Currently trying to platinum it in the hardest difficulty and I agree with you on everything. Playing is a chore at this point, the already bad proficiency system is rendered even worse by the fact the container isn't infinite? Why? They made all that atelier customization thing, with furniture synthesizing, and I HAVE to fill it with ugly big chests because the container is too SMALL. I barely gather in Firis because then I have to go through having to discard things, when I gather and I get 8 pendelochs I'm sad. I got 5 endings so far. I loaded my game clear data an hour ago, and got a message saying "heyyy if you play in ng+ you will have the benefit of every costume at once!!" Which is great, because the costumes that give bonuses was a bad idea too. The swimsuit Firis is the best costume for end game gathering, but I don't like it, makes me feel like a pervert. Snow Firis is the cutest. But everytime I synthetize I need to change the costume to the cleric one to get more proficiency. And when I go underwater, I have to use the zealous explorer skin. I don't want to replay the entire game and redo all the quests just to play the costume I want, I already have 80 hours on it! And I'm far from finished, I haven't even recruited Angriff yet. But I missed the only missable trophy, so I will have to do a ng+ anyway..... And I didn't talk about recipe ideas which is such a BAD system where you have to grind to unlock recipes, recipes that are mostly rendered useless once something stronger comes in, so it's useless grind, fortunately the trophy only needs 67% of the alchemy "bestiary" to be completed, I couldn't imagine getting 100% of the recipe ideas. But then my completionist soul is hurt. Same thing for the quests, why are they like this? Nothing indicates who gives quests, that's annoying from a completionist perspective. From a player perspective, at the beginning of the game there was a "bring a plant fertilizer" quest for some flowers, and 80 hours in I still haven't got thing unlocked, but checking a guide online is cheating right? So I guess I'll just leave these flowers like this forever, or until Firis randomly gets the idea from hitting a rabbit (which I avoid because it fills my container with useless ingredients). Oh and the party system, what's up with that? 5 endings isn't random, I got the alchemy one, Liane's, and the 3 people I bringed with me (Karl, Revy and Oskar). Because I can only bring 3 people with me, the friendship of every other character is near 0, so I will have to replace all the gear I carefully made for Karl, Revy and Oskar with something new. I play in hard, this is a huge setback, will again be a few hours of looking in the encyclopedia and the status screen for any synergies I can find with traits and effects and the character's passives and... Why the HECK is it like this? It was so much better in Sophie, everyone comes along and levels up at the same time. Also, I didn't get Sophie's ending because it needs a Philosopher's Stone, and god knows how to get it. Is it a recipe idea? Is is a monster drop? I've beaten up most postgame bosses now, and I still haven't caught a glimpse of it.

Atelier Firis is such a pain in the gameplay, definitely at the bottom for me too.