provide a consistent level of difficulty throughout the experience, where enemies could pose a threat the entire time, and managing health, MP, and items was always important. Loved this game, found a new favorite series with this.

A nice adventure game. Could use more cat things, there's no real night vision, nothing using their scent, no cat fights, no tree climbing. Can only jump in context sensitive spots, but landing on narrow rails would be frustrating with a normal jump understandably. I liked the settings and meeting the robots and learning about what happened to the world, though the story isn't about the cat itself much, the cat serves as a vehicle for the drone in that regards. The PC version suffers from bad Unreal Engine shader cache issues that cause the game to drop to single digit fps for a couple whole seconds at a time when trying to do the speed run.