- A mysterious story of a mysterious dream...
Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream is the twenty-third installment in Gust Corporation's Long Runner Atelier Series of JRPGs, and the fourth game in the Mysterious subseries. It is an Interquel set between Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book and Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey. It was released worldwide on February 24, 2022 on Steam, PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch.
During an adventure, Sophie and Plachta are sucked through a portal leading to another world, the "dream world" Erde Wiege, created by the Goddess of Dreams, Elvira. Separated from the Plachta she knows, Sophie encounters not only someone else with the same name, but also a girl named Ramizel—the same name as Sophie's late grandmother. She sets out to explore Erde Wiege in search of her Plachta.
Atelier Sophie 2 is a return to turn-based combat after Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout's semi-real-time Combatant Cooldown System. Combat transitions are now seamless, with no Fight Woosh before the enemies appear on the screen. Characters can switch between the frontlines and back row and perform Twin Attacks and Dual Triggers. Enemies may occasionally put up an Aura that reduces damage but can be broken with enough attacks, especially those of the appropriate elements.
The fields now have special gathering spots where you use special tools by playing a mini-game to obtain different crafting materials. Fully exploring the field also requires the use of special stones which can change the weather; weather conditions will not only affect the enemies and materials that are encountered, but also change the layout of the field, opening up new areas.
The grid-based synthesis of the previous Mysterious titles also makes a return. This time, both Sophie and Plachta can perform alchemy, with some items only craftable by one of the alchemists.
This game contains examples of the following tropes:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Ramizel has a tendency to pat people on the head, which Sophie sees as further evidence that she truly is the younger version of her grandmother.
- Alternative-Self Name-Change: The game helpfully titles the two versions of Sophie's closest friend 'Platchta' and 'Doll Plachta'.
- Another Dimension: Whilst Elvira is the Goddess of Dreams, her world Erde Wiege is explicitly not a Mental World, but a parallel world, which may be reached at points where the two universes intersect.
- Bag of Spilling: Sophie losing all of her equipment is justified, as it was lost when she got sucked into Erde Wiege. However, this is interestingly completely averted with regards to her levels: Sophie starts out with an Adventurer level of 20 and an Alchemy level of 50, which are both the Cap in the first Atelier Sophie.
- Beehive Barrier: Enemies may put up an aura, especially at the start of a fight. Auras massively reduce all damage taken, but can only absorb a certain number of hits before breaking. Using attacks of an element opposing the aura (such as fire attacks against an ice aura, or physical against magic) will damage the aura faster.
- Bittersweet Ending: The game's ending is almost entirely happy, as the Groll are defeated and Elvira is saved. However, in the end, Elvira realizes that the existence of Erde Wiege goes against the code to which deities are bound, forcing her to make everyone else leave so she can end this realm. Sophie also ensures that Elvira won't have to spend eternity in an empty void by creating the Dream Vision Pendulum, allowing her to become a Dream Walker. But despite every problem having been solved, the party eventually has to part ways, and the fact that they come from different time periods ensures that most of them will never meet again. Sophie in particular is especially saddened at the realization that she has to say goodbye to Ramizel, her long-dead grandmother in the real world.
- Boss Rush: A Boss Rush mode is unlocked after finishing the story, then loading your clear data and choosing to return to before the final battle. In this mode, you face powered-up versions of the game's main story bosses all in a row without refilling your items between battles, and can earn additional rewards for completing certain challenges (such as winning in a certain amount of turns, or doing lots of damage with a specific character).
- Brick Joke: Alette and Olias' Dual Trigger, Whiteout, has them cause a rain of Ice Bombs. If you use this attack, a special victory animation will play at the end of the battle, where Olias poses, only for one last Ice Bomb to fall onto his head, leaving him clutching it in pain while Alette laughs her ass off.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Kati, the owner of the Crystal Sparkle Pavilion, is a Supreme Chef, but also has very little motivation to actually cook, so Gnome ends up handling most of the cooking despite not being as talented in the kitchen as she is. In one event, she does help out... by tasting the dish and giving advice, then making Gnome cook it again, while still not doing anything herself.
- Call-Forward: The game ends with Sophie and Plachta resuming their journey. Their next destination? Ertona.
- Combination Attack: Party members are split between the front and back lines. At the cost of TP (gained with regular attacks or defeating enemies), frontliners can perform a Twin Attack with a backliner, allowing them both to act simultaneously while switching out with a reduced MP cost for skills. After a certain point, the Twin Attacks will fill up a fellow Dual Gauge, which allow specific pairs to perform a powerful Dual Trigger together.
- Comically Missing the Point: Sophie borrows and reads a romance novel from Ramizel, then talks about how she couldn't wrap her head around part of it- the part where the alchemist heroine marries a desert prince and wonders why she goes to the desert where gathering materials would be so scarce.
- Demonic Possession: The Groll, the game's main antagonistic force, are a race of monster that can possess other monsters to make them go berserk, as was the case with the Zmei, Diebold's Arch-Enemy dragon. They do this in an attempt to destroy the Dream Cores: as an Emotion Eater race, they feed on dreams, and the Dream Cores are full of them. Eventually, they realize that possessing monsters to destroy the Dream Cores is too difficult, and instead directly possess the sources of the dreams: the humans themselves, causing their victims to turn apathetic as their will to live is sapped. In the end, they even manage to possess Elvira herself when she tries saving the aforementioned possessed humans by absorbing all of the Groll herself.
- Didn't Think This Through: During one of his events, Olias mentions that his greatest fear is that after not seeing his family for years due to his mercenary work, they would be upset at him and not want to see him again. Sophie offers to help by making the Daydream Crystal, a crystal ball that lets one look at the real world... but as both Plachta and Olias point out, it wouldn't be possible to use this to see how they feel about Olias (after all, it's not like they'd keep a frown on their face for years on end if Olias did upset them).
- Emotion Eater: The Groll are monsters who feed on dreams. At first, they try to achieve this by destroying the Dream Cores, and later by inflicting Demonic Possession on the residents of Roytale, robbing them of their motivation.
- Fight Woosh: Notably averted for the first time in the series; combat happens right there on the field with no transition effect or loading screens.
- Friendly Rivalry: Olias and Diebold are good friends, yet also see each other as rivals for the title of Roytale's top bodyguard.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The first fight against the Zmei is a Heads I Win, Tails You Lose scenario: you defeat it, but fail to finish it off, so it manages to run away, allowing it to come back stronger a few dungeons later. Despite this, you still get Organ Drops as a reward for the fight.
- Genre Savvy: As soon as Sophie mentions that she also knows a Plachta and Ramizel, the possibility is brought up that the ones she knows could be past versions of those that live in Erde Wiege, since this world exists outside of the real world's timeline, meaning that people can come from various points in history. Sure enough, a bit later, it's confirmed that Sophie's party members include younger versions of her mentor and grandmother.
- Gratuitous German: Erde Wiege (Erdenwiege) means Cradle of Earth/the world. Several items also have German names, such as Seife (soap), Aroma Holz (aromatic wood), or Zettel(piece of paper).
- Immortal Immaturity: Elvira. Despite being an ageless deity which created, maintained and populated an entire parallel world with people whose dreams and ambitions appeal to her, she never reached out to anyone except for Ramizel. Her actions during the first arc are entirely due to her losing her cool and trying to cover it up whilst working out a solution herself, rather than ask for help.
- Interquel: The game opens with Sophie wanting to become a licensed alchemist, placing it between the events of Atelier Sophie and Atelier Firis.
- Item Crafting: A mainstay of the Atelier series, Atelier Sophie 2 synthesizes its crafting system from all around the Mysterious trilogy:
- Like all Mysterious games, each ingredient gives you a number of shapes, coloured by element (fire, ice, lightning instead of earth, wind, and spirit), which you arrange in a grid, Tetris-style. The more panels of one colour, the higher effects of that colour you unlock on the product.
- Later in the game, you gain catalysts, which e.g. change the size of the grid, similar to their use in Atelier Lydie&Suelle. However, catalysts are not used up, and can be upgraded by re-synthesizing them, similar to the cauldrons of the original Sophie.
- Ingredients now also have star-shaped 'link' panels. Connecting them to other link panels of the same colour increases the maximum effect level for the colour, and sets off skills which e.g. recolor other panels. This is unique to Sophie 2.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When Plachta chooses to leave Erde Wiege in the ending, she asks that she not retain memories of her time here, as it might prevent her meeting Sophie in her future. She's not all that shaken up about losing the memories she made, because she knows that by ensuring she doesn't change the future, she'll get them back eventually when she ends up back in Erde Wiege as Doll Plachta.
- Medieval Stasis: Lampshaded during an event, where Sophie points out that even though the residents of Erde Wiege come from across space and time, the town of Roytale seems to have the same level of technology as in Sophie's time. She even mentions that according to Plachta, Kirchen Bell has not changed much in 500 years. It's acknowledged that there's a limited range of time (from about 1000 years before Sophie's time, to 100 years after) from which Elmira can invite people, so no one comes from the very distant future. Kati suggests that because people in both Erde Wiege and Kirchen Bell don't have many problems, and thus don't feel the need to innovate.
- My Future Self and Me: Doll Platchta and Plachta calmly accept each other as different instances of the same person. Whilst Plachta is curious about how their future self became a Doll, they ultimately both agree that spoilers would not be in their best interest. Plachta being Plachta, she's also distracted of learning of the possibility of moving a soul using alchemy.
- Not So Above It All: When Plachta gains a level, she cuts loose a little and high-fives her gauntlet, notices the player is watching her, and promptly gives a Death Glare to the camera.
- Old Save Bonus: Having the save data for the DX versions of the previous Mysterious games or for Atelier Ryza 2 will unlock outfits for Sophie.
- Reading Ahead in the Script: A rare case of this trope being played seriously. Plachta ends up learning a lot about what the future holds for her from Sophie and doll-Plachta, who's her future self. This includes bad things, like how her friend Luard will fall into evil or that she'll be forced to transfer her soul into a book in order to survive, but also that this leads to her forming a powerful friendship with Sophie, making it all worth it. In the end, Plachta chooses to have her memories of her time in Erde Wiege erased in order to prevent herself from altering her destiny, which would let her prevent the disasters that await her but also risk her never encountering Sophie as a result.
- Soul Jar: Plachta currently exists as a human soul attached to a doll body. This causes problems when the bond between an artificial container and a soul is weaker than that between a living body and soul, causing Plachta's soul to become detached when Elvira transfers her to the world of Dreams.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Sophie and Ramizel, her Grandmother look strongly alike.
- Trapped in Another World: Sophie and Plachta are pulled through a vortex. Specifically, Plachta is sucked in and Sophie refuses to let go of her. Sophie ends up alone in Erde Wiege, a strange, dream-like world, and seeks to both be reunited with the Plachta she knows and return to her world. Played with in that Erde Wiege is not usually a trap. As explained by its denizens, when a person is close enough to a crossing-over point, and has a dream that appeals to Elvira, she asks for their consent to transport them to Erde Wiege. All denizens are free to refuse, and once in Erde Wiege can leave at any time, by either a) achieving their dream, b) giving up on their dream, c) asking to leave. However, Sophie and Plachta's case is irregular - Plachta was more or less abducted, whereas Sophie never met Elvira at all. The conflict of Sophie being trapped in the world gets resolved pretty early on, and she ends up sticking around of her own volition in order to help Elvira.
- Wake-Up Call Boss:
- The very first gathering field you unlock has a Wood Golem and Admiral Puni. If you challenge them the first time you see them, get ready for a Curb-Stomp Battle with you on the losing side: they're much, much stronger than anything in the area. It'll probably take you a few more story quests and a good amount of alchemy before you're in any shape to challenge those two.
- In the Flower Bank Ruins, you'll meet three Kaiser Pigeons who act as a Mini-Boss and a tutorial on the Aura mechanic. If the fight leaves your characters low on health and items, that's not a good sign for your chances against the area's real boss, the Distant Sea Monarch, unless you go back and craft stronger equipment.
- Weather Manipulation: Weather Control can be used to change the weather with Dreamspace Stones. In the field, this can alter the environment, changing which items and areas are accessible (making the sun dry up a flood, or making it snow to freeze a lake, for example). It can also be used in combat, with enemies being stronger in certain weather and weaker in others.
