Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book DX Reviews

Definitely different compared to Ryza, in a good way. While Ryza focus on the Crafting , Sophie focused more on the gameplay, combat. While the story for me was lackluster, the interactions with the characters were good and I like the gifting system and the rumors mechanics. The music is good and the graphics too, considering the time this was released. Overall if you are a fan of the Atelier series and Turn based games, this is worth the buy, 8/10

This is one of those games where you can sit back and relax. It's totally enjoyable.

Atelier Sophie was a fun experience! I really like the character designs (Sophie specifically) and music in this one. It's a nice introduction to the series after playing the first Ryza. I enjoyed the unique colorful alchemy, even though I never got my synthesizes perfect. I had fun unlocking a majority of the recipes, and I got Sophie's alchemy to the max level, as well as getting all characters to the max level. The battle music is really nice! I liked it a lot! I also love the rock theme that was going on with the final fight. And I just cannot get that doll making song out of my head either! My only problem with Atelier Sophie, is that I could never figure out how to speed up the combat on PC. I tried everything, and still never found the right button. So I went through the entire game on normal speed, which probably added a few hours to my playthrough. It's a good idea to get your stats up before fighting the final boss. It was pretty difficult, until I crafted more armor, used Angel's Whisper for auto revive, or you could use one of the better revival items. Put Corneria in the party (I think her delaying turn skill works on the enemy). And crafted a ton of God's Gifts, which helps a lot. Just throwing in some tips for the final boss in case maybe someone who is struggling decides to read through the reviews and sees this! There is some helpful information online too. All of this is what I worked with, because I didn't walk into the fight with the greatest gear. It was only decent. If you're not lazy and don't want to go through the effort of making super high quality items with crazy overpowered traits like me, then there are much better guides out there. Also, you will definitely need to do way better than this if you're playing on hard or despair mode. If I need to spoiler tag the item names, please leave a comment, and I will do so. I had a good time with Sophie. Now, next up is Firis! Edit: I feel like this review deserves an update. At the end of March, I completed all of the achievements after what seemed like a very long journey. Lots of struggles with the bosses, pushing myself to actually make better equipment and items, and really giving myself a challenge, felt great for a change. Sophie may have just been the push I needed to start working hard for satisfaction. Now I can say that I really understand the complexity of the alchemy, effects, and traits. All thanks to Sophie. I'm really looking forward to playing the rest of this series.