 A brand new Atelier game is now released for the Nintendo Switch, the PS4 and PC. It is a collecting and crafting JRPG by Gust in the now very long running series dating all the way back to 1997. I'm finally seeing this series reach its recognition that I feel like it is deserving, as now more and more people are getting their eyes up for Atelier. I know for a fact that I have already converted a bunch of people into this series. I often get comments saying that I was the one that introduced them to the series and converted them into being super fans of Atelier and it is one of my favorite game series. Now Sophie 2 is a sequel to Sophie 1 from 2015 and I have to say when I saw this game was announced I never saw it coming. I didn't think there would be a sequel to Sophie. Original Sophie was never a favorite of mine even though I played it a ton and I enjoyed it a lot back in the day on my PS4. If you happen to be new to my channel consider subscribing, hitting like and leaving a comment. Story! Sophie 2 introduces you already on the main menu. A pre-story introduction to what happened in Sophie 1 with a short and informative video. So back in Sophie 1 Sophie was a young alchemist who befriended an old book with Amnesia and as she wrote alchemy recipes into this book the book started remembering stuff. The book was once an alchemist called Plakta and with a lot of help from townspeople and Sophie's friends they managed to transfer Plakta's soul from the book and over into it all. It made sense if you played the Sophie 1. Sounds funny when I say it like that. And now in Sophie 2 we see them walk past a very big tree when they are out adventuring and they are suddenly pulled into a vortex portal and sucked into a whole other world. Sophie wakes up alone not able to find Plakta anywhere, she gets help from some people in this brand new world and is told she has now entered a dream world in a different dimension than the regular world. Everyone in this dream world they are here voluntarily all invited by the world's creator called Elvira and they have come from different time periods too some from 500 years ago and some from even the future. People can come from anywhere and anytime and people decide to stay here to reach their goals and pursuing their greatest dreams. I'm liking all the new characters that are introduced in this title, especially I grew very fond of Ramysel and Elvira. Look forward to meeting them. Every big character has their own storyline and I have to say the story overall is massively improved this time around. I'm very immersed definitely. I'm loving this story. This story is better than earlier Atelier stories. This one I don't know it hit me. It hits me. Very nice. Gameplay. As any mainline Atelier game you have your home base, the actual Atelier, where you do synthesis which means crafting items. Here you can sleep, save and manage your outfits. The gameplay loop consists of watching story cut scenes, traverse around a ton of different locations, collect materials for crafting, defeat monsters, doing side quests and leveling up. The actual variety and freedom you have in the gameplay loop is one of the things that makes Atelier games so attractive to me. The freedom to do what you want when you want to do it. For example you can mindlessly grind side quests if you don't want to think too much and you can continue story arcs when you feel that is what you want to do. Synthesizing this time has similarities to how it was in Sophie 1. With some small added new additions you place your selected materials required to perform the recipe onto a Tetris-like grid with bonuses based on how you place them. In Sophie 2 I have only used autosynthesize with the exception of when I have a quest where a certain trait is required. But yeah I autosynthesize in this one because this is not my favorite synthesis mechanic. I for example much more preferred synthesis in both Rises and I have said so. I love the synthesizing in those. It's just different in this one. So out in the field when exploring you can collect materials everywhere by knocking trees, mining, fishing and this time there are small minigames sometimes when collecting. These are for the most part fast and easy to understand. In order to do mining and fishing you have to manually equip the gear, your fishing rod, the pickaxe in your Atelier, in the menu. Never forget this. I see new Atelier players being confused by this but you have to equip it to use it. You can engage in combat by hitting or coming in contact with enemies with this time a seamless battle transition which feels very smooth. It is a welcome feature. Combat in itself is not like it was in Risa but more like found in the first Sophie which is entirely turn based with normal attacks, skill attacks, items etc. And sometimes enemies can have an aura shield around them which needs to be knocked away before you can do damage to them. And I think this makes your tactical choices more critical especially during boss battles. You can definitely play on easy difficulty. I do. No shame. As you progress the story you will unlock locations on the huge world map which is a much improved map where you can see both enemies and materials in every discovered area also in all different weather conditions which is a new and fun thing in Sophie too. You can change the weather in dungeons and other locations between sunny weather, rainy weather, snowy weather, all sorts of weather. And these weather effects they change the terrain of which you can traverse such as freezing over lakes to walk over them or drying lakes with a sunny weather to reveal different paths that you otherwise couldn't progress through. These weather puzzles are smart and I have to say I enjoy them. You can level up friendships with your party members and they also have their own objective lists where you will be rewarded with ability points. Gameplay loop is just as any other italian game that is really good. Very nice. Graphics. Dude the italian series is absolutely known for their colorful and gorgeous graphics and way too often I find myself just looking around at everything both the characters and the landscapes. It is all just so pretty. Character designs in itself is especially detailed masterpieces and I can confirm that the Switch version of Italia Sophie 2 runs well and looks good. I play exclusively in handheld mode as I always do and I am loving how this game looks. Facial animations are even more improved upon and lifelike with much more details this time around. Some areas have a bit low resolution looking textures though. Not gonna lie. I'm not sure how this game looks on other systems than the Switch. They probably look better on PC and PS4 version. I find a lot of details in the interior items and fruit and food items all over the place. They are all in 3D so just like a big attention to detail. View distance is good and loading screens are acceptable. It is just such a pretty game. Well done. Music. There is only Japanese voice acting and I have to say I miss English as an option for voices. Sophie 1 had English voice acting but the Italia series has dropped having English voice acting for quite some time now. I just really miss it. Now the town music. It really reminds me of the good old music from the Ireland trilogy. Like Italia Roronos music. They are so similar. I mean have a listen. Happy music. The music was good. Voice acting is also actually really good even though it is in Japanese. It is really good. Often your party members talk to you when you are out and about traversing and collecting. Sound effects are of course good. Footsteps sound accurate according to the weather. You can hear the sounds of stuff like fireplaces and the bubbling from the cauldron. A ton of details. Again. Sound and music was really good. The music was good. Verdict. It is a great entry-wide title. There is definitely a ton of fun to be had in Sophie 2. I am especially engaged in the story in this entry. These characters are just a joy to be with. I know that I will be playing this for a very long time and come back to it regularly. It is really a perfect game in a lot of ways. With my personal drawback though. That the alchemy synthesize mechanic is not my favorite. So that is not good. For me though. A lot of people love it. And I miss the Ryza 2 ability to swim and being able to dive. Because you cannot swim in this game. But that would have messed up the water mechanic puzzles. I totally get that. Other than that I have to say I love it. You knew I would love it though. You knew it. So guys I highly and warmly recommend this title. Now my personal scoring because you know I love the series. I love though everything in the game except for the synthesizing. So that means 9 out of 10. It really does mean that. That is my personal scoring. And you knew it would happen. Come on. You know me by now. I love the series. Of course I would love this one too. Unless something super serious happened. And they changed the entire formula. Which they haven't. So I love it. Now I have of course reviewed a bunch of Atelier games on this channel. And I have an Atelier playlist. Where I have put all the Atelier based games videos in a playlist. And you can definitely check that playlist out in the top corner. Top pin, comment. I don't know. Description. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you want to leave a comment down below and a like on my video. And listen to Discadisk podcast. Finally got the merch. I got it way later than 20 yards. But it's fine. It's good. I love it. I love everything today. Really in a good mood today. Haven't had my coffee. Thank you so much for watching. And I will see you later.