YMMV / Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland

• Fan Nickname: Atelier Emilia because of how much Lulua's design heavily resembles that of Emilia's from the Re:Zero light novel series.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: The game obviously pushes Stia as Lulua's Les Yay Ship Tease partner to the point of dedicating the entire second half of the plot and the true ending to them, but the sentiment that the entire thing was a bad case of Strangled by the Red String resulted in Lulua and Aurel, who had still gotten quite a bit of Ship Tease themselves and were drawn as a clear parallel to existing Maybe Ever After pair Rorona and Sterk, becoming much more popular by sheer knockout in a fanbase that usually is heavily biased towards yuri. Even Lulua/Eva ended up becoming easier to find fanwork of.
• Game-Breaker: With the right amount of trait stacking, it's possible to turn the N/A Omega Bomb into a devastating tool of destruction that can One-Hit Kill bosses, including a level 200 Machina of God, as demonstrated here.
• Les Yay: On top of the latter half of the game revolving around Lulua's desire to protect Stia, Stia is portrayed as Lulua's most important person during the Normal and True Endings (although the way the game handles their story is controversial).
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Ficus and Piana don't actually interact all that much within the story, but they started gaining breakout popularity as a ship among Japanese doujinshi artists after people noticed the irony and potential drama behind putting together a girl who had escaped the fate of being eaten by a monster and the now-reformed demon who would have been forced to sacrifice her against his will.
• Strangled by the Red String: The general criticism of the handling of Lulua and Stia's relationship, since the story keeps expecting the player to believe she's suddenly become one of the most important people in Lulua's life despite the fact they're not shown doing much beyond things like "eat together". Once things get to Chapter 10, Lulua starts making a huge deal about "being able to talk to her" when they hadn't even gotten much that could even be called small talk (let alone Stia even much of a personality), but the plot becomes so obsessively about their supposed relationship that the events of the game happen in the first place due to Lulua's desire to save Stia across all the parallel timelines in the world, all while sidelining the other characters with better developed relationships to Lulua.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Of all the characters who could return from previous Arland games, very few people anticipated Piana (a character who had only had background significance in Totori and wasn't even mentioned in Meruru) to return as a major character, let alone in the plot-critical role of Lulua's teacher.
  • Two bosses from the previous Arland games reappear in this game, but as Lulua's acquaintances:
    • At first glance, Mana seems to be just one of many young orphans at the Arklys orphanage where Eva works. In reality, she's Machina of God, an optional Superboss from Meruru. To put things in perspective, prior to Lulua, fans weren't even sure if Machina of God was supposed to be canon.
    • Ficus is initially presented as an ordinary traveling magician, but he's actually Evil Face, the True Final Boss of Totori, now with a human form and working under Mana. With Lulua's help, he finally breaks free of his demon form.