Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings

Overall, Atelier Lydie & Suelle is a great entry in the Atelier series, and it’s easily one of the stronger Mysterious entries. It competes with Atelier Sophie for my favorite in the trilogy, though the general bloat of Atelier Lydie & Suelle gives Atelier Sophie the slight edge. That said, it’s a great follow-up. Though it may take a while to reach its conclusion, it serves as a nice way to tie up as much of the Mysterious storyline as possible while also offering new worlds to explore, exciting new battle mechanics, and a refinement of an already excellent synthesis system. Of course, with the recent announcement of Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, I’m eagerly looking forward to more Atelier.

It has great dialogue along with interesting battles but a boring post-game. It offers us a funny and epic story, but it also has excessive loading times for each action and poor quality in Nintendo Switch's portable mode.

The Mysterious Paintings has a good battle system and premise, but overall I wanted more from the final entry in the Mysterious trilogy. It seems like a missed opportunity to not include an open world and instead opt for a streamlined adventure with quick travel being the only option for exploration.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemist and the Myterious Paintings looks like an efficient and long RPG with some good mechanics but will clearly fail to impress or surprise you (except if we talk about its expensive DLC), as its lacks novelty. If you're a true fan, you'll get what you want. If you're not familiar with the series, you could give it a try with this Switch version.

Atelier Lydie and Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings readily enchants with a charming story and some fantastical worlds to explore. But, while the game’s greatest strength lies in the depths of its alchemy system, Gust has failed to have thrown enough new ingredients into their murky cauldron to innovate on the experience as much as has been seen in what came before. What we’re left with is a rather average concoction.

If the game was ever-slightly-more polished it would be a solid recommendation. Instead, this game’s a shrug. It doesn’t earn the credit it gets and instead just perpetuates a good idea that’s been at the core of this franchise for two decades. This series needs a lot of improvements before the next entry; hopefully series’ developer Gust will put in the work. If they do, I’ll be there to play it myself.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is a fun yet sometimes tedious JRPG that has you doing a lot of busy work. In some cases there is some fun to be had but a boring battle system spoils what I found to be a fun and lighthearted experience and worth checking out.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle is a rather standard entry to the Atelier series. Content with relying on a pretty standard setup, the game doesn’t innovate or move forwards, although fans of the series will no doubt be interested in the new story alone. It’s a pretty interesting take on the ridiculously wide genre of RPGs, with a much heavier focus being given to its deep crafting system, but that might not be enough to convince new players on its own.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is another solid chapter in the current era of Gust’s franchise about heroines drawn to alchemy—and that’s said in both a good and a bad way. If you’ve enjoyed previous Atelier games for what they’ve been, then twins Lydie and Suelle are ready to take you on another adventure of crafting items, fighting monsters, and uncovering the secrets that hang over their homeland. However, if you’ve been hoping for some real progress or change in the Atelier formula, that recipe, sadly, remains undiscovered.

The Switch port is very inconsistent. In both handheld and docked modes, the frame rate is inconsistent. I shouldn’t be surprised considering it is 30fps on the PS4 Pro but it is so erratic that moving the camera in some situations might give you motion sickness.