Short review: The character and world writing fall well below the bar set by previous Atelier games.
Long review:
I play Atelier games for their good writing. And by good, I mean a diverse cast of characters, all with their own traits, goals, and issues who all make sense within their well fleshed out world.
This is the first Atelier game that doesn't have that. Atelier Lydie &Short review: The character and world writing fall well below the bar set by previous Atelier games.
Long review:
I play Atelier games for their good writing. And by good, I mean a diverse cast of characters, all with their own traits, goals, and issues who all make sense within their well fleshed out world.
This is the first Atelier game that doesn't have that. Atelier Lydie & Suelle is the low-effort cute/comedy Atelier that appears to be trying to appeal to the waifu or moe croud while offering nothing in terms of intelligence.
I was initially worried about this game based on the protagonist character designs. And my worries were unfortunately warranted. The protagonists are dressed as fancy clowns, and they stay dressed that way through the entire game (no clothes changes like the last two games). The clothes make no sense in their world. No one else is dressed like a clown. Most other characters in the game and all protagonists from the prior games are dressed relatively normally, with a few bits of flare here and there, depending on their profession. The protagonists clothes make even less sense since they're supposed to be very poor. In fact, everything in the game indicates that they're the poorest people in the city, so how are they wearing and maintaining such fancy clothes? There is a story reason for their clothes, but like most other story points in the game, it's very weak.
The amount of unbelievable things in the story increase from there. There's not much good unless you want nothing but comedy.
Returning characters from the previous games are mostly one-dimensional comic relief. Liane is no longer a strong mercenary who loves her sister. Now she's a straight-up sister stalker who has no value in the story at all besides telling everyone how cute her sister is - to an absurd and unbelievable level.
Firis, the well-fleshed-out protagonist from the previous game has been reduced to being a travel addict. Now she only talks about traveling or comically eating meat.
Plachta and her rival are mostly ignored. Their histories could have been very interesting in this story, but we get very little of that. But they have plenty of comedy...
The game is suspiciously devoid of masculinity. The most masculine man in the game (ignoring Hagel) is a pretty boy prince who is constantly berated by the other characters for wanting to find a girlfriend. And he fails at this constantly, which doesn't make sense, especially given his position. The much-more feminine male gets all of the girls, and why? For comedy's sake.
All of the above would have been acceptable if the protagonists were well-written. But they're not. They've got the most generic goal of having the best atelier in the kingdom because their mother told them to. And they don't have any real hardships with reaching that goal. The game gives the impression that because of they're cute, things are easy for them and everyone wants to help them.
In previous Atelier games, the protagonist has a goal and has to work hard to reach it: physically, within society, and within hard rules. And sometimes they don't even reach them. Their stories had the theme that hard work results in good things. They didn't progress through society simply by being cute. But not this game. Almost nothing is portrayed as being hard, there is almost no society to work within, since everyone you interact with is comic relief, and the tasks that you must meet are arbitrary and have very little meaning in relation to the world. You're just going through the paces, doing meaningless work, and everything that you want is coming true. Not because any real effort, but because you're cute. It's disturbing to me how much "cute" is mentioned in this game. Is this what all young girls should strive for, instead of hard work? And if you're not cute, are you worthless?
The gameplay and crafting is about what you'd expect, although there's pluses and minuses here and there. Overall it seems not as good as previous entries, but my dislike of the story might by coloring my opinion.
How gameplay is intertwined with the story is another big issue. Your main goal is to raise your atelier's reputation as ordered by the kingdom (who consists of one person, apparently - did I mention that this game has almost no world building?) . You raise your reputation not by doing work for society, but by picking up items, using certain attacks, crafting items with specific traits, and watching comedy cut scenes. There's almost no interaction between you and the city population, which is what would make sense if you were trying to increase your reputation. No other previous Atelier game had this big of a disconnect between the gameplay and story.
So this isn't the game for people looking for intelligent writing. But you might still like it if you like the traditional Atelier combat/crafting or if you're looking for a new moe waifu.… Expand
Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious PaintingsYour Score0 out of 10User Score
