Whether Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream is your first ever Atelier game you picked up, or one of the many you have played, it’s always good to have a refresher. Developer Gust tries to make every game a bit different. Whether it’s a big overhaul from one trilogy of games to the next, or different synthesising systems, different battle modes and more. But although there’s a good in-game guide, it’s easy to miss the finer details that make the gameplay much more enjoyable.
So, I felt it was time for some tips and guidance to get you started! And by the way, if you are still in doubt whether to go for the game, here’s our review.
Alchemy: the Basis of the Game
In Atelier Sophie 2 you work with a board of panels to place your materials on. The aim is to make an item that’s the highest quality it can be. Or you can go for specific traits or effects in the resulting item. Quality increases with the total number of panels that you can fill, while effect levels increase with the number of components that are used of the corresponding elements.
A material can have fire, ice, lightning, wind or light elements. Whenever you can, add more of the same element next to each other, this creates links (See the white link between the two green circles at the top of the image below? These are the links that you want to form).
The maximum effect level of an element increases according to the number of links of that element you made. Filling out entire rows or columns on the panel board gives you a higher chance of Super Success, which improves the quality of the finished product quite a bit.
Look at synthesising as a nice puzzle: later in the game, you get the option to use various panels and catalysts, which makes this puzzle even nicer.
You can choose to synthesise as Sophie or Plachta, both have specific recipes to make. Although it might be automatic to choose Sophie when you are making stuff, it’s important to level them both up equally: if you can only make a specific item later on doing alchemy as Plachta, you’ll be ready for it.
Looking for more in-depth guidance about Alchemy in Atelier Sophie 2? Here’s our step-by-step guide.
Ideas Can Form Anywhere
The ideas for new items come to Sophie while she is going about her business. When recipe ideas form, you get tips on how to unlock the recipe. Most often, a recipe is needed to advance the storyline. You can check what conditions are needed to unlock the recipe. For example, I have to make something that lures monsters. Check more info by pressing ‘+’ on your Switch, and you’ll see Special Request 2. On the right side, it says I need to synthesise Tasty Looking Bait and I need to gather Devil’s Kiss.
Question is, where can I find this? By pressing X I can pull up the corresponding Recipe Ideas, where I also see my Monster Bait greyed out.
By pressing ‘-‘ I can see related data, which in this case shows me the list for the needed ingredients, with Devil’s Kiss at the bottom of the list. Selecting it, I see more information. It’s a material I can find in the Dusk Forest.
So this is how the game works. There’s a lot of info, just needs some clicks to find it.
As I mentioned, there is a recipe tree for Sophie, for Plachta, a shared tree and finally a screen with References. These are the recipes that come from actual books. Both girls can make these items.
Friendship and Assist Skills
A new addition to Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream is the use of Assist skills while doing Alchemy from the characters that accompany you. What kind of skill they can assist you with depends on the person. The assist skills will activate after you form a certain number of links with the person’s associated element.
The effects of them can be powerful, like improving the quality or supplying additional panels or materials. Just how much of their skills unlock depends on Sophie’s level of friendship with her companions. So be sure to, aside from the main storyline, progress personal storylines too.
For example, looking at Olias, his assist skill is Ice. You reach that when your friendship level is high enough. You can check a character’s stats screen by opening the Main Menu >Party/Stats>scroll to Olias. Press Y “Open Stats Screen”.
You will find his active skills in battle, but at the bottom, there’s also his Quality: Ice (the final product quality increases by 3x the number of ice links) and his Element Switch: Ice (can change anyone placed component into an ice component)
Getting Ready for Battle
Your party has six fighters in it, three in front and three in the back, to form two teams that co-operate in multi-linked turn-based battles. If you’ve played an Atelier game before you’ll recognise much of the basics. Every fighter has HP for Health Points and MP for Magical Points. MP is used when you want to deploy a character’s skills, and as they level up, more skills are added.
For each move, you have the choice to attack with the weapon of the character’s choice. For Sophie, that’s an Alchemy Staff, but Plachta for example uses an Arm that seems to move on its own. You can choose skills, making use of the MP. Skills are very useful as they sometimes hit all the enemies in the field all in one go.
There’s the option to block incoming attacks, and you can even try to flee. You can also use items, and you have to synthesise them all. Unlike in Atelier Ryza, the use of items in battle doesn’t replenish but each item has a set number of uses, just like it was in the Atelier games before Ryza. This spurs you on the make bombs of the highest possible strength, making healing items that are as powerful as you can manage in the stage of the game you are at.
Don’t forget to equip the items you want to use in battle before you leave the atelier. Every character in your group can equip items so that’s wonderful. As the items are actually used up make sure you check too if there are any uses left. As you can see in this example for Plachta: the ice bomb has 0 uses left, so I’d better equip a newly made one.
The same goes for your equipment. It helps to either buy the best weapon, protective clothing or accessory you can or even better: synthesise it yourself!
Turn-Based Battles
I really like the fact that in Atelier Sophie 2 true turn-based battles return. Which gives you plenty of time to think of what move to perform next. Still, you might not be into the game for the battles. If so, you can choose your battle difficulty in the Options Menu.
During battles, by performing basic battle moves like attacking or blocking, you accumulate TP (Technical Points). You can only use them during the same battle, they vanish once the battle is done. You need 1 TP to perform Twin Actions, where a fighter in the attacking team and a character in the back-up team both perform an attack. If you choose to use a skill, it costs 10MP less than usual.
Another instance of where the characters work together is when you use the command Support Guard. A member of your backup team changes places with a fighter in your attack team and becomes the target. Support Guard also costs 1 TP.
There are skills and items that, when you use them, issue Time Cards. They get their own place in the turn order at the bottom of the screen and their own activation count. So when their turn is up again, the effect will automatically trigger. Should you use the same type as an already existing one that’s in the turn order, they are added to the already existing Time Card.
Some enemies use an Aura that shields them and makes them take less damage. A gauge (the blue circle that you see in the image above next to the name of the monster) will show the strength of the Aura, in this case, 14.
Looking at the stats for the Pariah you can see it has an Ice Aura, and you can also see how you can damage the aura. In this case by using fire attacks.
Once you manage to deplete it the Aura will be broken. Monsters with broken Auras take more damage and their turn is pushed back by one. The fighter that breaks the enemy’s Aura gets a bonus TP and can act again immediately.
Controlling the Weather
Sophie and Plachta can synthesize sun or rain stones to feed the weather devices you find in several areas. This makes exploring even more fun. A piece of land you couldn’t reach before? Having the sun come out makes the landscape go “woosh” ( Alette’s words, not mine). Suddenly you can explore that area where the river used to run. Making it rain makes other areas accessible or it creates new fishing spots.
The Weather can also have an effect on battles. Some enemies become stronger in certain conditions. If you want to know exactly how the weather conditions influence combat with a certain monster, you can check it in the help card “Combat: Weather Effect Details”.
Some bosses even have the skills to affect the weather around you. The Dragon called the Distant Sea Monarch, you have to fight in the Cloudburst Hydrite is the first one you meet. Using the amber Sunlight Heliodor in that battle turns the conditions to sunny and in your favour.
Some Last Things
By doing all kinds of things in the game, like increasing your level in battle, completing party quests, discovering new landmarks you acquire Ability Points. You can spend it to learn new skills or improve an existing one. So it’s nice to play around with, and make your team ready for action.
To check what party quests, important things or town requests there are for you to do, press ‘+’. Press ‘+’ once more and you can see all the things you already did. So should you feel lost and not know what to do next, always check the story with this button!
