Atelier Totori: The Adventurer Of Arland Review

And here we go, the second part in the popular Atelier franchise, will this exceed it's predecessor? Let's find out! This is a sequel, so if you want to understand most of the references made, as well as get some backstory on some of the returning characters, you'll have to play Rorona.

After the events of the last game Rorona traveled all across Arland, spreading knowledge about Alchemy around in an attempt to improve the land. In this installment you take control of a young alchemist in training by the name of Totori, attempting to find her lost mother, who went missing a while ago while exploring a remote area of the land, However Totori isn't the Alchemy prodigy that Rorona was, add that to the fact that she's a very timid and sheltered girl, and her skills need a lot of sharpening if she's ever going to find her mother.

There are 3 main parts to this game, alchemy, adventuring, and time. Adventuring is pretty self explanatory,  you go around defeating monsters and leveling up just like in any other rpg, you have 3 different bars to maintain, HP, which are your hit points, MP, which are your magic points and manage what special skills you can use, and LP, which determines if your characters can defend an alchemist from an attack or not (I'll get into that a bit later), however something that's different is the way items are handled, unlike most rpgs where every character can use them, only alchemists (Rorona and Totori) are capable of using them, this makes them invaluable and is all the incentive you need to keep them safe during battle. If an alchemist is the target of a monster attack, a defend prompt appears giving you the option of taking the blow and saving your alchemist from harm providing you have enough LP.

Alchemy is the next major part, you can gather items in the field and synthesize them into new items in her workshop, these items have a ton of uses from battle weapons such as bombs to healing items to items for quests, (which will be your main source of money), the more you successfully synthesize, the higher your alchemy level gets, allowing you to make more high level items, the higher level an item is in contrast to your alchemy level, the higher chance you have of failure, failing a synthesis wastes the items you were using. The Alchemy system is very deep and intricate, with hundreds of different item possibilities.

The final major part and arguably the most important aspect is time, everything you do except for roaming around town takes a certain amount of time, and what you manage to accomplish before the end of your time will determine which ending you get, the purpose of this is essentially getting you to travel more efficiently, and adding a new layer of strategy to the game, however it comes across as very frustrating and constricting. This feature was present in Rorona as well, but Totori takes it a step further by dividing up the days into segments, in the previous game you could collect as many items as you want in a certain place without consequence, but in this game collecting items takes up roughly 3-5/10 of a day, this pushes the time management aspect but the idea of taking 3/10 of a day to collect a single herb is a little absurd.

 The story and various side events are presented through cutscenes...a lot of cutscenes...I cannot stress enough how many cutscenes there are...you will eventually be driven mad by the sheer number of cutscenes in this game, at first they serve as a nice distraction from the gameplay, but as the game goes on they become more of a negative than a positive, nothing is worse than being the victim of a long cutscene and forgetting what you were planning to do, there really is no reason for this, as the gameplay alone is enough to keep you engaged, the frequent events only serve to disturb your flow.

In terms of graphics, it's pure moe anime style, so if you're not a fan of the cutesy designs that come with the territory, odds are this isn't the game for you, everything is pretty to look at, but there's no reprieve from the art style and it's constantly thrown in your face, if anything it's the presentation that puts this game into a niche that will only appeal to a certain section of the gaming fanbase.

Overall thoughts: Atelier Totori is the type of game that appears like another throwaway game on the surface, but if you can stand the cutesy presentation and character models, it provides a very deep and strategic challenge. Don't come into this expecting an epic rpg experience that'll follow you around for years, but the multiple endings are enough to keep you coming back for more. Instead of straying away from it's predecessor, Totori manages to improve on it in very interesting ways. 7/10