Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey Reviews
Once Firis has passed the exam and the game drops the time limit, Atelier Firis turns into a pretty good JRPG with some deep crafting mechanics but a fairly lacklustre combat system. To get to this point, however, requires a fairly substantial time commitment.
A decent opening devolves into a directionless wander. The repetitive nature of many of the game's tasks and situations mean that the real meat of the game is hidden under a lot of padding that demands a huge investment of time and will to uncover. Unless you're a hardcore fan of the laid-back crafting loop of the Atelier games, there are many more engaging RPG's out there.
Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey provides a great example of how a game can provide an entirely fresh experience merely by shifting around the mechanics that it already had, as opposed to piling on new ones.