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The Atelier series

OldNorseSaga

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Nov 25, 2017
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Could you play last or any Atelier Arland game as standalone and which of Atelier Arland are best as they canpossibly be. I care not about difficulty.
Or in other words, Ateliers are all shit, but I want to play pretty female protagonist jrpg & don't want to trow 80 euros on whole series and would prefer easy, but enjoyable experience.


If anyone got good pc pretty female lead game either jrpg or rpg reply on my profile. Especially with pretty graphics.
 

glass blackbird

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I was under the impression that only the Arland trilogy was good and you could forget the others. Was i wrong?

OldNorse for pretty female leads you have: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/neptunia-franchise/
Dusk is also good. A lot of people think E&L is the best game in the series but imo it's Ayesha. They're not on PC though, unfortunately.



The mysterious games have the most detailed and complex crafting but everything else about them is much worse
 

commie

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I was under the impression that only the Arland trilogy was good and you could forget the others. Was i wrong?

OldNorse for pretty female leads you have: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/neptunia-franchise/
Dusk is also good. A lot of people think E&L is the best game in the series but imo it's Ayesha. They're not on PC though, unfortunately.

Not sure how the Vita or PS3 emulators are, but I picked up a cheap Vita for these and many other Jap blobbers and ARPG's. Easy to hack now and a worthwhile investment.
 

glass blackbird

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the dusk games still don't work in rpcs3 (lots of crashing) but the vita versions are good as long as you're ok with them looking kind of ugly. shallie vita even has more story and characters, which is good since the original was pretty barren
 

KeighnMcDeath

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Nov 23, 2016
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Seems like the newest was advertised here on the random ads. So this is a heavy crafting series? All console. Well, that leave me out. Btw, that Neptuna page sure looks like a lot of DLC. Maybe that's how a lot of the games are now. I recall my bro invited me over to Kansas and he had a ps3. I played my first ps3 game (or ps game period there) Arkham Asylum. And that PS3 was a pretty good mp3 Juke box if I do dare say and I guess its a blue ray too? Sheesh. I'm too far in the past. But I digress, I watched a few vids on this series and it looks a bit complex but that leads to the charm I suppose. Seems all female anime-type but eye-candy for this genre sells. I do not know of any gothic or dark steam punk type of heavy alchemy game but I can't say I've looked either.

Just what is Atelier & where do I start?
 

Exhuminator

Arcane
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
609
I have beaten two games in this series, both on PS3.

Atelier Rorona Plus: The Alchemist of Arland = 8/10
Thoughts from when I beat it back in 2015:
In the fantasy kingdom of Arland, a little alchemy shop sits underutilized by its lady owner Astrid and assistant girl Rorona. One day the development body of the kingdom decides the space taken by the alchemy shop would be better served by a factory instead. Astrid and Rorona are given three years to prove their alchemy shop is actually useful, or they can kiss it goodbye. Astrid couldn't care less though and leaves the task to Rorona instead. Rorona having little actual alchemy experience has a challenging road ahead of her to prove the alchemy shop is worth keeping around.

For the player this means taking primary royal requests from the kingdom and fulfilling them before a time limit runs out. There are twelve tasks in total of varying difficulty. The tasks usually focus on synthesizing special items via alchemy. To do this, Rorona and her friends (or hired mercs) must venture out into the dangerous countryside and collect the necessary ingredients. But that is not all Rorona can do in this game by far. There are copious side quests, cooking, gardening, equipment crafting, and even bounty hunting elements as well. That means the true challenge is managing your time, as everything you do costs days on the calendar. Run out of days before the primary royal request has been filled, and Rorona's little shop will be in dire straits indeed.

Atelier Rorona Plus: The Alchemist of Arland is an incredibly charming game to play, with an uplifting spirit to the whole affair. Though graphically simple for a PS3 game, the aesthetics are consistently upbeat and exude cheerfulness. Characters are written well and come to life via competent voice acting. The catchy and perky music is seriously great, but if you don't like it, you can change it, because Rorona Plus allows the player to pick tons of tracks from all of the games in the series and assign them however they like. And while the plot is relatively simple, it never gets caught up in overwrought melodrama as so often plagues JRPGs. (The only questionable element being that Astrid is ostensibly an overt child molester who admits to fondling Rorona when she sleeps.)

Atelier Rorona Plus: The Alchemist of Arland is not a game for everyone. Those seeking classic JRPG structure and tropes won't find that here. This is a laid back experience about a seventeen year old girl just trying to keep her job. But if you want to enjoy a relaxing game, explore some countryside, collect ingredients and synthesize all sorts of crazy alchemic goodies, Rorona Plus lets you do that. With a decent combat system and optional super bosses, you can get into lots of involving battles as well. By the end, Rorona's friends and acquaintances will likely grow on you enough that you'll understand why Rorona wants to stick around Arland so bad. This game might not ultimately synthesize gold, but it never stops synthesizing fun.

PS After you finish the original game, the "Plus" version includes a large bonus scenario where the protagonists from Atelier Totori and Atelier Meruru travel backwards through time and end up in Rorona's shop. A whole new series of adventures opens up for the three to endure. This includes new super tough dungeons and incredibly hard enemies and bosses. Also extra costumes are unlocked for Rorona to wear (which are a bit scanty because that ol' lech Astrid designed them for her).

Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland = 7/10
Thoughts from when I beat it back in 2017:
Atelier Totori follows the exploits of Totori, an alchemist in training under the previous game's alchemist, Rorona. Totori seeks three things; to become a powerful alchemist, to become an adventurer, and to find her long lost mother. To do so will see her explore the land of Arland, gathering alchemy ingredients, fighting monsters, making friends, and generally having a good time. But time is also her greatest enemy, as all elements of Totori's quests have time limits. If she doesn't accomplish her goals before said time limits, the player will get a bad ending. Thankfully she's got plenty of friends willing to help her accomplish these goals.

Let me talk about positives first. Atelier Totori is a charming and breezy game to play. It's also very relaxing, and never takes itself too seriously. It's easy to sink hours into the world of Arland, just fulfilling quests, alchemizing gear, and enjoying the seemingly endless random skits between Totori and Arland's many denizens. The pleasant (though low budget) graphics, fantastic hand drawn character portraits, and uplifting OST keep the experience inviting. There's plenty of deep gameplay subsystems to keep the player's mind busy, and setting your own agenda to fulfill is in stark contrast to most JRPGs. Also the turn based battle system is simple, but fun, and has a fast pace. The player is always afforded freedom to do as they wish, and is given enough time to do it. The amount of depth and nuance in this game's design would catch many players by surprise. Sadly this is a series far too often passed over by average RPG players due to false assumptions and misplaced machismo.

However, not all was to my personal liking, and I ended the game rather quickly. Whereas I got a great ending in Rorona Plus, here I consciously chose not to. Why? Because the more I found out about Totori's mother, the less I cared to find her. And when I discovered what I would have to build to find said mother, and how complicated it was to alchemize this thing, in addition to the significant time investment required to find all the ingredients, I simply lost my will to continue. So instead I chose to sleep my way from the beginning of year five all the way to the middle of year six, until I got the bad ending. Yes I technically beat the game, but I got a terrible ending. I surely missed something like 30% of the game's content by choosing that ending. Maybe if I cared more about Totori's mother I would have bothered with the considerable complexity of building the thing needed to find her.

Up until the point of realizing how ridiculous what I had to build was, and what a douche Totori's mother was, I was having a great time. I really enjoyed chatting with all the characters and exploring the world of Arland. Plus you just have to love Totori, she's such a likeable protagonist. Too bad the back end time investment didn't seem worth the pittance of a return, plot-wise. Keep in mind, if you play this up to that point, you may feel completely differently. Maybe you'd happily build the thing and find the mom, I don't know. As for me, I did at least help Totori become a master-level alchemist, and a world class adventurer... we just didn't find her punk mother. Two out of three's not bad, and Totori can always just alchemize a new mom anway.

This is a good series that will not shrink your balls for playing it.
 

glass blackbird

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Atelier is popular with women because it's largely about girls having little adventures and making friends and also crafting bombs or weapons using increasingly complex crafting mechanics as the series goes on. Sometimes there's a big high stakes finale but often the plot literally is just a girl owning an alchemy shop or whatever and she wants to get better or doesn't want to lose her job. In Escha & Logy the protagonists are literally civil servants working in a minor local agency, and the only way to get game over (dying in combat loses time and resources, but doesn't end the game) is to fuck up enough that they get fired from their comfortable government alchemist jobs.

Sometimes they have fanservice or whatever too as a way to try and broaden the market, and they went full on Regular JRPG during the PS2 era with mostly underwhelming results except for Mana Khemia which was pretty good, but mostly they're about girls making shit and having small adventures and maybe there's a time limit to manage.

the music is also always really good
 

OldNorseSaga

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Nov 25, 2017
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glass blackbird, as a woman I can agree only that I love Atelier Arland series so so much. In Atelier Lulua there's so much stuff to do, gameplay is per excellance, and interface, alchemy, gameplay in all its forms are awesome.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
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Sep 20, 2014
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13,465
In the Atelier games, you have stories about saving the world, which don't feel like stories about saving the world.
 

vonAchdorf

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Sep 20, 2014
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Atelier-Raiza_05-25-19.jpg


The graphics are more realistic and have life-like proportions, which is a significant change from our visual expression on PlayStation 4 thus far starting with Atelier Sophie, but this time we are doing a complete overhaul

:hmmm:
 

glass blackbird

Learned
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I hope it's better than Firis. The last two games have been good but it seems like they're trying to do a more exploration/adventure thing again and Firis was maybe the worst game in the series, so it's worrying
 

Gerrard

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Yeah those legs are definitely "realistic proportions".
 

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