Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book (PS4) - Another Wordy Chapter

While I was writing a review for Atelier Escha & Logy, I came to the realization that really had to stop. Regularly reviewing titles is fine and all, but the Atelier series is one of those kind of games that was falling in the vein of a Madden or Assassin's Creed. Gust was pumping out new titles at a fairly regular pace and there wasn't enough difference between them to merit writing the same review over and over.

I only played through Escha & Logy once. I didn't even get through Shallie one time. Didn't mean I didn't like the games, but it did feel like they didn't merit a review. However, Gust has been dipping their toes into the PS4 generation and I have been kind of following closely with their releases. After trying something different with Nights of Azure (review to follow), they stepped back into the comfort zone with....

ATELIER SOPHIE:(PS4)

 THE ALCHEMIST OF THE MYSTERIOUS BOOK

This installment of the Atelier series starts off a bit more light hearted than some of the more recent installments. The Dusk crisis of the previous three games gets discovered and resolved at the end of the Atelier Shallie series, so we start off with a new protagonist: Sophie Neuenmuller. She is a fledgling alchemist in a small religious city called Kirchen Bell. Her grandmother was a proficient alchemist but sadly did not get much time to train Sophie, so while Sophie means well and tries hard she more often than not causes reactions that explode in her atelier (which seems to be a running theme for new alchemists in this series).

While working in her shop she comes across mysterious book that contains an number of alchemic recipes, but a number of the pages are blank. However she is shocked to find out that the book is a sentient personality being able to fly and speak of its own volition. It refers to herself as Plachta. Plachta explains to Sophie that there is easier means to become better at alchemy, which is to use something called the Cauldron of knowledge.

Unfortunately, Plachta seems to be struggling with a large portion of lost memories about everything. The two discover however that if Sophie learns more recipes and writes them into Plachta, some of her memories return. So with Plachta's help, Sophie decides that she will improve as an alchemist in the hopes of restoring Plachta's memories and possibly uncovering the location of the Cauldron of Knowledge.

So ok, not the most heart pounding foundation for an adventure, but if I am being honest this is pretty status quo for the Atelier series. Aside from the Dusk trilogy (specifically Atelier Ayesha), the Atelier games always tend to take a pretty light hearted tone before they start to uncover more of the serious plot elements. I am sure this will be the case in this one as well.

If you have read any of my other previous Atelier reviews or have played any of the installments from the PS3 installments to now, you you probably already have a pretty good handle on what kind of game this is going to be. Like the ones that came before, it is a item creation/dungeon crawler JPRG. You start off with a home base and village to explore to find the NPC that gives you additional side questing to do, and once you are satisfied with that you can leave to enter the world map. 

Like the previous games, the world map is a line based series of pathways to spaces with areas to explore. Some of them are only one map, some of them have multiple locations as you play through (usually marked in red). Once you select a location you are free to wander the location bash enemies to fight, side quest jobs to complete, and pick up various rocks, plants, and etc to take back to your Atelier for item creation. The maps differ fairly well, and even the ones that have multiple areas usually aren't too massive so you typically aren't trekking for long.

It should also be noted that you really want to investigate everything. The reason for this is because Sophie will unlock new alchemy ideas by having life experiences. Your main menu can give a hint on how to unlock them but some of them can be very easily missable. For example, when exploring areas you might get a small question mark bubble that can show you can investigate things, the problem is these don't appear on your mini-map, only monsters and collectibles do. Until I discovered these hints in the menu, I was completely skipping NPCs or investigating seemingly pointless wall decoration, causing me to miss a lot of recipes needed to progress. Be thorough in new areas.

There a new mechanic to world map adventuring now called LP. Basically this is counter represents the overall stamina for your characters as you travel along the world map, fight monsters, and harvest ingredients. Each of these actions in addition to taking up time, now also pull from this LP number. The longer you go out and explore the more you will expend this number, and the less potent your characters ability to fight will become. Most of the time it won't be a horrible inconvenience but there are situations where you will put yourself in a bad way in a fight by not paying attention to it. 

Once back to the Atelier, this is where a large portion of your game will be spent. Gust has always gone out of they way to try to update the alchemy mechanic to make it feel different each time, and a little more complex and interesting to do. Now that I think about it, it's an interesting storytelling mechanic as well, since all of these alchemists are rooted in their own style, it would make sense that their means of performing alchemy varies between them (that and a game about stirring a pot seems like it would boring as hell).

Atelier Sophie's alchemy system is probably the most complicated one to date, and I'm still not sure that I fully understand it, but will say it requires more ingenuity than and puzzle solving than previous iterations to do it well. Essentially you start off as you usually do, picking what item you would like to create and what ingredients you want to use with them, making sure to pick the ones that bring the best traits along with them. Each item still has traits that change based on the quality of the item used, so you want to do the number manipulation like you did before.

But here's where things get different: You then select what Cauldron you would like to use that provides you at 4x4 to 6x6 grid of colored squares some with star like collectibles. Once you have that selected you then can start placing your items on the grid. When you place items it leaves its shape with colored rings of that element type, and doing so activates or increases the collectibles in the squares around them.

They also provide a percentage counter that will boost one of the elements depending on which one has the highest percentage. When you collect them it provides an additional boost to your trait bars depending on how many starts you got on the placed item as well has how large they got while you did it. It is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces you have.

There is always a learning curve when you start these. But I always tend to
figure it out near the end of the game when I need to most.

Also, the cauldron can also play a factor on what kind of boosts you get, if you are timed, what happens if you fail, etc, etc. So with the exception of the advanced cauldron, you really want to play around with what items you use and where you place them so you can produce the maximum effects to make the best items. It's cleverly done and is probably the most interesting iteration of the alchemy mechanic in this series to date.

The problem with alchemy is listening to Sophie talk over it. This is not something new to this series as every alchemist chimes in with a little commentary as you work. Every single one of them. However, with Atelier Sophie I would have to say this is the game I noticed it the most. This is probably because sometimes she repeats herself too often. For example I'll be placing and removing an item around the grid trying to figure out what space produces the best possible result for my item. Every time I put it down I will her spout of "Wow, this looks kind of amazing!", "This is going GREAT!", "Alright! This is going well!" over and over and over. It started to get annoying and it forced me to really pay attention to how I wanted to work things prior to doing it. This is my only real complaint about the alchemy mechanic.

There is actually another crafting mechanic that happens later in the game, but I hesitate to discuss it because its a pretty major spoiler. All I know about that is I did it once, and my turn out was so good I wasn't able to create something better in subsequent attempts. Now that I have finished the game I will have to play around with it a bit more to see what else it can do.

Combat in Atelier Sophie has changed a bit as well. For one, the party number has been bumped up from 3 members to 4 members. It generally functions the same as most of the other games but now everybody on the team can now use alchemic items and weapons. This basically allows you to have more firepower or healing on the team, and access to all the characters items as you travel. However you need to bear in mind that not everyone can equip every item, so pay attention otherwise you will built needless items like I have.

There is also a new Offensive and Defensive stance mechanic. When you select a characters action you can flip between the two for the possibility of your team following up attack with another or stepping in the way to reflect some damage if the teams link percentage is high enough.. Typically, I've left it on offense at all times. Another perk to doing this is it allows the team to perform a massive triple attack if your reach 300%. These ultimates usually hit multiple times and deal massive damage. I never quite figured out how to use a certain ones at will, which is a shame since one is required for an alchemy recipe.

Since the the game doesn't have a deadline anymore, there is little risk in losing fights now. The worst that happens is you could lose a selection of items you've picked up during the course of that particular run in the wild. So as long as you didn't collect something super rare like a Dragon Bloodstone or something, you should be golden.

So naturally, because I always do, I have some issues with this installment of the game. It hasn't been a regular feature in series for a few games, but I honestly miss the deadline mechanic. A lot of reviews think the game is better without it but I am not so sure. The Atelier series always appealed to me as something I called a "weekend RPG" because they weren't a long commitment to finish. But without the deadline mechanic that fast/multiple playthrough ability is no more. While I played through Atelier Shallie I often found myself getting stuck without a clear idea how to progress the story.

This also happened when I played Atelier Sophie. For the first few chapters its a lot of exploration, but after a while you need to do a lot of very specific things to unlock more recipes to progress. One such example is going to an area at nightfall and talk to a regular ineffectual NPC. This is something I would have kept missing if I didn't google it. I mentioned this earlier on too but the game could be clearer about what you need to do to move the story along. "Continue your alchemy studies" is not exactly a clear direction. Of course I'm going to continue, that's literally the point of the game.

They also kind of skimp on the importance of rumors. When picking up quests at the bar, you can also pay for rumors. These sometimes will open additional boss fights or give a small window for rarer materials. What the game doesn't tell you, again, some of these are required to unlock recipes. I wasn't till the final stretch of the game before I realized I needed to be using these. I probably could have cut the play time way down.

The games biggest fault, and its one Gust is regularly guilty of, is there are too many cut scenes. This was a problem way back when I first started this series with Atelier Totori. can't walk from one section of the map to another without tripping over more wordy cutscenes. In the early game when all the characters are introduced it is especially bad because 90% of the time they aren't very much applicable to the story. Its just flavor to flesh out the characters. Fine, I get it. But I don't need them all at once. Intro me to the main characters and then work in the shopkeeper storylines later. I end up skipping a lot of them.

Although, I will say to its credit gust has finally gotten away from that whole visual novel style of storytelling that has plagued anime games for so long. Yes some of the cut scenes get a little wordy, but they are using the character models and animations instead of of just a couple of changes to still images. When games do that they tend to barf way too much text onto the screen. This keeps the cut scenes punchier and shorter.

Sometimes it feels like every time I change the map, I get another cutscene.

I find myself in a love/hate position on the soundtrack of these games. Like most of the Atelier games (Meruru and Ayesha excluded) they manage to find this balance of unique and generic music. I hear the music in the game and think how plain and boring it is, yet a few weeks down the line I will catch myself humming or whistling songs from it, so apparently they are more memorable than I thought. And say what I will about the overworld music, this series always manages to blow me away with a few tracks. Like many of the others in this series, it has an exceptional final boss theme. I will say that overall, it tone of the music fits the tone of the game very well. Gust always tends to hit on this one.

Sophie is a wonderful character. She is cutsey and charming without coming off as air-headed as some of the previous protagonists have. It's a shame she has to share the stage will probably the blandest cast of characters one of these games have had to date. They aren't a bad set of characters, they just are kind uninteresting tropes: Best friend, fat best friend, loner guy, creepy guy, hunky guy, pretty girl, shy girl, etc. Honestly these casts kind of recycle in these games and it feels like the don't establish until they appear in another installment.

You'll pretty quickly assemble a party of characters you like and that will be it. This isn't like before when I ended up being happy to see characters reappear in later games, I know this because I played the game for at least 40-60 hours and I can probably only tell you 3 characters names. That's not a good sign for a memorable cast.

As you can no doubt tell from the gifs I've posted, Atelier Sophie isn't exactly a graphical powerhouse, but then again most anime games aren't. I think that is something about the saturated color design that makes the game feel like its not using the graphical potential it could be using. On the inverse of that, what I'm treated to by not pushing the limits is a game that moves a fast and smooth pace I don't think ever dipping under 60fps, As I play more and more PC games, I've come to realize why people would bitch about that.

That being said, a lot of these nitpicks are things I have complained about before when it comes to the Atelier games. But I've played enough of them to know what expect from them. I know that I am going to like them so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to give the game a reccomendation. But what I will say is that out of the Atelier series going from the PS3 generation and on, Atelier Sophie is probably one of the best installments of the series.

I don't know if I would put it over Atelier Ayesha as my favorite, but from a purely technical standpoint this game pretty much does everything it needs to on all fronts. If you are the kind of person who can get engrossed in menus and item creation, then like all the rest of them this will scratch that itch. It's an excellent addition to the series and I am certainly happy to see it appear on PS4.

Seriously, I have 8 of these games now. I have a problem and need help.

And nobody will help me.

Atelier Ayesha (PS3): I wish I knew how to quit these.

A little over a year ago, I got the wild hair up my ass to try to step back into the Atelier universe. Having  not played one since the PS2 era, part of me was curious to see if it had changed at all. After playing Atelier Totori, I found it to be a decidedly average item creation JRPG with no lastability or originality to it, and figured it would quickly fade from my memory. The game however had another idea. 

I don't know how the hell it happened, but it became one of those games I'd kill whole days off on. I became  attached to the characters, got sucked into the universe and the lore. Next thing I know, I own the trilogy of games in Ateliers Rorona, Totori, and Meruru. I was completely dialed in to this universe of excessively frilly outfits, alchemy, and girly anime stereotypes (Yes, my pretty frock fits quite nicely now, thank you). After the wrapping up of this timeline of story, I figured I can finally put this series down. Unfortunately for my masculine pride, they have made a 14th installment of this series.

ATELIER AYESHA:(PS3)

Ayesha Altugle is a young apothecary who resides by herself in a workshop outside of Vizenburg. After the passing of her grandfather and the mysterious disappearance of her younger sister Nio, she makes ends meet by making medicine and selling it to orders taken by her friend and travelling merchant Ernie. She seems content, but is nagged by the uncertainty of what happened to her younger sister. 

While visiting nearby ruins to collect ingredients for her medicine, she visits a makeshift grave for her sister and begins to catch her up on how she has been. As Ayesha goes to leave the flowers in the surrounding area begin to glow and a spectral version of Nio appears and calls out to Ayesha before quickly vanishing.

A wandering alchemist by the name of Keithgriff witnesses this scene and tells Ayesha that alchemy can unlock the secret to this phenomenon and if she wants to save her sister, she must learn and understand alchemy. With nothing more to go on than that, Ayesha packs up her things on her cow Pana, and sets off for the big city to learn how she can save her sister.

Alright then, so right out of the gate I have to give Atelier Ayesha points for better storytelling than the previous three games. In those three, the goal was basically "hey become a better alchemist because alchemy!" One was to save your shop, one was to be an adventurer, one was to make your kingdom thrive. All fair but from a story line perspective they are kinda weak since the goal was the do it just because. This one at least gives me a clear goal: Your sister vanished and you need this to save her. Much more clear cut and tangible.

This is another marked improvement in the area of story telling because this series has finally gotten away from the annoying still frame reaction poses that has plagued so many NIS America games before it. Now they use the actual character models and give them animations for reactions. Its not the most incredibly advanced move but I thank eff'n Christ its not those awful stills anymore. Those things are like a pass for excessively wordy text. The game at times can get a little cutscene heavy but for the most part all of it can be skipped if you don't care. 

I did have to say I was a bit caught off guard and maybe a bit heartbroken that this game didn't take place in Arland. I got really attached to that universe and those characters, and it was nice to see canonical games where I can watch the characters grow older and mature over time. Now I'm in a whole new area having to learn about all new people. Which isn't bad or anything, I just kinda wanted to see what was happening with the old gang.

The new cast is a bit weaker to be sure. Ayesha is a pretty good protagonist in her constant nativity she almost never seems to come into being the confident hero until right up till the end. Her party doesn't fair much better. You get a 14 year old witch who is work ducking, high energy goofball who is only in your party long enough to get someone else. You get the tomboyish pretty girl who plays the best friend angle, you have two tank characters who are stoic and bland in their personality. Finally you have the grumpy old man who plays reluctant father figure to Ayesha. None are awful and they have their moments, but they don't seem as dynamic as the previous cast.

Wilbell can be annoying, but with the right gear? Teaming her with Linca and
Ayesha can produce probably the best balanced team in the game very early.

Like the previous Atelier games, you have a pretty arbitrary time limit to complete as much as the game as you can, and how you do affects the ending you receive for it. I don't much mind it this way because it means you can play through the game quickly, and still be interested enough to keep playing it and seeing the other endings. I have never completed all of them but it gives me a reason to keep coming back. Also, if you've played a few of this series before you know exactly what to do to proceed quickly.

Although perhaps not totally, as they made a number of subtle changes throughout most of the games execution. You still need to try to create every alchemy recipe you need to get your hands on, but instead of going to some central location and taking in all the missions you can handle, instead you just wander towns and people give you requests to fill out for memory points. You don't seem to NEED to fulfill them, but it does give you points to use in your journal which gets you stat increases, so just try to keep a little of everything when you make it. 

Alchemy is a little more complex this time around. Its intimidating to learn but
when you get the hang of it, you can make some pretty powerful stuff. 

I also found objectives very unclear as well, you have tasks and goals. Wish I could tell you what makes it any different. It took me almost the whole length of the game to realize certain ones were marked to progress the the story, all though some of them aren't exactly clear either. Generally if you just make sure you clear all the monsters on your first pass, and pick each search point when you go through, it'll grossly cut down on the goals list.

They took away weapon and armor creation in this game (or at least it seemed to me). This kinda sucked because in New Game+ mode you get to keep your money and equipped items. It basically allowed you to fly through the early stages of the game when you replay so you can quickly get back to where you finished the last game and further expand on it. Now most of your equipment is dropped in rather abundance, but most of the changes always seem negligible.

When you finish a story point, you unlock a memory.
When you put it in your journal, you get a major stat increase.

The way to really beef the gear you find up is to create stones or dyes to move stats onto your weapons. I was never really good at this, but there is a tutorial out there that gives you the steps to many any weapon some divine weapon of vengeance that basically allows your team to rip enemies asunder. Once I did this bosses I couldn't beat became almost laughably easy.

I'm always a fan of the music in these games. Its usually just a fairly generic blend of classical/folk styles of music with the occasional bit of rock sprinkled in for the battles, but in every game there is always a handful of songs that are super memorable to me. I find myself humming it hours after I have complete the game. And while this one didn't have the bad ass Guilty Gear style metal Atelier Meruru had, there are some pretty reasonable exchanges. 

One of the later boss fights (I believe the final, actually) has this very slow paced kinda sad melody you hear through most of the game, only this time with vocal accompaniment. Since you hear the song through most of the adventure it's pretty fresh in your head when the fight starts, and it just overlays this feeling of sadness that adds this wonderful weight to the story telling. The fight still manages to be tense while at the same time brings a powerful poignancy to the overall situation. It was exceptionally done and is a shining example of proper ambiance to story telling.  If you don't mind a bit of a sappier sounding song, give it a listen.

For the most part, the combat hasn't drastically changed but there are a couple of key difference. You still have a part of three and your characters still only learn like 3 or 4 abilities. You can still use your team to jump in front of you and take a hit, or follow up an attack. But the two major changes I noticed were one: when the hero goes down, the fight doesn't end. That was always very annoying in Totori and I'm glad to see you get a fighting chance.

The other big change to battle is now you have the option to move around the battle field a bit. You can do this on your turn or with follow up attacks. It allows you to get back attacks for additional damage, and by scattering you can avoid big area of effect attacks. Naturally there, the trade off is you can't really block damage for another character. It adds an extra level of strategy to the game and I enjoyed it, but this is still dying for an auto-fight button for more tedious fights. Its pretty standard as turn based combat is concerned, but it just rings of that classic old school JRPG format I love.

Its usually around here I have some kind of comment about how the game is somewhat average and it will find a niche audience, or that you should pick it up if you are already a fan. But as I look at game central in my room, I have Hitman: Absolution, Tomb Raider, and God of War: Ascension all sitting on my TV stand, and yet even getting two endings I plan on playing more Atelier Ayesha.

If I had to complain about something, I would say that there is never really a clear villain or antagonist in these games. There is always some massive monster you have to fight at some point, but its usually pulled  right out of the story's ass with virtually no build up going into it. I'm happy to have boss fights and many of them are pretty cool looking. It just would have been nice to have some of the hero's tale leading up to it. Learn what happened to her sister, learn about monster holding her, and how to approach it. That would make sense to me. Basically all you know is that its alchemic relic from a time before, and then its right into the fight.

Really, the biggest complaint (to most people) is that its a pretty standard JRPG. To me? that isn't a fault. But knowing this dovakin shouting, 90 minute countryside walking around, first person borefest western RPG generation we've become? That is exactly the reason why people hate these games. Hell, one online magazine gave it a review without even playing it. Battles are turn based and come and go, it gets a bit repetitive since its item creation. Much of the locations to explore are fairly linear. I know these are things people bitch about but it doesn't bother me in this.

I guess (?) you could say Keithgriff is the antagonist because hes a bit of a dick.
But he is definitely not a villain.

I seriously have no idea this overly girly, simple, kind of repetitive, and incredibly short series of RPGS managed to work its way into my brain, especially when I didn't even like it at first. But goddamn it, there is something this formula that makes it work. It has that same addictive quality just like the previous 3 have that just prevent me from putting it down. That is a quality a lot of triple-A games just don't have these days. As mentioned before, I got a stack of em sitting their waiting to be played and I keep going back to this. 

Whatever it is, this game has me tightly wrapped by the heart strings. Atelier Ayesha is a fun addition to this already lengthy series of games and they seem to have the formula down to make introverted shmucks like me jump at the drop of a hat to buy it. If in another 6-8 months from now another country in the Atelier universe needs alchemy? I will gladly done my prettiest alchemy attire, grab my basket, and will eagerly get weed picking with a new alchemist for their adventure.

My parents must be so disappointed in me... :(