Atelier Lulua: Arland!

After a comical episode involving the Puni Rangers, Lulua's crew have arrived in Arland. Time to renew Rorona's license.

Atelier Lulua is definitely in the sweet spot in lots of ways. Playing hard mode (not even sure how I switched... just kind of happened) it quickly consolidated as a laid back journey with as much back and forth as I wish (cause no time limits, and quest boards in every town).

So, wait... is it a journey? Or darting around?

Lulua occasionally locks in: once in Arland, apparently we have to stay in Arland until we're done with it.

In all, I started Atelier Lulua and Atelier Totori almost at the same time. I spent twice as much time with Lulua but, frankly speaking, it is simply a prettier, better produced game.

Spending more time with Lulua, I also found time to get bored. In Totori, game time however weightless is such as scarce resource that there is literally no time for that (The thumb sized area maps also don't consistently register bad, because picking materials vs "gathering whatever", is a thing).

I overall don't think trading time limits for story flags is freedom. True, you can craft to your heart's content, but I'm not a crafter at heart, sorry!

Similar to Atelier Sophie 2, the story flags never let up. Atelier Sophie handled this gracefully - not quite letting go, but laconically posting "get better at alchemy". Which, well.

Freedom is a summer holiday. If Gerhart closed shop for a couple of months, that would be two months of well earned freedom.

Still haven't figured how to make a hi-q healing salve.

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