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

Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist Of Arland Review

Such a pretty logo.

BETCHA DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING! ...Okay the select people that I've been gushing to about this game might've known...BUT NOT ANYONE ELSE!

Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist Of Arland is the first installment of the Arland series, but is actually the 11th installment of the Atelier series, a very set of popular games in japan, most of which have sadly not seen a North American release, with releases starting all the way back on the PS1, however this is Atelier's first outing on the PS3, with this game being released in fall 2010. It's also worth mentioning that all of the games aren't connected to each other, only games with the same title, so for example Atelier Marie, Atelier Elie, and Atelier Lilie all take place in Salburg, and are therefore connected in some way, however the next game, Atelier Judie, takes place in a totally different land, with no connection to the previous 3 titles. As I mentioned earlier, Rorona is the first installment of the Arland series, meaning that if you have no previous experience with the series, you can still jump right in.

In this game you control a young alchemist in training by the name of Rorolina Frixell, she is currently studying alchemy under her current master, Astrid Zexis. Astrid is a brilliant but generally lazy alchemist, Rorona began studying under Astrid after she saved Rorona's parents from an illness through the power of Alchemy but was unable to pay afterwards, she's currently working to pay off her debt. Due to Astrid's general laziness, and also her slightly unpleasant attitude towards most people, the workshop has a pretty bad reputation amongst the townspeople, which is the setup for our plot. One day a knight from the kingdom by the name of Sterk informs Rorona that the workshop will be shut down unless she can prove it's worth by completing various assignments, and reporting each one over a period of 3 months, if she is unable to do this, then the workshop will be closed and Astrid will be exiled from the kingdom. Upon hearing this, Astrid informs Rorona that she'll be forced to come with her as she doesn't intend to forget Rorona's debt so easily, gives the workshop to Rorona, tells her to do it, and goes to take a nap, yes Astrid is my favorite character ever. Rorona must now journey all over the land, fighting monsters, performing alchemy, and doing quests for the townspeople, to save the workshop.

Now for my first problem with the game, the time system is FAR too constricting, there's no time to really enjoy the game to it's fullest because you'll find yourself scraping up trust points, which are given out in miniscule amounts, and completing assignments, leaving little time for exploration, also battling enemies isn't as important of a mechanic as it could be, I've beaten this game with Rorona being at level 25, there's no way the game should be beaten that way

Mahou Shoujo Rorona-chan!

But in all honesty that's my only complaint about this game, everything else, from the colorful cast of the characters, to the cute graphics, to the wonderful alchemy system, was all done very well. There are multiple endings that you can get depending on your party members and your actions through the game, which will keep you busy for a long time if you're a perfectionist, however there's no aftergame/infinite play mode, you must start over after beating the game with only your monster encyclopedia remaining, and to be honest the endings aren't worth another playthrough to get.

Overall Thoughts: This game is great for people who are into Rune Factory style RPGs like myself, great characters, graphics, and fun gameplay makes this a good game, but it's held back from being as good as it could be by it's restrictive assignment element, also no after game hurts it a lot as well, it gives you an engaging world but it doesn't let you explore it completely, that's generally the opposite of what these types of games should strive to do. 6/10