Really liked it, at first you feel like you aren't progressing and you only get beaten up. But then with time you make some money, fame and skills in both combat and alchemy and it ends up being a very fun journey.

I actually only played this Atelier and Ryza 1 before at the point of writing this review and I wouldn't have expected to like it more than Ryza, while I enjoyed Ryza plenty, I felt like the simplicity behind Atelier Marie's core loop is what attracted me the most.

You have a 5-year time limit but the game isn't pushing you to be fast, I actually finished everything I wanted to do in 4 years, so just enjoy your daily life as an alchemist, I personally had so much fun having people knock at my door for special events related to services I did previously for other people, which in return made me more famous and made more people asking for help, I feel like this is something we lost in recent games, or maybe this is because of Ryza's plot ? While she helps people in the long run, she doesn't interact much with the average person.

In the end the two flaws I could find are the bosses, while you hear about them, nothing really happen while you fight them or after, I know Atelier isn't your typical hero saving the world type of rpg, but there's not a single dialogue related to defeating them and that's a bit of a bummer.

The second flaw is related to all the secrets events : on one hand, finding these feel great but on the other, there's so many important things you can miss which will block like 1/3 of the game easily, like a secret door you have to find behind a wall that open many books of knowledge that would help you solve requests you wouldn't otherwise. I get that this is an older game made with the intention of having people play and play the game again after beating it but... Well, I rarely play the same game multiple times nowadays unfortunately. So it's your choice to play it blindly or following a guide, for my case I did a bit of both.

In the end I still had a lot of fun and I recommand it to everyone who's searching a short retro game with a lot of charm. I will also definitely try the remake coming soon.

Weird fighting game for sure, it's not a bad thing but you'll definitely be completely lost when trying it out.

It really feel rough around the edges with a huge lack of normal moves and combo, the movement feel great nonetheless with all the dashing around and I wish we got something like this in the Arcana Heart series.

I'll also add that if you decide somehow to really tryhard this game with a friend or some people, the game CAN work really nicely and it feels like watching a dance between two players, both throwing and dodging projectiles. You can definitely see that the devs had an precise idea when making this game.

The story mode is probably the worst I've ever played from any fighting game, it ditches its fighting games mechanics and just go back to its roots and you get an ennemy that has infinite super with lot of invulnerability frames and 90% of the stage is lava, all of them do chip damage and some are unblockable. I kind of understand the concept but it's just poorly done and it doesn't feel good at all.

Apart from that, as always from touhou the art and overall atmosphere from the game is great and so is the soundtrack.

I had a lot of fun playing this game, the combat feels great, the exploration overall is good, satisfying and each floor felt very different from each other, up to the final boss.

I could find some flaws about the map, not the level itself but the map of each level (when you press B) which is pretty basic and could show more details like being able to move it around for the big floors or to see where doors lead to. But apart from that the game was completely fine, it was a short but very fun and original experience, there aren't many games like this one, I might go back to the NG+ one day