PLATFORM: PC, PS4, SWITCH (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Just a few short months after the most recent Atelier game (Ryza 2) was released, alchemy and experimentation are the order of the day once again as the 17th, 18th and 19th instalments of the long-running series make their way to the Switch in a deluxe pack of expanded editions (also available separately, if you fancy just trying one out to see if you like it). As always, there’s not a huge amount of variation between each game, all featuring a heavy emphasis on exploring your surroundings, gathering and experimenting with crafting materials, making new items, general atelier-ing, talking to the locals and going about your daily business, with a bit of low-stress turn-based combat on the side.
The titles of each game pretty much tell you what to expect. In Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book, Sophie sets out to discover the origin of a mysterious book that holds the secrets to the art of alchemy, and Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey sees young Firis, an inhabitant of a village sealed inside a mountain, going on a… mysterious journey (to leave the village and pass her alchemy exams). Lastly, we join twin sisters Lydie and Suelle as they gather materials from within a series of mysterious paintings in Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings. Enough mystery for you there?
Each game has enough to make it distinctive from the others, whether it’s the story or the setting or differences in combat, and it’s fairly rank each entry against the others. Sophie is easily the best starting point, while Lydie feels like the most polished and overall most enjoyable of the trilogy. Firis suffers a bit from its frustrating time management element, as you’re against the clock for the first dozen or so hours, making you rush through places that you otherwise might have stuck around to explore. When the time constraints are eventually removed and you’re able to wander around at will, the world turns out to be one of the best in any Atelier game, so it’s a real shame that it takes such a long time to allow players to enjoy it fully.
There are a few things you can be certain of with any Atelier game, and each title in the Mysterious Trilogy is no exception – slightly tricky to get into (the all-important alchemy systems are never explained very well, so you’ll have to pay close attention and put some time into figuring a lot of things out for yourself), but the payoff is always enjoyable. Rustic and just on the right side of twee, innocent and inoffensive in every single way and extremely chilled and laid back, they always provide a reliable way of keeping your brain engaged in something that doesn’t really have too many high stakes. The DX versions of each game include brand new quests, items and vehicles as well as swathes of previously-released DLC, and each game has its own digital art book which also includes a music player (Atelier soundtracks are always quite the treat). As with last year’s Dusk Trilogy, you’re likely to get more out of certain characters’ arrival in subsequent games if you’ve already met them in a previous title but it doesn’t really matter if you play the games out of sequence. Definitely start with Sophie though.
