Has anyone played any of the Atelier games? Were they any good?

I've played the Atelier Iris games. In my opinion, the games after that...are when they started becoming bad. Again, my opinion.

Atelier iris 2, it was awesome and I dont even like turn base. Ended up leveling up wrong, so once I got to the end I died in like 3 blows XD. Where I saved you couldnt back track so I was royally screwed. But the game overall was great. Those new ones are horrible. I tried to play the alchemist one and fell asleep. Sorry I even forgot the name of it.

I played Atelier Annie, Totori, Rorona, and Meruru. They were kind of fun and generally different than your average RPG since rather than going on some quest to save the world, your main goal is to create things through alchemy and complete various other tasks and goals. Much of the game however is about time management as you have a limited number of turns to complete the games main goals. If you hate having a time/turn limit then avoid the games I mentioned, in general this is what got me to quit playing the series. Not all of the Atelier games have time limits though. Some of the newer ones I believe abandoned it and I don't believe Iris had a time limit either. My personal favorite from the Atelier series was the spin off Mana Khemia 1 and 2.