Welcome to our review of Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, the latest game in the Atelier franchise and the newest story of Sophie and Plachta.
This is a story about one of the adventures Sophie the Alchemist had after she left her hometown of Kirchen Bell. It is centered around Sophie’s quest of searching for Plachta after they are separated in a dream world of Erde Wiege, and the new friends they meet there.
This game incorporates new multi-link turn battles that feature six party members divided in two teams and begin seamlessly when players encounter enemies while exploring. The combat experience is enriched by a multitude of special effects and actions, including special Dual Trigger skills that involve two of the team members attacking in unison.
This game features an accessible puzzle-like synthesis system where you place ingredients on a panel to create new items. Players can choose to use either the Standard Panel or the Restricted Panel, which will increase both the difficulty level and the rewards.
While each region of Erde Wiege has fixed weather, you will be able to change this with the help of special tools. Changing the weather will allow you to not only change the scenery when visiting the same area but also gain access to new, previously inaccessible places. Perhaps the weather will affect even the materials you can collect?
I have said it before and I will say it again, if you played one Atelier game, you have played pretty much all of them. While this sounds negative, it can also be a most positive thing as lovers of the franchise will almost never be disappointed when it comes down to the mechanics of playing these lovely RPGs.
As it is never been my habit to spoil storylines, I do have to somewhat break that habit by shedding some more light on the original game as you do continue from it. If you have not played it and want to start with the newest one, I do recommend watching the video on the game that shows what happened in the previous installment between Sophie and Plachta, so it will make more sense in the new game. I hope that is about as vague as I can be, but really get yourself spoiled so you actually know the back story.
As Atelier games are rarely disappointing storywise, the remainder of this review will discuss the few annoyances I encountered. I know, this sounds weird but it is important to know they did not occur in other games for me, but when running, the game somewhat becomes stuttery on my PS5. Moving the camera around, it is less appealing than the usual fanservice Atelier games tend to bring, I mean, boin boin power, right?
Another thing that I really hated, when new characters do their entire intro dance, in Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, their animation is really crappy when they move fast. Like it is missing frames or just not presenting it properly. My TV is a 120fps capable OLED, so it can handle the moves just fine, it just stuttered. First time I had to leave the town to gather alchemy ingredients, there are consecutive movies and it just bugged me out.
In conclusion, aside from the minor bugs that may be ironed out eventually, Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream is a fun game to play, just kind of disappointed this was still a PS4 game and not fully upgraded to PS5 yet.
