Recent reviews by Rosmontis

Balatro

So I want to start saying that I absolutely adore the Atelier series. Although I've roughly been a fan for only 8 years, it's something that's near and dear to me. As I review this, I bluntly state this is a game that never should have been made. From gameplay, to cinematics, to story, everything felt half baked. Here are my thoughts on the alchemy system, the combat gameplay, and the story itself along with any tangents that may or may not be relevant.

First off, the alchemy system. What is the pride and joy that is the core of the franchise itself is an extremely shallow system gated by the need to roll on the gacha. The alchemy system in every Atelier game (and a few other Gust games) allows you to mix and match items to create equipment and combat items. Every game allows you to fine tune each item or build on the next iteration of any given item to make them stronger using resources you can find in exploratory maps. Resleriana requires you to use units you to roll on the gacha in order to build said items, forcing you to spend in game currency or real world money to obtain effects you would not find anywhere else.

To put into detail, when crafting a recipe in Resleriana it requires you to use 2 support units from your roster and an item that you gathered in a dungeon. Recipes start off with 3 specified characters you are not required to have but give specific starting colours and you are to choose units that follows those colours and an item that follows the last unit's colours. Once you have the necessary parts and fully craft a recipe, the product inherits the stated effects from your units and the item you've chosen. This greatly restricts the customization of any item you can produce and heavily relies on the gacha to produce items with effects you want. In addition, they also want you to roll for duplicate characters as the system will mostly produce low quality effects until you have higher star ratings for better consistency. Effect quality is also tied to the units at hand. Alchemists are provide a bonus chance to increase effect quality and increasing their rarity vastly increases that chance.

As for the combat gameplay, Resleriana uses a battle system similar to it's modern cousins. Or if you want a specific example from a more recognizable franchise, Final Fantasy 10's ATB system. The ATB system for Resleriana gives full detail of how the battle flows, from your own unit's initiative to when the enemy acts. From here, the game describes when someone acts as a panel (turn), which gives the game it's own twist. Individual panels will have a buff effect or a debuff effect that you can see on the timeline. The Atelier franchise is unique compared to other JRPGs in that it asks you to manipulate action economy in battle. Whether it be by item, breaking an enemy's stance (if applicable), or by status effect, the games give you multiple ways to do so. That being said, Resleriana's combat loop wants your units to obtain buffs on their turn and force the debuffs onto your enemies. Except that's when it begins to fall apart.

One of the core ways to manipulate the combat timeline in Resleriana requires the use of items. Panels can be pushed back in the timeline by using an item during your own unit's turn. Items are locked to a charge gauge that require a certain number of turns to pass before you can use an item. Those familiar with Blue Reflection 2 would see a similar system with it's supporter/reserve party member system where they can use an item or a special action done by the character in reserve.

Every differently named item has it's own unique effect, modified and expanded on via the alchemy system for the game. Products with effects that inflict debuffs are wierd, for lack of a better term. When applying a status debuff onto an enemy these debuffs will eventually expire after a certain amount of turns. Each panel that passes and for every action taken counts as a single turn meaning that debuffs expire very aggressively. With items that produce status buffs, they instead last for a number of attacks instead. That isn't much of an issue with the exception that your enemies have Area of Effect (AoE) attacks. Of my current list of recipes in-game as I am writing this, products with defensive buffs last for 1 attack from the enemy. This can be easily be removed if the enemy has an AoE attack in queue. You may say that you can push the enemy back with the given mechanics and prevent that but multiple AoE attacks can be and will be queued up against you when possible.

In addition, the effects that you produce for items via the alchemy system have very small benefits. For whatever reason the resulting effects from crafting have very small modifiers, with some of the best results being a 10% bonus for a general buff or debuff. Specialized buffs have a much higher modifier percentage but still requires you to roll on the gacha to obtain those effects. And if you do managed to get those effects, your party may not be able to capitalize on that due either your loadout or the enemy loadout. Presumably, the reason why these effect modifiers are so low are due to the status effects provided by the panels in combat or because of the gacha equipment that you obtain when rolling for characters. Which is it's own can of worms.

Now for the story. Admittedly, the story is one of the things I dislike the least for Resleriana. It is, however, very meandering which is par for the course for many Atelier games. A lot of the story beats in this is similar to an early Fate/Grand Order where for no applicable reason, you are shoved into a combat encounter. Clear the encounter or do not progress the story. A lot of the marketing for Resleriana is centered around Gals being Pals, going as far as having the pull animation for the gacha being an adventure with title character Resna and the secondary viewpoint character Velaria except they never interact with each other in story (I have only progressed as far as chapter 2-35).

There have been several points in the story where a character accompanies Resna to act as a guide, to protect her, or simply as a companion. They never actually show up in the combat encounters. From the start you are given Resna and a freebie unit named Shallistera. If you never engage with the gacha at all, they are the only two characters you have in the entire game. Izana, best friend of Resna is introduced as the absolute third character in the game who touts herself as guardian of Resna and wants to be a knight. She is not playable, you never get her as a unit nor is she acquirable from the gacha. For whom is essentially a core character and part of Resna's character growth, you never see that in gameplay.

In my opinion, Atelier Resleriana is an insult to the franchise itself. Which is funny as they had another gacha game that was shuttered called Atelier Online and it was mechanically a lot closer to the original games itself than what Resleriana does with it's own mechanics.

I have far more grievances with this than what I have written down for this review. However what is written down is what I believe to be some of the worst issues it has without tapping into how bad it's monetization is. This game is a high effort cash grab. It does not respect your time and wants you to open up your wallet. It costs $40 USD or $50 CAD to perform a set of 10 pulls from the gacha. It flashes splash screens of deals touting massively inflated discounts without telling you how much it would actually be.

To repeat myself, this is an insult to the Atelier franchise. Do not play this game, do not download this game, and perish any thought thinking this would be something to check out. Play the actual Atelier games instead (not Atelier Tia, that is a porn fangame). Whether be it purchasing the games on Steam or emulating the old classics, an Atelier game should be worth your time. Resleriana will never be.

Despite playing this for effectively 500 hours on record, both on and off Steam I have suffered multiple issues with the quality of the client itself. In addition to this, I had also suffered multiple download and installation issues via Steam which resulted in multiple full reinstallations of the Client itself.

I don't recommend this client if you are prone to frustration with technology.

I don't know what I'm doing but I already clocked 100 hours and I'm loving every minute of it.

Bang bang, boom boom. Catharsis in a tankshell.