Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk DX Reviews

I hardly spent any time playing this game, so take this with a grain of salt if you feel you need to finish a game to leave a review. I played the previous trilogy of Atelier games back on my PSVita, and I remember enjoying them despite the cutesy and bubbly nature of the protagonists. I thought the characters were generally interesting and I liked how they evolved across each entry when they made cameos or came back as playable characters. Maybe I've simply aged out of these games, or maybe it's because there is a greater variety of compelling games to play, but I have made three attempts to get into this trilogy, including playing about 3 - 4 hours on my PS5, and the beginning of this title turns me off so badly. Ayesha has the worst case of ADHD ever portrayed in a game and she presents as a total ditz which is hard to endear myself to. I've played many games with less than stellar protagonists, Luke Fon Fabre I'm looking at you, but despite the initially off putting character design, he had a great cast of supportive characters and had significant development over the course of the story. Ayesha, on the other hand, feels like a terrible trope that I could not get into the game. I also had an issue with the ultra high pitch girly VA in the English VO as it felt really fake and forced. I know a lot of people want that type of voice acting but it really breaks immersion and makes me dislike the character. I know most people will say "all English dubs suck!" or "Japanese VO is superior", but I rely on a good English dub to draw me into the story and appreciate the characters. While I've played games with Japanese VO, as well as having grown up on Nintendo far before VO even existed, the production quality and excellent dubs in many modern games makes this less tolerable. Also, whether in English or in Japanese, with or without audio dubbing, the writing is still pretty abysmal for the main character. Even the cutesy moo-oink creature panis, I mean pana, you may or may not get the reference there, is obnoxious rather than cute. I know I'll get plenty of hate for this, which honestly doesn't matter to me as I'm leaving this for people who are sensible and deciding whether to invest in this game rather than to rate it directly, but I only recommend this game if you are into Waifu ultra cutesy games where you find ditzy and innocent girl tropes enjoyable. I think there is a lot to like in the game design, and from what I recall of the prior Atelier games, the supporting cast often helped drive my desire to complete the game, but the past protagonists, while ultra cute and occasionally ditzy as well, felt much more tolerable and humanized than Ayesha.