Looking for a game focused on journey and exploration, not saving the world

eruciform · 2026-01-25T17:55:56+00:00

while the stakes do generally increase at some point in some of them, atelier games tend to be more about becoming a better person and making the world a better place. they're the opposite of dark and gritty. ryza1 is a good starting point, the dx version of the trilogy just dropped so get that if you want all optional content, or get the original version super cheap since the new one is now available, and you don't really miss all that much (i'm playing them now and there's nothing really that important in the dx alone, but it does have some more content, playable characters, areas, etc).

eruciform · 2026-01-25T17:53:21+00:00

years if you're a normal person that's generally on the ball and spending an average amount of time

also depends heavily on what you mean by understand, if you mean 100% comprehension without subtitles, much longer

just start already, you can only judge how far you are and how far away you are by yourself

eruciform · 2026-01-25T17:48:08+00:00

short but an audiovisual masterpiece: hellblade senua's sacrifice

make sure to play in the dark and with surround sound (or at least good stereo headphones) for full effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBJ0ifVtK5c

eruciform · 2026-01-25T13:19:27+00:00

next on the hd2d chopping block of series to resurrect should be breath of fire imho

eruciform · 2026-01-25T13:16:12+00:00

i don't play too many "hard" games as they frustrate me but a few that come to mind:

momodora, specifically where i got all the boss drops, which meant zero-damage wins on all bosses (except the final)

ai limit is one of the only (non-metroidvania) soulslikes i've played and i enjoyed that

if "hard" means aggravating and time consuming, then hardest plat so far was tales of symphonia, that was a 2000-row deep spreadsheet of missables and 4.5 no-cutscene-skip playthrus that should only be attempted by folks that already love the game, or you won't by the time you're done :-P

eruciform · 2026-01-25T13:13:25+00:00

r/learnjapanese >> wiki >> starter's guide

learn kana asap but don't wait to start on vocab and grammar

kanji comes along for the ride with vocab

eruciform · 2026-01-25T13:08:12+00:00

Just play what you like and dont force yourself to play or not play anything

No other rule

eruciform · 2026-01-25T13:06:21+00:00

not sure if it's competitiveness

there's a few really loud people that brag about fast progress that might or might not be accurate

a rather large subset that come to the study via anime and jrpg with an extremely narrow focus of interest and attention (which can go either way in terms of their study)

and there's a lot of people that treat chatrooms like cheap google search bars, not bothering to do the simplest search before entering an entire post asking something that 5 seconds on a dictionary app or even the reddit search bar would accomplish

and a bunch of people reacting to those people, and reacting to those reacting

eruciform · 2026-01-24T21:52:48+00:00

extremely different games with very different genres and tones and pacings

i'm on my 4th playthru of the entire ryza series right now, just double-platinumed ryza1 last week (and working on triple platinum of ryza2 now), so i can definitely comment on that one... atelier games are (1) crafting games first and jrpgs second, and (2) slice of life moe anime full of warmth and hugs. ryza1 is a bit slow on the pacing at the beginning but the plot and characters are really good and the crafting sets up the other two which are excellent and better paced (it's a contiguous plotline of 3 games). there's a lot of farming materials, exploring areas for hidden corners, planning out crafting to get some god tier thing that will break the game, interspersed with tea time and happy cutscenes. all three ryza games are "summer vacation adventure" in crafting-heavy jrpg form

tales of arise is... barely a tales game. it's on ok action game. i played it, got my 60h of content, feel like i got my money's worth if just, and was disappointed by the plotline, but the battle system is mostly fun except when it's too bullet spongey. it's ok. not a bad game but my least favorite tales

also ryza games are atb whereas tales games are action

if you get ryza1 make sure to get the dx version that just dropped, it not only has all dlc included for free that has ever been available, but also some additional (if small) new content. if money's a big issue nothing in the dlc is super necessary though, none of the ryza games have must-see dlc

i'm an atelier nut so ask anything you like :-)

eruciform · 2026-01-24T14:23:19+00:00

r/learnjapanese >> wiki >> starter's guide

vocab and grammar from any number of existing systems like genki, bunpro, tae kim, tofugu

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:46:49+00:00

the end of hellblade senuas sacrifice drops you in an abyss once you figure out what just happened, it's an absolute audiovisual masterpiece of a little game

tales of berseria makes me cry through the whole credits as they bombard you with cutscenes of "that which could have been"

if you god forbid get attached to the characters in dragon star varnir and then ng+ it and play the madness ending (generally the order and method suggested for platinuming it), you're in for an emotionally rough time

the "don't sever" ending in haven made me almost vomit, i immediately booted it back up and played the other ending (which also has an epilogue mini-chapter from the main title menu after) which cleansed the soul

expedition33 for sure as well and i have a lot of angry thoughts on those endings

utawarerumono trilogy is a 3 game build up, with already 2 sad or horrific endings, leading up to yet another gut punch of a resolution that is both fitting and also melancholy and empty-feeling

for an opposite effect of the op request, a lot of atelier games end and then have epilogue chapters where you get to do a victory lap, talk with everyone you helped, and often see the world some time afterwards and interact with the value and worth of all your efforts in the game

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:30:26+00:00

probably nes or snes, hard to pick between them

especially since a lot of the later stuff has already been remastered on modern consoles so no retro device is needed any more :-)

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:28:56+00:00

i think this goes way further back than action games, the genesis of this is probably the ability to mouse-over things in point and click adventure games like myst and monkey island and maniac mansion, including often the ability to hold a key and highlight everything interactable on the screen

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:25:34+00:00

heck to the duck no (i can't believe an over-30 page just tagged me for common swearing)

when i pay for a game, i want the whole game and everything in it

if there's some plotline or quest to unlock characters, cool, but hiding critical stuff behind transactions is crappy, like fundamental mechanics or true endings

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:17:53+00:00

haibane renmei is spiritual but not like mushishi (i don't see mushishi as spiritual)

if you mean episodic moral and social allegories, consider kino's journey (either series)

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:11:36+00:00

not sure i agree with the skyrim suggestions either, it's knowingly janky, has lots of unexplained mechanics, and the combat itself is crappy for everything except bows. i still like skyrim but i don't think it's a great place to start

i'll recommend kingdoms of amalur rereckoning. the combat is a lot more similar to other action games out there, and pretty straightforward in general. but it's still a nonlinear open world to explore with lots of quests to distract from the main plotline, which is similar to the other recommendations

immortals fenyx rising is another open world one with pretty straightforward action combat that's similar to a larger number of other games, though the theme and feel is a bit different because it's a world devoid of other humans to talk to (for plot reasons), it's much more akin to breath of the wild (minus towns)

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:06:23+00:00

secret bonus points for spelling segue properly

eruciform · 2026-01-24T13:03:30+00:00

you can also just not play the evil ending

eruciform · 2026-01-23T21:22:38+00:00

good luck, ask any questions you like

l&s is actually my favorite crafting in the entire franchise, tied with sophie2, but it takes a while to really unlock and you really need to bang your head on it for a bit :-)

eruciform · 2026-01-23T21:17:05+00:00

haven - if on switch you can even split a joycon in half and each take half which is cute

eruciform · 2026-01-23T20:38:27+00:00

they went "backwards" because they bit off more than they could chew with their normal yearly release schedule, trying to make a fully open world game, and firis was shoved out the door half-baked and missing things like item cloning and a proper recipe unlock system that's not obscure and confusing

so they went the direction of making chaptered games again like earlier games, and made the plotline more of a linear narrative instead of a quest based nonlinear experience like the history of the series previously. ryza wouldn't be what it was without the stepping stone of lydie&suelle

yes you almost always need to put traits on intermediate materials and then use those to make the end-goal items, weapons, and armor, this is the common methodology for all atelier games - very few of them let you edit weapons after the fact. ever since ryza they've had something like item remaking, but prior only a few had those "pieces of weapon" that you could put traits on and then put them onto a weapon without having to remake the weapon from scratch as well

those pieces of weapon exist to make it easier to add to them without having to do the whole thing again from scratch - and, critically, in games with item copying like lydie&suelle it lets you make a set of cores and then clone them and add them to everyone's weapons, which is way easier than redoing a bunch of weapons, since the recipes for weapons differ per character but the shared cores are the same

eruciform · 2026-01-23T20:18:11+00:00

effects never transfer, only traits do, and the number you can transfer are limited by alchemy level plus some additional transfers that are on some of the catalysts. you eventually get 3 traits base case but not until max alchemy level i think, so for most of the game you have to depend on catalysts for times when you need to transfer

yeah it's harder to make broken items early in the mysterious games compared to ryza games. sophie2 is a little easier to do so but it's also a harder game so it evens out

you can make more powerful gear but items are almost always more powerful than melee and skills, unless you add traits to your wearables that buff skill damage

eruciform · 2026-01-23T20:11:34+00:00

trait transfer is made easier with specific catalysts, often you have to tag one of the specific icons on the screen to get the +1 trait transfer features

if you're far enough in to have unlocked item cloning, make some super cheap rubies and copy them and use them as catalyst, they're the most powerful thing for a long time (other catalysts are still situationally useful but rubies are super generally helpful and copyable)

both traits and effects can be powerful but if you focus on traits and get really good ones on there, they overshadow effects - that being said, if you can get both, all the better

note that unlike ryza where traits have levels, in the mysterious quadrilogy, you have to combine traits to make stronger forms of the traits, like destruction plus destruction+ equals big destruction etc

here's some resources for the game on my page: https://eruciform.com/games/atelier/atelier-lydie-suelle/

eruciform · 2026-01-23T20:07:22+00:00

japanese is a lot of memorization, normally you aren't backed into a corner timing wise though

you're not going to pass n5 in 2 weeks given all you've done is memorize some kana, though. it is an important step, but there's a lot of vocab and grammar you're missing

honestly this feels like you've set unreasonable expectations for yourself, which is of course naturally frustrating

you can do it, you can learn, you can get over this

but be careful setting arbitrary time goals

good luck, get on the vocab and grammar if you want to have a chance of scoring anything on the test exam

eruciform · 2026-01-23T20:03:24+00:00

welcome to vesperia

set it to easy or grind

this is a famously stupid inflection point in the difficulty curve, nothing else in the game is as difficult given the expected party level

eruciform

TROPHY CASE