Atelier Lulua ~The Scion of Arland~

Literally does not work, and I've spent an hour troubleshooting it. Can't even get to the first controllable sequence.

Started the game, used WASD to navigate to Settings, pressed SPACE... Nope. E... F... RETURN... Nope. Keypad RETURN? Oh, it must be SHIFT like in really old console ports... Nope. ALT+F4. If launched from the Steam library rather than from the desktop, there is an option to launch a configuration app, you know, the kind with the gray+white layout from the mid-90s. For every button on a controller, there is a drop-down to select what key you want to map it to on the keyboard. But I have never used a controller in my life. I am not going to be able to remember that I should press P when the game tells me to press the blue button or whatever. Or maybe I can if I make an effort, but this is a 2019 game not 2009 and I bought this game to relax before going to bed, not to test my memory of controller mappings. So I refunded it. It's K by the way. The button to confirm things, usually SPACE or E or more rarely F or RETURN, it was K in this game.

An alchemist that reads a blank book after getting hit by same book on the head and now having hallucinations.

As someone who has played most of the modern Atelier games (Rorona and after). Lulua might fall short in some aspects regarding story, characters and combat. But if there's anything that this game excels is at the alchemy system. Lulua alchemy system is BY FAR the system with the most freedom of any Atelier game so far. If you are a fan that deeply enjoys messing around and fully diving into the alchemy system like me then you will enjoy it. The other parts of the game are very fun but I think that's the nostalgia glasses as someone who deeply enjoyed Arland trilogy. Overall: 8/10

Now that I completed the game and just chasing for extra endings before closing this game off, I'm already dreading having to let go of this game since I'm quite attached to the characters in the game and the music. Considering the arland series is a trilogy originally and it took 10th anniversary for them to make atelier lulua to be the 4th arland series game, I probably have to prepare to never see these characters again for a very long time (if we exclude resleriana series that is) As for the game itself, it's a very enjoyable heartwarming game as per the style of atelier arland series, and you get to see all of the main protag from arland series grow up but also still as silly as ever. HOWEVER, as other reviewers pointed out, not a fan of the barrage of DLC in this game, which is usually fine as it is a typical Koei DLC riddled game unfortunately. But locking the two main characters of previous atelier game behind not-exactly-cheap DLCs feels kinda cheap

😏