The Atelier series have always been relatively traditional RPGs with quite original and fun battle systems, but with relatively heavy item creation elements to diferentiate themselves from other games of the genre. At least from my experience with the series (Atelier Iris 3 and Mana Khemia). And they were quite fun.

This is the first game on the DS to make it to America, with Atelier Lina and Atelier Lise not getting localized for unknown reasons. But maybe there’s hope for them to come now…

So, does this bring something new to the Atelier series, or is it not worthy of the name?

Read and see!

Developer: Gust
Publisher: NIS America
Date of Release: October 27, 2009
Platforms: DS

Genre: Alchemy simulator/RPG
Players: 1

Looks and sounds
The game’s look is very anime. All the characters are quite well designed, if not a bit cliche, but I really like how everyone looks. On the “maps”, they have a chibi look and are completely recognizable from their non-chibi versions. The rest of the game is a bit unimpressive. Gathering spots, shops, buildings, all of those are 1 screen big, and they look very average. It doesn’t look bad, but they could have put in a bit more effort.

The sound is okay I guess. You get pretty generic sounds for magic and such. The game features voice acting for multiple scenes, and for lots of basic things like talking to shop NPCs, or Annie doing Alchemy. One thing to note is that all the voice acting is in Japanese. Might be a good thing for some people, a bad thing for others, I personally don’t care. Annie has a bit of an annoying voice, the rest of the voices are okay.

Story
You play as Annie, a random girl who does nothing with her life. It starts with her waking up after getting “kidnapped” by her grandfather and brought to an island. When she wakes up, she’s greeted by a “fairy” (small dude with a staff) and is told that she is to become an alchemist, despite being a newb.  So she has to learn alchemy, and at the same time participate in an alchemy contest which involves building a large resort on the island. On the island, Annie meets quite a few people. People from the committee who take care of the contest and the island’s development, knights, adventurers, other alchemists, and other inhabitants of the island. There’s multiple stories and side-quests to do with most of them. All while finishing assignments for the contest and building up various things for the resort.

The story is pretty simplistic, but it’s well done and fun, with a good cast of characters. There’s multiple endings depending on you actions in the game, and how you’ve built up the resort and such. Needless to say you can completel the game multiple times and get different endings in each. I guess this element is pretty dating sim-like… But make no mistake, it’s not a dating sim. I think none of the endings are really romantic endings with a

Gameplay
The game takes place in a 3 in-game year span. In that span, you will be given 6 tasks as an alchemist. Each of those give you a 180 day time limit. During all that time, you can pretty much do whatever you want. In addition to alchemy you can: Gather supplies, build and improve resort facilities, buy equipment or ingredients, take quests from either the adventure guild or your resort facilities, and most frequently getting scenes with other characters. Mostly comedic scenes, but some advance the story or give backstory to most of the characters.

Alchemy
Alchemy is pretty simple. You get recipes, either after conversations or by buying them at the library, and then you have to choose the item you want to make, There you pick the ingredients for the recipe, where you have multiple choices if you have multiple versions of one item. For example, Lando’s can have different colors, or be big. Then, you can choose to add a suplement. This gives the item a chance to get the trait that the supplement in question gives. That’s really important for some quests that ask an item to be a certain trait. Finally, you choose which tool you’ll use for the alchemy. You start with just a cauldron but you can buy more. Basically, they each have a type of item they specialize in making. For example, using the egg makes for higher chances of making food. Though I found that just using the cauldron through the whole game does the job. As you do alchemy, you raise your level of expertise in alchemy, and you automatically upgrade the alchemy tools you use.

Another type of alchemy(Special Alchemy) requires that you have books for certain traits, and the required supplement. This will make it 100% sure that you’ll get the item you want with the trait you want. It works the same, except for the whole getting the trait for sure part. As for supplements, each of the 6 types can give one of multiple traits. You have the synthetize them, since you can’t buy them. The way they work is that if you synthesize a new color or trait to the supplement, all previously synthesized supplements will take on that trait. For example, if you want to synthesize a “Big” item, but you Supplement 2 currently gives “Red” trait, you have to make a new Supplement 2, using the “Big” version of the item that makes it. In Supplement 2′s case, the ingrediant is Lando, so to make Supplement 2 give the “Big” trait, you have to make it using a Big Lando. So when you have to make items with certain traits, you usually have to synthesize a new supplement.

As for ingredients, there are 2 ways to get it: Buying them, or gathering them. Buying is simple. Just go to ne of the 2 stores and buy it. The stores get new stock as you progress through the game, so you’ll eventually be able to buy almost everything you need, with a few exceptions of course. For those, and for early-game stuff that shops don’t sell right away. Basically, you go to a gathering spot. It’s one screen big, and it has a few spots in there where you can press A to get items. You can do so until the spots disappear. Sometimes you’ll get in battles during those parts. At first you only have Annie, but you can ask other story characters to join your party so you can get through the harder areas. Battles are just about as simplistic as they can get. You can have your characters either in the front or at the rear(same effect as in all RPGs with that feature), you can attack, use items, or use one of 2 skills. There’s rarely any strategy going on, other than enemies having weaknesses. Most enemies have a weakness to weapons of certain colors. That’s about all there is to say about gathering. And alchemy as a whole.

Resort management
Alchemy and all the aspectys surrounding it are the biggest parts of the game. But there’s a bit more you can do. The second biggest element is building the resort. Basically, after each assignement is completed, you are graded, and depending on your grade you get a cash prize. That cash prize can be used for nothing other than building the resort, so you can’t use that 12 million you get at the beginning to horde ingredients or anything. In your shop, you can talk to Pepe (the fairy I mentionned earlier) and either build facilities, or upgrade them. Building is simple. Just choose what you want to build and it gets built instantly. Also, when you build one facility, it removes another one from the choices of facilities you can build(just so you don’t end up having all the facilities and easily pwning the game). For upgrading it’s a bit more complicated. You have to actually go to the facilities, talk to the manager and get quests from them. Then you have to do the quests, report to them, which raises your fame. When it gets to 80, you can do the first upgrade, and when it gets to 180 you can make the second upgrade. Upgrades make them more profitable, and gives you more quests on them.

Speaking of profit, each month on the first day you get a sales report. You get money (that goes to the same funds as the competition prize money), and how much you get depends on a few factors. For one, going to each facility and doing mini-games in them (only the ones given by the managers) raises your fame, and doing quests as well. Raising your fame in each facility will inevitably boost the amount of money you make with each. Also upgrading facilities will upgrade your own shop if you upgrade enough of them. The fame for your shop depends on the quests you do at the Adventurers’ Guild, so doing quests there is quite important to boost not only your actual money, but your fame in for your shop. Just to clear a few things up here, quests in the Adventurer’s Guild will give you a time limit, and if you fail to meet them you will lose fame and get less money from them. And in regards to quests, you are usually given a trait that the items you have to give must have. If you give the items with the wrong trait, you still get money, but your fame goes up a bit slower.

Game Flow
Almost everything you do in the game is timed. Alchemy takes minimum 1 day to make one item, sometimes more when you make multiple of the same item. Moving inside the city takes no time whatsoever, so you can go around doing things in there as long as you need. If some quests can be done by buying something in a shop, just do it that way and waste no in-game time on it. Then, going to gathering points takes days. Going to the first place takes 1 day, going to the rest takes 3 days. Once IN the gathering point, moving around in it and gathering things takes days away from you(you can gather from one spot multiple times before a day goes by, but moving just a bit will take days quite fast). Going to the facilities in the resort also take time. Which I find kinda stupid to be honest… I mean, what kind of lame resort is it if going to the hotel takes you 3 days, then going to the theme park takes you 4 days from the hotel… kinda counter-productive don’t you think? Either that or the island is HUGE. I don’t know… Anyways… Just about everything you do in the game takes time away from you, so you have to manage that.

As the days go by, obviously the date changes, and so do the lives of the inhabitants. At certain dates, going to certain locations (especially the workshop) will trigger scenes with characters. Most of the endings have a requirement in regards to the events you have to see. So seeing as many as you can is pretty important. And they sometimes give side-quests as well.

Finally, when you’re done with the game, you can save over your file and start a new game. This will restart you at level 1, with the normal un-upgraded Cauldron, and as a beginner alchemist. But you will end up keeping a few things… you keep all your items for one, so that gives you less ingredient gathering to do(and that includes weapons and accessories, which is good). You also keep all the books that enable you to do Special Synthesis, so you don’t have to collect them all over again (and you can concentrate on getting the ones you missed the first times through the game). Finally, you keep all the money you had on-hand (so not the money that can only be used on boosting the resort), which can help a lot. Everything else you lose though, including recipes. But that can give you a good advantage after the first play-through. By the second one, you know what to do, and you already have everything you need to do it.

Overall
I wasn’t expecting this at all. I thought it would be a traditional RPG in the same style as the Atelier Iris games and Mana Khemia, but instead it was a simulator with very small RPG elements to it. And It’s surprisingly good.

It’s fun and addictive, but most of all there’s good incentive to replay the game multiple times. It’s definitely a good experience. I wasn’t expecting to like an RPG that basically had no RPG elements, but I’ve been playing it non-stop and enjoying every moment.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Fun original gameplay
- Lots of replayability if you really get into it, especially with new game+ transferring all your items
- Okay humor
- Incredibly addictive
- The game mostly lets you do whatever you want

Cons
- Can get repetitive
- The game mostly lets you do whatever you want… which can lead to confusion if you’re not completely sure what to do

The Save Factor
If you’re interested in it and expect to replay it nonstop, the $30 price point is fair, otherwise(if you’re not sure about the game) $20 should be a fair price to pay. I don’t think the premium set that sells for $40 is really worth it though.

So those are the Save Factors: $30 and $20 depending on your level of interest.

jobocan ds, Games, Handheld, Review