Choosing yourself mattered in the Arland games because the same item could have varying quality and traits. In Ayesha, that's not an issue. They do not have varying traits, and the quality of all the items in the area is preset. All of the, say, Tauns in an area that you gather will be exactly the same, so there's no…

The new alchemy system certainly takes some getting used to and it doesn't explain things as well as it can.

Ayesha is completely unrelated to the Arland trilogy (Rorona, Totori, Meruru). You can jump straight into Ayesha with no familiarity or experience with the franchise. And if you've only played the Iris games, you're basically an Atelier newbie because the Iris games were more typical RPGs while the traditional Atelier…

I think they're great, it's easily one of my favorite franchises.

The upcoming (in the U.S.) Tales of Xillia let's you pick between two main characters, Jude (male) and Milla (female). And my understanding is that Milla is much more the main character in that the story heavily revolves around her while Jude feels kind of tacked on.

Most Tales games should not require any grinding just to finish the game (assuming "average" skill level, notable exception for Tales of Vesperia due to a really hard early game fight), though optional content or getting Trophies/Achievements probably will.

Have YOU ever played a sequel? How many sequels have you playing through almost entirely the exact same levels? Not very many.

"Some RPGs, like The Last Story and Final Fantasy Tactics, prefer to throw a finite number of scripted encounters at you. Nothing random there."

Play Meruru, just do it after Totori. Rorona is the first one that I'm suggesting skipping or coming back to after you play its sequels.

Tough call between Totori and Meruru for "best" and I'm still working on my first playthrough of the Meruru.

Which Atelier games did you play?

NISA doesn't have anything to do with this game yet. So far, all information about the game has been translated by third parties. So the error is on the part of Kotaku or some other unofficial translation.

Madoka Magica was poor comparison because Madoka Magica is not actually that violent or gory. There is very little blood in Madoka Magica. There is about as much blood in that screenshot in this article as there is in all of Madoka Magica. Characters die, sometimes brutally, but not graphically. Yes, someone loses…

Yes, Tales of the Abyss is a good place to start. It's my favorite Tales game so far and tied for my favorite PS2 game. The main character starts out as a whiny, obnoxious ass but I found him entertaining and the other characters have no respect for him either and I really enjoyed his character arc. The story is very…

"Haganai" is official. I think the author came up with it. It even appears in the anime eyecatches. And the full title is really not that long. "Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai", five words and two of them are sentence particles, the Japanese equvailents of "the" and "of". I translates roughly to "I have few friends".

Anime that sell well tend to get second seasons. OreImo sold really, really well, so a second season was pretty much guaranteed.

"In order to do so they must form strong bonds with their human users. This is accomplished through conversation to an extent, but more effectively through either sliding crystals into the Reyvateil's installer ports"