Atelier Megathread: Making Bombs With Your Mom

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Atelier Megathread: Making Bombs With Your Mom

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Atelier is a series of JRPGs released roughly yearly with (as of this post) 23 mainline entries and a dozen japan-only spinoffs. The best words to describe the mood of (most of) the games are "cute" and "chill". They almost exclusively have low stakes like "stop the government from eminent domain-ing my small business" or "don't get fired from my job". You (almost always) play as a young woman starting her career as an alchemist. What this means in game terms is crafting. Lots and lots of crafting. You craft your own weapons and armor, you craft bombs to throw at the enemies, you craft healing items, you craft everything. The trend in modern games is to have the crafting be a fully-realized puzzle minigame where the outcome is shaped by the exact details of the items you put in. Besides the crafting, the gameplay is fairly standard turn-based JRPG fare, often with a subfocus on exploration. Some of the older games also have a time management component, of varying levels of difficulty. The games are also known for having kickass soundtracks and heavy lesbian undertones.

Most of the games are linked to each other in trilogies (or the occasional duology or quadrilogy). Generally speaking, you don't need to play a trilogy in order--they're designed to be playable individually (with varying levels of success). The series started on the original Playstation but it wasn't until the PS2 that the games started getting localized. The PS2 games are also huge outliers; in the PS3 era the series returned to its roots and the PS3 games are much more similar to the PS1 games than they are to the PS2 games. This means that the PS3 era is the start of the "modern" Atelier series. Thus, rather than talk about the series in chronological order, I'm going to talk about the modern games first and then go back to the older games.

Arland Quadrilogy (PS3/Vita/PC/PS4/Switch for the first three; PC/PS4/Switch for Lulua)

Atelier Rorona: A wholesome, charming game about an apprentice alchemist saving her master's failing business from being bought out. This game is a very laid-back, relaxed experience if you just want to get to the end and make some anime friends, but a very frantic experience if you want to make all the anime friends because there's a time limit. That time limit is extremely generous to just complete the game, but extremely tight if you want to 100% it. Also, content warning, there are a few scenes that are uncomfortably horny about underage characters. Also apparently the PS3 version is terrible and you should never play it. This is one of my recommended entry points to the series.
Atelier Totori: This game dials back the charm compared to Rorona, but in exchange has a heartfelt story about family. This game has in my opinion the second-best writing in the series. It's a bit janky though--when Rorona got ported, it got a bunch of quality of life updates, whereas Totori is a straight port, so it's the oldest-feeling of the modern games. It also has the tightest time limit of any of the modern games, and is the only one where a careful player faces a realistic chance of failure. Consulting a guide or asking for help is recommended.
Atelier Meruru: This game has a sort of frantic energy to it. You play as a princess using alchemy to provide infrastructure to her kingdom. The new characters besides Meruru herself are all pretty boring but it brings back all the favorites from Rorona and Totori. This game has a similar time limit to Totori but is a bit easier so there's less risk of failure. Also Rorona is inexplicably turned into an eight year old in this game, a move which nobody liked.
Atelier Lulua: This game came out a decade after Meruru and is a long form apology for what they did to Rorona in it. Rorona is now in her 30s and is a mom, and you play as her daughter. The game is written as a slapstick comedy and the first half has some great cinematograpy contributing to the comedic timing (before they realized that doing that for the entire game would run them way over budget). This game does not have a time limit.

Dusk Trilogy (PS3/Vita/PC/PS4/Switch)

Atelier Ayesha: This game wins my award for best-written Atelier. The game is in turns cute, heartwarming, funny, and deeply moving. You play as a young woman going on an adventure to learn alchemy in order to save her sister. This game can be a bit confusing at times on how to proceed and has a time limit, so I recommend using a guide if you ever find yourself stuck on what to do next. This is one of my recommended entry points to the series
Atelier Escha and Logy: This is another fan-favorite for its lovable cast. You play as two alchemists starting their career in government work. This game has a time limit but failure isn't very realistic.
Atelier Shallie: I don't even know how to summarize the story of this one. Tbh I don't like it all that much, it felt too much like it was trying to rely on the appeal of the previous Dusk games while not having anything worthwhile of its own, or a very good understanding of what made them great in the first place.

Mysterious Quadrilogy (PS4/Vita/PC/Switch)

Atelier Sophie: A young woman begins to learn alchemy under the instruction of a talking book who is her future wife. Unfortunately for her, her village is filled with only boring people for her to be friends with. Fortunately for her, new, less boring people move in eventually
Atelier Firis: An open world Atelier. You can really tell that all the development effort in this game went into doing their best to make an open world game, and the rest suffers for it. I personally think they pulled it off, but everybody else on the planet thinks this is the worst Atelier by a mile.
Atelier Lydie and Suelle: A return to form, this game feels like it could have been in the Arland trilogy, writing-wise. It has a lovable, colorful cast of characters and excellent gameplay. It's more comedy than drama, and probably the best of the comedy-style games that don't have a time limit. This is one of my recommended entry points to the series.
Atelier Sophie 2: This one came out after the Ryza games, and is a direct sequel to Sophie, occurring before Firis. Still, it has minimal connections to the other Mysterious games and can be played by itself. It pulls in the cinematography and storytelling of the Ryza games, while having the gameplay of a Mysterious game. Overall it's a very good package, and my favorite of the no-time limit games. This is one of my recommended entry points to the series.

Secret (?) Trilogy (?) (PS4/PC/Switch)

Atelier Ryza: This game is a story about a young woman in a rural town coming of age and finding her place in the world. The story leans a bit more traditional JRPG, with linear story beats and a more typical save-the-world framing (though there's still plenty of Atelier-style low-stakes stuff to go along with it). The combat system is also decidedly unchill, and demands quick thinking to succeed. This is one of my recommended entry points to the series, but it's kind of short for a full-price game so maybe wait for a sale
Atelier Ryza 2: This game is a little bit worse than Ryza 1, but not by very much. Get it if you finished Ryza and want more of those characters.
Atelier Ryza 3: Kind of aimless, with a tacked-on open world. I didn't like it very much, and the only modern game I haven't finished.

Iris Trilogy (PS2)

Atelier Iris: I haven't played this game since I was a teen but it's probably boring and bad
Atelier Iris 2: I have replayed this game so I know it's boring and bad
Atelier Iris 3: This game has charming-but-boring writing, but an unusually engaging battle system.

Mana Khemia Duology (PS2)

Mana Khemia: I'm the only Atelier fan who doesn't like this game so it must be doing something good. Play it maybe, and then tell me why I'm wrong for not liking it
Mana Khemia 2: I bounced off this game.

Other stuff

Atelier Marie: The very first Atelier, available to play via a fan patch for the PS2 version. The entire game is time management.
Atelier Elie: The second Atelier, available to play also via fan patch. It seems to be Marie but better.
Atelier Annie: A DS game and officially considered a spinoff, though gameplaywise it seems to be basically mainline. Unfortunately, that gameplay is trash. It's a shame too because the writing is legitimately funny.
Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: This is a crossover game. It is not a mainline Atelier, it is a spinoff. The genre is townbuilder, not JRPG. Don't play it unless you've played so many Ateliers that you'll recognize a good number of the crossover characters

cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jun 23, 2023

# ¿ Feb 6, 2019 00:36

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 02:17

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Snooze Cruise posted:

I am playing Totori and am enjoying it a lot and I can't believe there was a democratic revolution woah.
I can't wait to meet adult Rorona and her gf.

who is Rorona's gf in your mind

# ¿ Feb 6, 2019 03:04

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

There's a few scenes where adult women get drunk and gropey with the teenage leads. They're bad scenes but not worth a rating bump by themselves

# ¿ Feb 6, 2019 09:49

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Dehry posted:

https://twitter.com/KoeiTecmoUS/status/1093509690749800448

Wow I can't believe Plachta turned back into a book and moved to Arland

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 18:57

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

CYBEReris posted:

I like how in Rorona the tournament arc event has no item restrictions so you can end up firing cannons, chucking bombs, and rolling barrels into Sterk

I just 2hkoed with auto attacks. I might have been a tad over geared or leveled

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 20:47

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

At some point I kinda want to replay Rorona and Totori cause I didn't feel like I really understood the crafting system, top to bottom, until Meruru. That said, the equipment you buy from Esty is only a smidgen worse than optimized stuff so Rorona at least is operating at almost full power even if you don't do any equipment crafting beyond the bare minimum.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 21:26

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Firis livepost: Sophie taught me how to craft and this system seems really interesting. The lines system seems better than L&S' zodiac sign nonsense and this really rewards thinking about the order you place items in. I'm looking forward to trying to do difficult projects in this system.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2019 08:10

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Does it still have that design from Sophie where if you put one component in and it overlaps even a little bit with another component, than that old component is totally erased

Because that sounds really annoying to plan around

Yes

Endorph posted:

jokes aside yeah id put money on lulua being a homunculus

which im honestly fine with, because atelier rorona is a thing i played like a decade ago that made me go 'i like when video game characters are gay' even if ostensibly the cordelia isnt explicitly a lesbian ending or anything, its pretty obvious that they were intentionally playing that up. so giving rorona a male partner wouldnt be like, the end of the world or anything, but it wouldnt be my preference.

The way I read it, Cordelia was definitely lesbian and into Rorona, and Rorona was a late bloomer who hadn't moved beyond "that person is kinda cute, for their gender", and by Totori she was acting as a teacher and not showing her romantic interests to Totori. And then in Meruru, Astrid hosed her up real good

So I think just about any origin for Lulua fits with canon but I can almost guarantee based on the way this series is written that it will neither confirm nor sink any ships. My money is on Lulua is either created with alchemy or adopted.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2019 19:01

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Rorona married her cauldron

# ¿ Feb 9, 2019 06:00

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I'm gonna really miss Julie Maddalena's dub Rorona. I'm sure the JP voices are fine too but I can picture her weird mom energy dialed up to 10 effortlessly

# ¿ Feb 9, 2019 06:07

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

https://twitter.com/eJf01odQyCgDEJz/status/1093140867773157377

Yes, good

# ¿ Feb 9, 2019 18:52

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

DisDisDis posted:

What's the atelier to begin playing the atelier games with, on pc? important note: i rarely finish individual games let alone trilogies

e; second important note: im into homo stuff

Totori or Sophie. Both have the payoffs for their respective homoness in sequels but I think just about every relationship in this series is a slow burn.

Totori is the better game but Sophie will potentially be cheaper

# ¿ Feb 10, 2019 00:52

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Firis livepost: Liane is right, Firis is adorable

I remember hearing the game has a lot of missable stuff, is there any best practices to follow to avoid missing things or do I just gotta have a guide open?

I'm enjoying the general lack of direction. This first segment of the game at least feels a lot like Ayesha (with worse writing obviously): you're given an objective and a time limit and just told to get cracking. I like that gameplay loop a lot. Not enjoying the shoe dropping to make this game bad because it's been fine so far.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2019 04:44

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

This is not what I would have predicted a younger Ilmeria to look like. The Mysterious character designer really likes changing up the colors in their designs between games it seems, instead of keeping a constant color scheme.

e: the holster on her thigh that she uses to carry a book is amazing though

# ¿ Feb 10, 2019 06:27

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Hot take: so far, Firis is better than both Sophie and Shallie. I assume this will change eventually, but it starts strong

# ¿ Feb 10, 2019 07:23

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

"Mom you're awfully close to

Cordelia
Sterk
> Your Horse"

# ¿ Feb 10, 2019 18:03

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I remember hearing about it but I forgot to brace myself for Escha being Roronaed

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 04:18

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

corn in the bible posted:

lol yes and you also have to talk to her endlessly for padding purposes. you're gonna be in that city for like two loving hours of nothing

That post wasn't quite live; I'm probably an hour into the city and I'm still enjoying myself. My hot take that this is better than Sophie is getting hotter by the second but it still hasn't descended anywhere near Shallie

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 04:44

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I have already filled my container in Firis

this is the first time I've ever filled up my container to the brim

e: oh this triggered learning a recipe to expand it. Sure, complaint withdrawn

ee: is there any way to check what kinds of subweapons characters use?

cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Feb 12, 2019

# ¿ Feb 12, 2019 03:22

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

FractalSandwich posted:

Not really. It's not communicated very well. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that there are three slightly different kinds of swords.

I can just tell you, if you like. Which characters are you interested in?

Well I was interested in Drossel but then I removed her from my party to make room for Ilmeria who I had a gun lying around for so it worked itself out

Speaking of which, I'm through boat town and am more excited than ever to keep accompanying Firis on her journey. I think I might just be broken because so far this game still seems quite good

# ¿ Feb 12, 2019 04:17

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I just stumbled into a postgame superboss while level 20

# ¿ Feb 12, 2019 06:58

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

A Sometimes Food posted:

The Ice Spirit?

That's the one that got me.

Palmyra

# ¿ Feb 12, 2019 17:13

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Dehry posted:

https://twitter.com/zoru0815/status/1095286388537253888

1. I can't imagine living without Firis. Firis-chan!!!!!!!
2. I heard Totori is here, but I wonder if it's true. Excuse me, can I ask you a question?

I'm not expecting Nelke to be good but if it pulls out a miracle and manages to be then I will be very happy

# ¿ Feb 12, 2019 23:04

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Immediately after crossing the lake I decided to go exploring in the hopes of finding my third letter of recommendation and set off to the north, for lack of any direction. It turned out north was an endgame zone, superbosses and all. I dodged the enemies, gathered endgame high quality ingredients, and started making busted bombs to be able to defeat the enemy formations, which would give me a full level up every encounter. This was a really cool fun experience that you don't get much in any RPG. I'm off the "Firis is less bad than I expected" train and on the "Firis is legitimately great" train. The problems people mentioned are all there but in my eyes they wrap back around to strengths. Like the grindy crafting system of leveling up each recipe just means that you get to decide what you're good at instead of the game deciding for you. The party members besides Ilmeria and Liane basically don't exist that's true but they're all boring and I didn't want to talk to them anyways. It's a very different experience than most Ateliers but I think Gust mostly nailed it, about as well as you could expect a studio of their size to ever nail such an ambitious project.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 07:40

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

https://twitter.com/Kmame_at/status/1095885302529290240

I think this artist has the wrong read on Firis, her love of food should be overriding her discomfort at being dressed up and posed by Liane (who is manning the camera off screen)

# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 21:33

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I just passed my Alchemy exam and the credits are playing. I might be the only person in the world who thinks this but Atelier Firis rules. Probably my favorite of the Mysterious trilogy.

I'm assuming that despite the credits playing there's an extensive postgame which should be considered part of the main game despite being after the credits? Based on what people have said in the past.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2019 23:03

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

# ¿ Feb 18, 2019 23:19

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Tales of Woe posted:

do i need to get to the final adventurer rank in Totori to beat the game, or just build the boat? it's a pretty huge jump in points

You need to build the boat and then actually sail to your destination (which takes up days, building the boat just open up new world map locations). The final adventurer rank is just for postgame superbosses I think

# ¿ Feb 19, 2019 02:53

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

U-DO Burger posted:

The lack of difficult monsters in L&S is starting to get annoying. I've got a full party now, give me a chance to pull out all the stops and just go nuts on something!

I miss being able to summon bosses at will like in E&L and Shallies

If nothing else, you can always up the difficulty from the menu.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2019 04:39

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Enemies drop better items on higher difficulties too so you get more cool things to play around with too. If you can handle it it's win-win

# ¿ Feb 19, 2019 04:50

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Speaking of postgame and Firis, I'm starting to transition into making busted poo poo in Atelier Firis and I dunno who thought the resonance traits were a good idea but sure I'll stick Resonance All: Truth on all 19 of my equipment slots why not. I'm sure there's at least one boss who expects that level of stats in the game

# ¿ Feb 19, 2019 20:23

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

If I ever replay L&S I'll get the character DLC but realistically I'll wait until the Mysterious trilogy gets Plus versions to replay any of them.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 00:25

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

U-DO Burger posted:

I honestly don't remember anything about Keina other than that she was Meruru's servant

And future wife

Dehry posted:

She now has a more (frank/liberal/open-minded) personality.

How

Was she not already maxed out somehow

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 18:32

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

What I'm getting is Meruru is Gio 2 now

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 18:43

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

CYBEReris posted:

In Totori, is there any reason to delay ranking up? I was worried about losing the license objectives including ones with bonuses but it looks like they carry over.

There's a reward for turning in a certain number of quests before ranking up. Like "do 10 quests while ranked bronze" or whatever. They give a lot of points and hitting the postgame final rank without it is a pain. If you don't care about fighting the superbosses then it doesn't really matter though

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 19:19

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Her eyes look weird

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 19:45

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

The more I look at Meruru's new design the more I'm convinced that she's explicitly Gio's heir, even without reading any of the text

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 20:10

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I finished Firis (Ilmeria ending of course). I started along the process of getting ready for postgame but it turns out in this one, in addition to doing a ton of crafting (which I enjoy), you gotta farm bosses to even have access to the most powerful traits, which was boring. The Arland games had a really good trait system, where all of the traits were easy to get, or were combinations of easy to get ones, but CP was a serious limiting factor. I didn't really engage with the postgame in Sophie and in L&S you just make a single Firis Bomb to crush bosses and don't really need to dig that deeply into the trait system so I don't know if this is a problem in the Mysterious trilogy or just with Firis.

This was the last modern Atelier I hadn't played yet. So unless I go back to Mana Khemia, I'm all done until Lulua.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2019 08:42

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

The biggest advantage Arland alchemy has over Dusk and Mysterious is the ability to make multiple in a single synthesis imo.

I'm just guessing from screenshots but it looks like it's similar to the Arland system where you're just filling bars but ingredients get assigned to a bar by color like the Mysterious games instead of it being set by the recipe. There also seems to be a system where opposite colors cancel out, so they're probably themed as elements like in E&L

# ¿ Feb 22, 2019 17:57

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 02:17

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I believe they also sell for way more money

# ¿ Feb 28, 2019 04:02

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