Atelier series thread

[nocturnal YL]

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings
リディー＆スールのアトリエ ～不思議な絵画の錬金術士～

I'd like to talk about Atelier Lydie & Suelle. I'm 120% certain this is the wrong forum for such discussion, as it's a PlayStation-centric RPG that falls flatly into the Japanese-as-ever territory. Still, it doesn't hurt to write a piece about this game either.

This post is extremely long. Feel free to ignore it; the main thing here is that I love this game.

FULL SPOILERS AHEAD: I don't think anyone in this forum has played or will ever think about playing this game, so I'm not holding back on spoilers.

Some basic information about the game and the series.

• The developer, Gust, was founded in 1993, and became famous with Atelier Marie in 1997, the first game in the series. They became a subsidiary of KOEI TECMO in 2011 because the latter wanted to make Atelier-themed mobile games, and were absorbed by them in 2014. Gust remains the branding used for the games they develop. Nintnedo Switch fans probably remember them for Night of Azure 2. Having access to KOEI TECMO's technology allowed them to greatly shorten the loading time of their games.


• Atelier is a series of RPGs that puts emphasis on the items. You collect materials, make your own unique items, and use them in battles or use them as materials for synthesizing other items.


• The Atelier series is subdivided into story arcs that are not connected to each other, with each story spanning over 2 or 3 games.


• Atelier Lydie & Suelle is the 19th main series entry (the game's title is thus abbreviated as A19) and the last of the Mysterious trilogy, after Atelier Sophie (A17) and Atelier Firis (A18). As such, its story brings proper closure to the previous two games' subplot.


• Atelier Lydie & Suelle is available on PS4, PS Vita (Japan only), Switch and PC. It's the first Atelier game (spinoffs included) on a Nintendo home console. It's undubbed for overseas releases, unlike the previous games.


• Atelier is pronounced Att-li-eh, in line with the word's French pronunciation.

Preface

I have mentioned this before, but I bought this game as a token of thanks to KOEI TECMO GAMES, both for making Fire Emblem Warriors and for generally being so supportive of Nintendo's platforms (even the Wii U). Following this logic, I should have bought something from ω-Force or Team Ninja, but another Warriors is the last thing I want. This also happened before I borrowed my cousin's PS4. I'd have picked the Switch version anyway, just for the portability.

We're going to have some new Atelier announcement on 14 June.

Atelier in general is known for not telling a standard hero-saving-the-world kind of story. Rather, each game follows a small group of alchemists' quests to reach their personal goals, be it saving a specific friend, seeing the world, or honing skills in alchemy itself.

Lydie & Suelle is promoted as a slice-of-life RPG, following the lives of a pair of twin alchemists. The twins' goal is to raise the ranking of their shop to the national best as a promise to their late mother, and if you think they're going to eventually save the world, well, no. They did save their city once, so I guess that counts?

This game revolves around the painting worlds they can venture into and collect materials from. Said materials will help the twins make better items, which in turn helps their atelier rank up. Repeat the process until the end — the story isn't as boring as this makes it sound, but this premise is used all the way to the end.


Characters



Lydie: The older twin. Good at studying and theories, but nota good fighter. Appears to be more delicate, although she can come off as being rude and mischievous from time to time. Likes reading romance novels. The two sisters aren't forced (in terms of writing) to be similar or different, making them one of my favourite twin characters.

Suelle: The younger twin. Outwardly energetic and mischievous, gives an impression of having more brawn than brain. She is the one to come up with ideas to raise the atelier's renown, though. Not good at reading, and doesn't read kanji very well. Fears bugs and ghosts. Called just "Sue" by herself, most other characters, and even the system menu.

Mathias: A bodyguard assigned to the twins by the castle receptionist / princess, Mireille. Later revealed to be Mireille's brother, and even later, the next king. The twins, especially Sue, made fun of him for his womanizing ways and appearing to be not working, but they eventually understood him better. The only non-alchemist in the party.

Firis: The last game's protagonist, and Sophie's student. A happy, easygoing hunter / alchemist who has set up a tent in Merveille (Adalet's captial city and this game's base of operation) while travelling. She was tasked with investigating the paintings with the twins, and stayed ever since. Loves meat.

Alt: A mysterious boy who appeared out of nowhere. As it turns out, he is actually a 500-year-old alchemist who went mad in pursit of power. He gained a normal human's form after a series of events. Has a sharp, direct mannerism. Cautious about repeating his past mistakes.

Sophie: The protagonist from two games piror. She is basically the best alchemist there is, as far as this story is concerned. She was on a pursit of getting her friend and teacher Plachta a human body after she was sealed away 500 years ago, which did eventually happen. Though powerful as an alchemist, she is not good at taking care of herself.

Lucia: The twins' rival and, as we later find out, cousin. She's a typical tsundere character, complete with the red outfit and twintails. Despite appearance, she really cares about the twins, who didn't realise this until they pulled a prank on her and read her logbook. Playable as a DLC character.

Ilmeria: The twins' teacher, and something of a tsundere (yeah, well, there are two others in this game, as NPCs). Likes cute stuff, but refuses to admit so. Also hates to be reminded she's short. Good friends with Firis, although they practise different styles of alchemy. Playable through DLC.


General impressions

I absolutely love this game. …Again. There seems to be something about RPGs that few people have played that attracted me. I wonder why is that the case?

It's not my favourite game ever, and I think I still like Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE better, generally speaking. But Atelier Lydie & Suelle also had most of what I'd ever have wanted to see in an RPG: An easy way to keep track of subplots, being able to review the story so far (in a limited way), adjustable difficulties that either makes tough bosses manageable or makes grinding easier, and most importantly, the story. The game is also fairly balanced (if you don't count the extra quests added in the 1.04 patch), requiring only little grinding if you simply want to make it to the end. It's generally very friendly to players new to Atelier, although it does expect you to know how to play RPGs in general.

One thing I do like is how it gives experience points. Everyone gets full experience (except when you're fighting Firis), even for characters who aren't participating or are down when the battle ends. Experience-raising items raise the experience points of the whole party, not just the user. I have always been hoping to see an RPG with a shared experience counter, and this is the closest thing I can find. Oh, you also don't lose progress if your party is wiped out. The worst thing that can happen is that you get sent back home and lose some of the collected items. Very user-friendly (well, me-friendly?) indeed.

But the best part has to be the story. It's really just me, but I generally like positive-sounding stories. Well, I also like sad stories, but I think they can be easily botched. Just look at Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates. I also like to see character-based events (as I did with ♯FE), as these really give out a feeling of the characters helping and getting to know each other over time. And this game is so full of them. Oh, and (spoilers) I really love how the story ended up with a negative (human) death count. Again, it's just me, but this is one of my favourite RPG stories, even more than ♯FE.

There are a few things that general RPG players may not like about Atelier. Because of the game's emphasis on synthesizing items, dungeons are short and they really exist to just host the story events, monsters and materials. You also only get a single town, because you make items at home. I personally don't mind this, and hey, I've seen worse. These simple towns and dungeons are at least 100 times better than those in Puyo Puyo Chronicle.

There are other areas that are criticized about, including the graphics (PS3- or Vita+ grade on Switch, PS3+ grade on PS4, and it's really awful on Vita), the price (base game costs about 7800 yen, DLC cost 9000 yen, the total price can be spent on three cheap games), and if you're playing in English, the localisation (spelling inconsistency between Sophie/Firis and Lydie & Suelle, and there's no dubbed voice despite the previous games did). None of them bother me too much (I spent more on the full version of FE Echoes, so this is nothing).


Random comments

I'll talk about various stuff. It won't be a full play impression, which is something you can find everywhere online (here's one, here's another, here's a short impression in English, Switch version guide). It's also very chaotic.

Again, full spoilers ahead.


The first thing that caught my attention was this:

Yep. That's Sue. With guns. That's not what I expect from a game like this, although I later found out (in-game) that Ilmeria used to use a gun too.

I don't have many images from the early game, partly because I was too immersed in the game itself.

One thing I noticed early on is that the characters here are either Japanese people who have adopted German names, or German people who have throughly adopted Japanese culture. They write in Japanese, talk about language features unique to Japanese (honourifics, first-person pronouns, furigana), make puns in Japanese, start drinking when they turn 20, and adopt an S rank above A that's characteristic of Japanese games. The only things that aren't Japanese are the character names (which are mostly German with some French) and place names (which are French). Of course, this is the case with a lot of medieval fantasy works, but this game is one of the biggest examples I know of.

Mathias is treated poorly at first. Well, maybe that's an understatement. He gets no respect whatsoever. His early attempts to hit on women also missed a lot: a failed attempt on an unnamed NPC; an attempt to ask the church's sister out, who turned out to be in her 50s and just happened to look young; and he also attempted with Sophie, which drew the ire from her friends.

This is Plachta, Sophie's teacher. This is probably the only time I can see a 520-year-old, sage-like character run into interpersonal issues and turn to a pair of 14-year-olds for help. This is actually the general tone of this game (and perhaps the Atelier series). Those who have surpassed mortal limitations still have daily lives, after all.

And this is a deity. She may be extremely powerful, but personality-wise she's just a normal girl. Lydie and Sue noticed this as well.

Firis's tent (looks like a tent outside, and a wide room created with alchemy inside) hosts character events for Firis, Sophie and Plachta, and can take a long time to clear. Towards the end of a true ending run, you'll see nothing is going on except this little tent. It can get rather boring if you truly have nothing else to do.

The event here is a meeting between masters and teachers. Ilmeria feels like she may not be a good teacher, especially for Sue. The sisters would later send her a gift of appreciation, made using their own recipe. (The blue-haired girl is Plachta in puppet form before she got a human body.)

Also, a few scenes not captured but I really liked:

There's this one point when the twins did have an argument and refused to talk to each other, but they eventually saw flaws in their own reasons to dislike each other and made up after teaming up in a battle. Generic, but I like it.

There's also the scene of Plachta finally getting a human form. Creating space? Reversing time? Making a whole human body with alchemy? Nothing is impossible for the legendary Sophie!

Oh, right. Another observation. Some of the later character events have them talk about the events in the previous games. This is unfortunately something that players new to the series (like me) wouldn't understand without an online search.

Some system stuff:

One thing I don't like about the game is the unskippable combination skills. It's not as bad as the Sessions in ♯FE (which happens after almost every attack), but it does get boring after a while.

This is the screen for making an item. It's hard to explain with a short text, but basically, you fill the guages at the bottom right so that they reach a certain level to give a certain effect to the item. You can either use no catalyst and get a 4×4 board, or use an item as the catalyst to get a wider board or add effects to it. Once you figure out how to mass-produce the Philosopher's Stone (sounds hard? To this game's alchemists, it's only an intermediate-level item), you can use 7×7 boards with multiple +5 bonuses at a low cost.

I really like the item description screens. You're presented with a mini-drama of the characters talking about the items.

Town map. This makes locating the major NPCs easy. It also shows where the next goal is at (!?) and whether there are new character events (!), although the latter is also used for the optional, infinite end-game battles. This makes it hard to tell if Firis's tent actually has a character event or if Firis is available to practice-fight the party again.

I really like Sue, both as a character in the story, and as a high-speed fighter who gets a lot of turns to fight (this is a timeline-based RPG, so speedy characters can get more than one turn for every enemy turn). As a result, I also gave the best equipment to her. Lydie and the others don't have stats nearly as high.

Post-game soundtrack commentary. It's interesting to see what the composers and voice actors think about the game, within the game itself.

This game has two BGM packs as free DLCs (one for the Atelier series, the other for a few Gust games), which take up a lot of space. There are also paid BGM packs, but I don't think I'll ever want that. Same for the outfit DLC.


And finally, true ending stuff, and a conclusion to why do I like this game's story.

Although all endings count, the true ending is basically how I want to see an RPG end.

• Firis would talk to the twins about travelling from time to time. Sophie also talked about her hometown.


• Ilmeria's events had her explain to the twins that she and Firis separated because while she wanted to run an atelier, Firis's dream was travelling and she didn't feel like she should stop Firis just because they had a promise to co-run their shop.


• During Firis's events, she made a teleporter for Ilmeria, so that they could meet while she travels without her. This solves the problem of them not being in contact while Firis is travelling.


• Firis later sent the twins a flying portable atelier that they could use if they ever decide to travel.


• After finishing all other character events, which involve mending Alt's heart, restoring Plachta's body and help her decide whether to stay with Sophie, Sophie started to discuss about the idea of permanently securing the twins' mother's existence (her soul resided in a painting after she passed).


• The twins were successful, and they also made a decision to travel far to further their goal to use alchemy to make people happy.


• In the end we get a bunch of master alchemists who is capable of just about anything, and they get to travel far with the option to teleport people from their hometown.

The whole thing is just so stupidly optimistic. I love it. I love it because it's not like any other RPG story I've seen. It doesn't end with a downer footnote, either due to the story or due to the writer's oversight.

Actually, if you think about it, there are question left behind. Those who have visited painting worlds are said to have their souls go to the paintings after they die, and this applies to most but not all of the characters. What would actually happen? Will the paintings eventually be overpopulated with dead alchemists? Interesting question, but I'm willing to let it pass. I usually only care up to the point of the story's end.



Anyway, here it goes. A rather chaotic post, I know. And I'm fairly certain that non-players may not understand everything I've written, but I don't feel like refining my writing. Feel free to ask for clarification.

And finally, it goes without saying that I do recommend this game. I don't think it has an audience in this forum, but I still do recommend it.

[nocturnal YL]

So… having completed three games thus far, I think I can start calling myself a series fan. It's going to celebrate its 22nd anniversary on 23 May 2019, by the way.

Now, where to start… I know I gave some basic information about the series before, but it may be better to list out the past games individually so that there's a reference point for what I'm talking about in the future.

The time limit in the list below refers to the in-game time limits attached to either the whole story or individual tasks. Time is consumed for almost every action — travelling (both in town and on the world map), item synthesis and battles all take time. Failing to meet the time limits (for the main plot tasks) will result in a game over.

By the way, those interested in learning about the various worlds featured in Atelier should consider trying out Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists. This game features no traditional Atelier gameplay, but the story surrounds the alchemists interacting with each other. You can get a rough understanding of what each world is like after reading through their conversations.


Generation 1
These set the basis of the series that will eventually return for the modern games.

Salburg series

(A1) Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg (1997-05-23, PS, with time limit)
Marie broke the low score record in the royal academy, so she was tasked to run an atelier for five years in order to graduate. Rather low in difficulty.
This game was ported to several sysems later, such as PS2, Dreamcast, iOS and Android.

(A2) Atelier Elie The Alchemist Of Salburg 2 (1998-12-17, PS, with time limit)
The ill, near-death Elie was saved by Marie, so she vowed to become an alchemist herself. Features more difficult battles than Atelier Marie.
This game was also ported to several systems. There are also games outside of the main series that cover and extend both Marie and Elie's story on WonderSwan and GBA.

(A3) Atelier Lilie: The Alchemist of Salburg 3 (2001-06-21, PS2, with time limit)
This game takes place before Marie and Elie, and is about the construction of the academy they go to.
Atelier Lilie is PS2-only, never ported to other systems.

Gramnad series (same world as Salburg, just different locations)

(A4) Atelier Judie: The Alchemist of Gramnad (2002-06-27, PS2, no time limit)
Judie went back 200 years in time to Lilie's period due to a mistake in making a time-travelling item. Her goal is to return to her own time. (…And then we get the (non-canon) events in Nelke. She's a dangerous time traveller.)
This game forgoes the usual time limit, but makes items deterioriate over time. It was ported to PSP later.

(A5) Atelier Viorate The Alchemist Of Gramnad 2 (2003-06-26, PS2, with time limit)
7 years since the beginning of Elie. Vio refused to move with her parents and leave her village and its signature carrots behind, so she was tasked with managing the town as a condition to stay.
Has a PSP port.


Generation 2
These are the more unusual games by Atelier standard, featuring Mana, male protagonists and darker or battle-oriented stories.

Iris series (these games put more focus on the RPG part and feature the energy force Mana, and are the first to leave Japan)

(A6) Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (2004-05-27, PS2, no time limit)
Features a rather standard boy hero (Klein) as the lead alchemist. The story is a rather standard RPG.

(A7) Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny (2005-05-26, PS2, no time limit)
Another standard RPG, featuring two protagonists (Felt and Viese) that can be switched to freely most of the time.

(A8) Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm (2006-06-29, PS2, no time limit)
Features Edge and Iris, travellers whose job is to go to alternate worlds for investigation. The last two games have NPCs named Iris, but the Iris in this game is playable.
All Iris games are for PS2 only and don't have ports.

Mana-Khemia series (these games also feaure Mana; not the same world as the Iris series)

(A9) Mana-Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis (2007-06-27, PS2, no time limit)
Alchemy student Vayne is on a journey of discovering his true origins and his late father. As it turns out at the story's end, it's actually one of the darkest stories in the Atelier series.
Has a PSP port.

(A10) Mana-Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy (2008-05-29, PS2, no time limit)
More than a decade after Mana-Khemia, this story tells the school life of Raze and Ulrika, two polar opposite students who keep arguing with each other while investigating on the gradual disappearance of Mana in their world.
Has a PSP port, and is the only PS2 Atelier to be available in PS2 Archives (downloadable PS2 games for PS3).


Generation 3
The Atelier we know and love now, with 3D graphics (finally), elements from the first games returning and the focus back to the individual alchemists' growth. All games in this generation are available on PS4, and most of these are available on Switch.

Arland series

(A11) Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland (2009-06-25, PS3, with time limit)
The first modern Atelier title. Combines systems from the various old games, and adds its own systems like inheritable item properties (in addition to item quality). The story is about Rorona trying to finish assignments required to keep her license to run an atelier.

(A12) Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland (2010-06-24, PS3, with time limit)
Adventurer and Rorona's apprentice Totori is on ajourney to find her missing mother, who is an adventurer who leaves all kinds of crazy tales. Popular for its story and characters, but is very difficult on the time management side. No one posted the solution to the true ending online for a whole month since its release!

(A13) Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland (2011-06-23, PS3, with time limit)
Meruru, the ex-princess of Arls whose country was going to be merged into a republic, studied under Totori and worked on both alchemy and development of her homeland. This game is well acclaimed for its gameplay, but several out-of-character moments makes it not very well-received in story terms.

(A20) Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland (2019-03-20, PS4/Switch, no time limit)
Lulua, Rorona's daughter, received a mysterious book that only she can read. The book, the Alchemy Riddle, contains hints and guides that aids her own endeavor to become a great alchemist, and ultimately led her to change her fate.
This game mixes systems from the Arland and Mysterious series, and is bigger in scale than the previous titles. Reception on the story seems tobe mixed, though.

Dusk series (features an about-to-fall civilization, possibly inspired by dark worldbuilding in works like Fallout: NewVegas, Attack on Titan and Madoka Magica)

(A14) Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk (2012-06-28, PS3, with time limit)
Pharmacist Ayesha started learning alchemy in order to find her sister, who went missing three years ago. This game introduces multiple endings that can be fulfilled at the same time, with a dialog option at the very end to determine which ending to happen. This makes completing all endings much easier.

(A15) Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky (2013-06-23, PS3, with time limit)
The story is about the investigation of ruins… that float in the air. The game's UI is much friendlier, with features like items being replenished upon returning to town, making it one of the easier games with time limit. It also features a popular battle system.

(A16) Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea (2014-07-17, PS3, no time limit)
This game follows Shallistera who wants to learn the solution to her tribe's land getting dry and Shallotte who wants to chase her dream and "go big". It's poorly received due to tasks feeling mundane, had quite a lot of bugs pre-update (which is a problem for all modern Atelier titles), and failed to conclude many of the Dusk series' subplots.

Mysterious series (the light-hearted stories might be inspired by the nichijou-kei anime and light novel boom lately)

(A17) Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book (2015-11-19, PS4/PSVita/PS3, no time limit)
Sophie's goal is to free her late grandmother's talking book (Plachta) and give her a human body. As a stopgap solution, Plachta is given puppet forms to move freely and interact with people (which proved to be a popular system). The game is relatively free of bugs even before updates. It's very beginner-friendly, and has only one ending.
Sophie was voted the most popular Atelier character in the 20th anniversary poll held by GUST.

(A18) Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey (2016-11-02, PS4/PSVita, time limit in the first part only)
Unlike most of the Atelier series, the protagonists are not stuck in the same town. Rather, Firis gets to move her portable tent wherever she goes in open world-like fields. The pre-update version is rather buggy, and it's overall a far less newcomer-friendly game. Nevertheless, it's appreciated by seasoned fans.

(A19) Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings (2017-12-21, PS4/PSVita/Switch, almost no time limit)
Twins Lydie and Sue set out to improve their atelier's reputation to fulfil their promise with their late mother to run the country's best atelier. Well-received in terms of story, because it gives proper closure to the plot threads, unlike the other "third games" Meruru and Shalie. It's also rare in that updates did not make previous viable battle strategies useless; rather, updates made them even more effective.


Spinoffs

Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World (2019-01-31, PS4/PSVita/Switch, with time limit)
Nelke, a non-alchemist noblewoman, offers to work as Westwald's governor to help her own research on the legendary Granzweit Tree. Alchemists from multiple worlds started appearing mysteriously, and they offer Nelke their help to develop the town. A non-canon (but doesn't clash with canon) town building game that some see as surprisingly hard, partly due to the infamous time limit that scared some new players is now back in full force.

Other games
There are quite a few others, but the notable ones are Atelier Marie Elie And Anise (GBA game that extends the first two games), the DS Atelier series (3 games: Liese, Annie, Lina), Atelier Questboard (mobile game) and Atelier Online. And then we have Atelier Elkrone Dear For Otomate (an otome game) that GUST licensed out and doesn't seem to acknowledge these days.



Source 1: ねりきんextra's Atelier Lulua guide (Introduction to Atelier 1 / Introduction to Atelier 2)
Source 2: TV Tropes

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Three games in, and I think I'm starting to see what do I like in this series. It's because it feels rather relatable. Not that I run a workshop that makes both lethal poison and food from the same pot or that I throw bombs at ancient monsters, but fantasy elements aside, they're just like your usual workers with real-life concerns. They struggle to keep their business running, they have personal goals, they have problems more than "I want to get stronger", and their problems often require more brain than brawn to solve. Some of them also live in deteriorating or post-collapse worlds, because alchemy/technology abuse is a very real thing.

And their response to their hardship? Keep a positive attitude, believe something will work out for them, and help out each other if they can't do it alone. I find it admirable, even if impractical.

That aside, it just feels good seeing these people, after the hard work they go through, can get their goals fulfilled. (This is also what I like about Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE.)

The biggest draw to the series (besides the story) has to be the item system. All items you get are unique, with different qualities and attributes attached. The unique item system makes the creation of equipment and items a fun puzzle on its own, but it can also get tedious if you can't figure out how to make the best items, or know what to do but don't have enough raw materials. Ignoring item creation will make battles harder, since they contribute more than the character levels.

The music also seems to be enjoyed by a lot of players, although I find them rather low-budget, with obvious synthesizer artefacts and an overuse of (non-synth) vocal songs in certain games. Songs can also feel repetitive (by being played too frequently in the game) and nondescript at times. This problem is vastly improved in Lulua, though.

Depending on what free and paid DLC BGM packs you have, you can change the background music to songs from the previous titles. Lydie & Suelle in particular has a free music pack that covers the entire Atelier series' complete music catalog as part of the 20th anniversary campaign. It also eats up at least 6 GB of storage.

The battle systems are more or less standard RPG fare, except for the more unique ways to use items. Dungeons are not very interactive (don't expect puzzles). Towns are relatively small. Not that they really matter, since character interaction and the emphasis on items are the main selling points of Atelier.

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Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland
ルルアのアトリエ ～アーランドの錬金術士4～

Overall impression

Even before the game's release, I got the impression that Atelier Lulua feels more modern in terms of graphics and UI. The text is smaller but with better spacing, and more information can be shown at the same time. This may have to do with the discontinuation of PS Vita support, which essentially guarantees the screen is always rendered in 720p or above.

The graphics feel much cleaner too, compared to the previous games. This is especially true for the portable mode of the Switch version. Lulua's graphics on Switch look a bit better than the PS4 graphics of the previous games, though comparisons between the same game still favour the PS4 version.

The system of Atelier Lulua is a split between the Arland series and the Mysterious series. In particular, it has:
- World map similar to Atelier Totori
- Item synthesis based on the Arland series
- Portable atelier similar to the one Firis has
- Two-row battle formation based on Atelier Lydie & Suelle, but further improved

The last one may take some getting used to for Arland players, especially with the presence of the Break system that makes combatants unavailable for any move after taking enough damage.

User interface

Really, the UI is good. For starter, it's now possible to sort and delete save files. For some reason, the previous games don't allow save file deletion, which makes cleaning up redundant backups difficult.

Item duplication service, previously provided by Corneria in the Mysterious series, is handled by Lulua's teacher Piana's assistant Chim Dragon here, who conveniently works in Piana's atelier.

The mini-drama in the item and monster description screens also return from the Mysterious series. They no longer comment on locations, and only the playable cast participate (because only them have the mini character head icons this time). Here you can also see the benefit of using smaller text; the item information is no longer paginated and can be viewed in one page.

Atelier Lulua has a habit of applying a weird blur filter on characters not in focus. Unlike the rest of the graphics, these blurred characters look rather awkward.

And finally, as I said before, this game has a vastly improved loading speed. Loading smaller rooms don't even trigger the "Now Loading" screen.

Battle

The most obvious change is that Atelier Lulua has 5 characters participate. But this is actually a good thing, because each supporter now supports two adjacent attackers instead of having them tied in 1-to-1 pairs. The special attack guage is now shared by the whole party, and since the guage goes up slowly, it's not practical to just use special attacks at the first availability like with the combination attacks in Lydie & Suelle.

Lulua loves curry. Guess what her special attack is like?

Since pairing attackers and supporters is not as rigid as in Lydie & Suelle, it's much easier to find good, easy-to-use combinations. One way to set up the formation is to put Lulua in the middle, supported by both Piana and Eva, then have Lulua use her physical/magic hybrid attack and trigger a long chain of followup attacks.

There are also more options for healing HP, MP, status and affliction with both skills and items. Overall, battles are much easier here. You also don't need to worry about reaching level 100, since you can reach there while worrying about other things like money and fulfilling requests.

Oh, there is also a large variety of battle music depending on where the battle happens. Atelier Lydie & Suelle only has variations of the same two songs (one for each twin) for normal battles, but Atelier Lulua has multiple unique songs.

Exploration

Certain Alchemy Riddle tasks require talking to specific NPCs or looking at specific objects in various areas. The raw material discovery and battle completion rates are being kept track of, and reaching 100% will make the raw materials found come in higher qualities.

There is also a particular material that can be found in this map during the 11th month, although this material can also be obtained elsewhere.

Item synthesis

Making items is relatively more difficult compared to Atelier Lydie & Suelle. The Arland system has the player control the elemental balance ofthe raw items used, and in some cases a wrong balance (like having too much fire without enough earth to counter it) will turn the item into failed trash.

The maximum quality is also initially capped. Items of quality above 50 can only be made after solving certain pages of the Alchemy Riddle.

Story progression

In Nelke, the fourth wall-breaking Gust-chan talked about how the Arland tales would continue, referencing Lulua. Gust-chan also congratulated Sophie for appearing in four games in a row in a previous conversation, confusing her.

And now, where to start… I'll just say it's not very straightforward. This time, I'm not going to discuss spoilers.

First off, on the story itself: Unlike some of the games (Marie, Viorate, Sophie, Lydie & Suelle, Nelke, etc), there is no specific end goals stated at the beginning. Some think it makes Lulua's fate-changing friend look like she just shows up without much story justification, but I'm perfectly fine with this. A person's goals can change all the time, after all. And each action, however irrelevant it may seem, makes Lulua learn something that will be made relevant to the final chapter. But not in a straightforward way.

While it's mostly an Atelier-style tale, parts of it does feel like a traditional, RPG-like epic. I like the balance here, although I still prefer a pure slice-of-life story.

Lulua talked to a bunch of Punis. How could this be related?

And now she's on a mission to expel ghosts!?

And a discussion with Rorona on how the past cannot be changed. (Also, Rorona is an adorable 35-year-old woman who is fully capable as an adventurer. How often do you find game characters like this?)

Actually, at this point, I could already guess what the end was going to be like. And I was correct.

This game does a lot of not-subtle-at-all hint dropping, and then reveal the answer when I already know what it would be. It feels more reassuring than surprising when I get the final confirmation.

One exception is the true identity of Ficus, which requires some level of knowledge in Atelier Totori's plot. This is one part I wish they could do better.

There are also a lot of character events, as would be expected from an Atelier game. One particular event I like is Lulua commenting that Totori and Mimi (a very obvious pairing) look like a married couple. Mimi gets all flustered about it, but the best part is that Totori doesn't deny it at all.

Also as per Atelier standard, there are a lot of illustrations. Though given the graphics style this time and how there are a lot of new character poses and motions this time, these illustrations don't stand out as much.

One thing I would complain is how the character events are being triggered. With the playable cast, it's the same as before: raise their friendship levels to 80%. But the events for the NPCs are a bit more complicated: basically, you need to buy from the shop owners, and complete requests for the characters that handle those. But there's also another requirement for triggering the next event after completing one, being the passage of in-game time. There's no indication on whether these requirements are fulfilled, making it hard to even tell if there are any further character events for a particular NPC.

Oh, and the story's end doesn't really feel like an end at all. It appears very obvious that a sequel is being planned, and I'm already looking forward to it. Arland 5 cannot come soon enough. I'm also interested to see Dusk or Mysterious being continued, but right now I want to see Arland 5 more than those.

Resources:

A free demo (playable up to Chapter 2) is available in the Japanese Nintendo eShop (Nintendo Switch) and PlayStation Store (PlayStation 4).

Soundtrack (YouTube)

Japanese website (don't bother with the English version; it's a single-page incomplete info dump that feels like they aren't even trying to sell it in the west)

Character page of the website (Lulua, Eva, Aurel, Piana, Ficus, Niko, Rorona and Sterk are playable; Totori and Meruru are playable through DLC)

Dengeki article that has a very good impression with the game

[nocturnal YL]

A few days ago, I got anotice on Twitter saying that GUST would announce something soon. I guess it's good to see them working on some other series—

Oh wait no. It's the 21st main series Atelier and the third Atelier title to come out in 2019. Atelier Ryza: The Queen of Eternal Darkness and the Secret Hideout is set to be released in fall, and is another completely new story.

Not sure if I'll like the changes that are said to be deviate quite a lot from the series, but at least it looks good so far.

I kind of want to see it not coming so soon, actually. Atelier is probably the only series I'd want to see slow down in releases. I'm not going to get the chance to play the older games at this rate! And it's going to be as buggy as everything else in the Atelier series, I'm fairly certain.

Leaked details

Famitsu article

[Nester the Lark]

According to Nintendo Everything, the Atelier series seems to have been building up a fan base on Switch:

Despite the challenges involved, Gust feels that it’s been worth supporting Switch with the Atelier series. Hosoi told us that sales have been increasing with each successive entry in the franchise on Nintendo’s console, so they “find that this is a good platform for us to have expanded onto.”

Makes sense, I suppose. In less than two years, they've already released seven games on the Switch (with the Dusk trilogy on the way).

[nocturnal YL]

My screenshots have those vertical line artefacts. Those are the fault of the Switch screen capture function, and are not present during gameplay. I checked across my Switch system, screenshots taken with capture devices and PS4 screenshots, and those look fine.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout
ライザのアトリエ 〜常闇の女王と秘密の隠れ家〜

Background information

My experience with Atelier Ryza is different from the previous games in that I was approaching this game with expectation based on the series, so comparisons are unavoidable.

Not long after this game was announced, it was revealed that this was something Gust were making for a while, in parallel with Atelier Lulua. Coupled with bold statements that it would change a lot of things to the point veteran fans may not like it, and with unusually heavy advertising by the series' standard, I was cautiously optimistic about the game.

Still, at first glance, I was also rather worried whether I would like the game, especially for the new battle system and the character design. (I was quite confused when I learned Ryza earned TGS 2019's best character design award.) I got just the game, rather than the premium box, unlike Lulua.

I played the game, start-to-finish, without looking at any external source. I also didn't watch any gameplay (besides screenshots) prior to playing, so this is pretty much a blind playthrough.

Overall impression

It ended up feeling rather lightweighted in many ways. Game length, story, voice acting, battle system, menu UI and extras are all cut down by various extents. Item synthesis is is both simpler to work with and allows more potential, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

There are parts that did improve. Graphics and maps are the more obvious improvements, and there are more map BGM this time (one for each area and with day and night versions). Design choices that make Atelier much less frustrating than other RPGs are still there: all party members get full experience even when inactive or downed, and the penalty for losing is almost nonexistent. Difficulty levels can still be freely swapped.

I won't fault the game for its shortcomings, since it really is just what it's advertised to be: the characters grow just a little, in a small adventure that lasts just a single summer; its main improvement is the graphics, and there are gameplay changes that veteran fans may not like. Still a bit disappointed in the general lack of voice acting, though.


Story

See the character pages of the official site (JP / NA / EU) to learn about them.

I didn't expect a particularly stellar story, and I didn't get that either. I like the second half of the story better, but the game emphasizes on the first half.

Ryza starts off as the daughter of a farmer family, and both her parents and other villagers are generally dismissive of her desire to adventure outside. This is quite a contrast with the last games I've played, where the lead characters lived in helpful communities and could seek support from senior alchemists. I… don't like this premise.

Roughly the first half of the game is spent earning the village's approval, preparing for the secret hideout and proving Ryza's group's power to Bos, their rival. Roughly halfway into the game, we learn the true intention of Empel and Lila's investigation, and by the time Empel joins, the story is almost over. The pacing is rather odd, glossing over the important part of the story.

Not helping the matter is that outside of the main cutscenes, almost nothing had voice acting. It feels weird to see how each new game gets less voice acting: Lydie & Suelle had full voice acting in cutscenes, Lulua had full voice acting in the base game but not the DLC, while Ryza doesn't get voice acting in most cutscenes, putting it on par with Nelke, which is a low-budget spinoff.

And it also doesn't help that there are no character-specific side-stories and their associated endings. Atelier Ryza uses the single-ending format. NPC requests now have short stories attached, but these don't nearly make up for the shrunken main story.

Battle system

One of the bigger changes to the game is the new battle system. It's semi-real-time now, with the option to pick attacks appearing after the player's turn is reached. Additional menu selections are carried on while the battle timer is still running, although the timeline is paused while reading the character stats, during specific attack animations or in certain other situations.

The battles are generally easier to make up for the lack of time to pick moves. And it's interesting to see that they do away with the MP and item uses so commonly associated with RPGs in favour of more unique systems, even though the whole system feels more casual.

There are only 3 active characters now, just like the older games before the front/rear row mechanic was introduced. This further contributes to the casual feel of the battle system. There are other ways to chain attacks (among the three active members), but it's more limited.

Overall, the battle system is better than I initially thought when I heard it'd be real-time. But I'd still very much prefer the old system.

Maps, material gathering

Exploration is mostly unchanged from Lulua, but besides the bigger maps, there are now multiple ways to get materials besides the standard staff swing. One downside is that it is easy to miss certain material types by not remembering to gather items with all methods available, but it's mostly a good feature that encourages trying different things. There's also the new feature to generate new locations for gathering materials, although there is very little in-game use of it.

It also seems to be easier to locate certain material types now, which really helps making things less frustrating. Also, each area has its own day and night BGM tracks, and some of them sound pretty good.

Item synthesis

It's much easier to make items now, for the baseline definition of making items. Most items require only 2 materials to make.

Making the best items is more difficult thanks to the new system that allows recipes to transform to other recipes, and generally it's better to transform from a lower-level item than to just use the high-level item's recipe. The game's difficulty is nowhere enough to require this, though.

One problem I have with the new item system is the ways to find recipes. Besides recipe transformation, they are obtained from shops and quests, the latter of which can be time-consuming.

At one point, I had to make an item with a material that I did not know how to make, since the recipe for said material was two transformations behind. The game never dropped any hint on where to look for it, although it helps a bit to think like the characters do in-game and use a little bit of an alchemist's intuition. ("This item may be related to that item, so if I unlock the recipe for that item first…")

Graphics

This game uses the same way to render graphics as Lulua, and there are some shared motions. The graphics are generally improved, but it is hard to see that on Nintendo Switch, especially in handheld mode.

The character models don't seem to be much improved. It's still easy to tell the polygonal edges, and clipping still happens a lot.

And given that this is based on Lulua, that weird blur effect on things close to the camera is also still there.

Also, the illustrated scenes that the series is known for total to a measly 10 now, putting it way below all 3 other games I've played. Though one may argue that those illustrations are usually used to supplement the limited 3D assets, making them more of a practical solution than an artistic one.

User interface and system

It's worse. Not particularly bad, but it is no longer possible to find location information in the album, and I couldn't tell the overall progress of the game as easily.

The descriptions in the album and the logbook are also standard, RPG-like description now, rather than having mini dialogs and looking like the main characters wrote those themselves.

The music in the sound gallery also no longer feature the composers' comments. Voice actor commentary still remains, though.

One thing that does deserve praise is that I have never seen a system crash caused by this game, unlike Nelke, Lulua and especially Lydie & Suelle. I thought the introduction of new game systems would lead to more bugs, but apparently this is not the case.

So do I recommend this?

I have mixed, and mostly disappointed, feelings toward this game. I can kind of see why is Atelier Ryza popular, but I also think newcomers have missed a lot of what the series can offer. I expected a full-fledged game since it felt like Gust was very ambitious, but ended with a standard-ish game that's about Nelke-sized in scale.

I still wouldn't say this game should be skipped by fans, and it's still a very solid game, but the last games' quality and this game's heavy advertisement have greatly raised my expectation. I'd definitely recommend Lulua over this, especially for veteran RPG players.

Current ranking:
Lulua > Lydie & Suelle > Nelke > Ryza