Hi this is Tom. I know this game has been out for awhile but it seems to be a game that's not commonly known, let alone seen. It's sequels are out and you may have seen them but I'm going to review this one for you as it's what introduced me to it's franchise.
Plot: Ok this is fairly simple to explain but still pretty good. Your an apprentice to an alchemist shop where the owner is a incredibly lazy pervert named Astrid. A Knight comes to tell you that the alchemy shop is being closed because it never has customers and such. Freaked out the apprentice named Rorona warns her master about the problem. Instead of talking to the Knight about saving the shop she sends Rorona instead.
To save the Alchemy Shop you receive special commissions you need to complete every 3 months. Rorona never being taught alchemy despite being an apprentice for a good while is told by Astrid that she will have to complete these commissions herself as the Alchemy Shop now belongs to her. If she fails to meet any one of the commissions, the store is shut down and your master leaves, making you come with her.
The Characters: We got quite a few who are fun. First off we have Rorona, a frail know nothing girl serving as the protagonist, she seems to be the chew toy of the game too as her parents are always going on vacations not caring about her situation, her master implies she touches her in her sleep and a best friend who occasionally smacks her AND is now being forced to be the hero of the story. Honestly she's pretty funny with everything she puts up with.
The master: Astrid is great too, she's a incredibly lazy teacher who doesn't teach Rorona anything about Alchemy until the store faces being shut down and even then only gives her a book on basic alchemy. She's also joked about molesting Rorona and honestly seems somewhat interested in her. (That cradle robber!) In anycase she's also fun to have around as she's always relaxed and acts as the cool character of the game. There's plenty more but we got other stuff to go over.
Gameplay: Ok this is a tough one to go over. Basically it's a third person adventure game where you need to collect items to synthesize into the items needed, these can vary from food, drink, bombs, metal, whatever. You have 2 different branches of level: Alchemist Level and Adventurer Level. Each Commission has a time limit where if you play smart, will have PLENTY of spare time to level grind both level groups which is strongly advised.
To gather most ingredients you need to venture out into the dungeon and do some dungeon crawling. Kill monsters and collect plants with a limited space of inventory. You can recruit your NPC friends to help you with dungeons. Entering a dungeon takes a certain amount of days. But one issue I have is even then the monsters don't respawn and once you clear the floor you need to consume days to run through the dungeon again even IF your actually there already. You take days to get to the area and even more days to run through 1 level of the dungeon.
Another issue I have is the battle system, it's your normal turn based battle system where using special attacks doesn't take mana but instead drains your health. So to use a spell you loose HP, even healing spells consume HP which is confusing to me. On the bright side if you build up your power bar or whatever it's actually called, your team mates can help block attacks for others. They take the damage instead but I think it's less damage. The Power bar can also be used to have team mates hit a enemy at the same time.
Now for the Alchemy, once you collect the right ingredients ( it can usually be different types of ingredients so you don't need to worry too much. ) you can synthesize them into what you need. Doing this raises your Alchemist level which determines the success rate of making more advanced items and increases your HP, which also drains as you make items. You will also need to take side quests to build up the trust of the people and your friends.
Honestly all and all, the one thing about the gameplay that really gets me angry though was there was no real warning that you need to work up BOTH levels to beat the game. I thought to get the ultimate ending you needed to be max level in both Alchemy and Adventure but no, you need both of them at good levels to beat the game, otherwise you can trap yourself where you need to go to a high level dungeon and be forced to fight the monsters you can't beat. And there isn't enough time to level up to fight said monsters and it's game over and you'll never beat it unless you start over! To make it worse it seemed that I was CLOSE to the end of the game! This just pissed me off to no end and I just couldn't force myself to play again. That was it, I was just done!
This could have been saved if they offered a Game + feature but they don't. Everyone says you can't get a Game + even if you do beat the game to help you unlock alternate endings or otherwise get some of those tough achievements.
The Graphics are fairly nice, the artwork is beautiful but the music tends to get old fast. On a good note though you can choose English or Japanese Voices with Subtitles, I love this feature because sometimes I like the Japanese more then English or the English can actually be good. Either way, you can pick your language to hear while still having English subtitles.
So in full honesty, despite the epic mistake I made in the game, I give this game a 8 out of 10. The game really is good despite the no Game + feature and the horrible situation I had. Once I get more money though, I'm gonna try it's sequels without a doubt. Personally the best improvement this game can have is the Game + so even if you mess up badly, you can start over with all your levels, at least. Go ahead and take all my ingredients away and make me unlock the dungeons again but give me a fighting chance to make up for that critical mistake I made.