An explosion from the past with an emphasis on manufacturing.
The Atelier series of games recently released the third game in the game subseries Ryza/Secret, and the anime adaptation of the first game in that series, Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness Queen. With its release, its popularity skyrocketed. secret hideaway. In response to this momentum, developer Gust is trying to return to the origins of the series with a remake of the first installment in the Atelier series, Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg. As a fan of the “Atelier” series, I was excited to try out this game, as this is the first time it has been released overseas. Personally, I had a lot of fun with Atelier Marie, but game fans who have only played recent games may not expect this.
In Atelier Marie, you play the titular Marie (short for Marlone). Marie is told that due to her poor grades in her alchemy academy, she is given five years to become an accomplished alchemist in the small workshop she has been given. This initiates her core gameplay loop, spending the next five years of her exploring the world, gathering alchemy ingredients, and returning to her atelier to craft items. Items can be used to complete quests or used in battles and collected in more dangerous locations. Rinse the area and repeat. The game’s combat is fairly basic, consisting of a simple turn-based system, and the alchemy system is equally approachable. The difficulty of the game lies in resource management. Like other early Atelier her games, such as the “Arland” subseries, Marie’s Atelier has a time limit. Five years sounds like a long time, but nearly every action takes an enormous amount of in-game time. Traveling, collecting materials, and alchemy all take time. So throughout this game, you’ll be making decisions to balance time, money, and materials to optimize this process. Do you go out and collect all the materials, or do you hire a kind elf to do it for you for a monthly fee? Trying to make the battle work with your best friend who goes to battle for free?
While this timekeeping system has long been the subject of debate among Atelier fans (debates over which game is the best to start with often revolve around this system), I believe that this system I think it gives these early games a unique quality that I personally enjoy. However, it may not be to everyone’s taste. Another aspect where this helps is replayability. It’s impossible to see and do everything in one playthrough. The first playthrough shows that he has completed 64% of the game’s events seen in-game. So one playthrough took about 10 hours, but I could easily have played a new game and played more. I enjoyed the setting and characters enough that I’d like to see the end of each story, and I’m going to (maybe after the break). I think the Atelier series’ character writing and storytelling have improved over the years, but Marie’s character is not as likable as the characters in the Arland subseries, and the worldbuilding and storytelling aren’t as strong as the series. Twilight subseries. Still, Atelier Marie: Her Remake exudes charm and makes you love these characters and the small town you’re based in.
The game also includes a list of all cutscenes and events, along with some of the details for triggering them, so you can easily access them. Personally, I recommend playing without worrying about that, interacting with the characters you want to interact with, and using that as a reference to get the event you want to see the most. It’s easy to miss certain events or days on the calendar (I didn’t experience an annual event until my 5th year, some characters I’ve never met), but you can look at the game’s event log. You can see what kind of events you can aim for and plan. hit next time.
Visually, Atelier Marie hits and misses. This Chibi Art Her style can be divisive, but it’s no surprise it comes from her JRPGs from the PS1 era. That being said, her 2D art in cutscenes is really nice and I wish there were more excuses to see her style in that art. Visually, the thing that bothers me the most is the fog and blur effect when moving and exploring the city. It’s a distraction and doesn’t add anything visually. Part of my mind suspects this is trying for a stylized effect in line with the “Link’s Awakening” remake and it just isn’t working. I wish there was a more stylized approach to 3D chibi visuals.
Where it did poorly in terms of gameplay were the minigames. Throughout the course of the game experience, there are several moments where the standard flow of gameplay is interrupted. For example, after making cheese, a mouse steals it. Then participate in a related mini-game (in this particular case, you chase a mouse through a maze while you can push objects in the path to catch it) and get good results to get more items. can leave Passing the game will leave you with the usual amount of items, failing it will cause you to lose items. All of these mini-games are boring at best and uninteresting at worst. This isn’t a deal breaker, as these happen very infrequently, but it seems to be very clear why these minigames (which were included in the original PS1 release) never became mainstays of the series. It seems.
Atelier Marie isn’t the best of the Atelier series, but I wouldn’t expect it. After all, this is the first game in the series. As such, I would not recommend this game to newcomers to the series. Each subseries (i.e. Arland, Dusk, Mysterious, Ryza/Secret) is self-contained, so you don’t have to play Marie before the other games. But for fans of the series, it’s fun to see where it all started and how well Ghast has done since the beginning, considering this can still be played as her JRPG, which is still super fun and refreshing . With other games in the series coming to modern platforms, we hope Atelier Her series continues to thrive in the future.