Board 8 > If I wanted to get into Atelier

(+) Yeah! (+)

It looks like the series is on sale on Steam and I haven't bought much lately. Worth it? What do I start with?

Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg

that ain't on steam!

I'll always recommend people to start with Ayesha in the Dusk trilogy. I see many people recommend Ryza or Sophie, but Ryza's combat is absolutely awful and Sophie bored me through almost all of its runtime. Ayesha has a great balance between the two mechanics - combat and alchemy, the time limit is extremely relaxed, and it has one of the best soundtracks of its entire console generation. It's a perfect place to start on the series.

Rorona is the best place to start IMO. The Plus upgrades make it an extremely playable game, and it's essentially the start of the modern Atelier era.

Ayesha is the other good choice. Sophie is a bad choice.

Sounds like Ayesha wins then, thanks!

I disagree with Ryza's combat being awful (though I don't prefer it to Arland and Dusk) but Sophie is bad yes.

And I also agree start with Ayesha.

Ryza and Sophie are both good.

Not sure why everyone seems to hate them. Hubby and I liked both Ryza and Sophie. Sophie has the better combat system but Ryza 2 I liked the plot better than Sophie 2. (but both had good plots)

I wanted to say Ayesha but people beat me to it.

Ayesha has a "darker" vibe to it as far as Atelier games go. I remember enjoying that and Shallie quite a bit because they veered into a bit more of a dystopian setting. Now, this is by ATELIER standards. Atelier tends to stay as cutesy and non-offensive as JRPGs tend to get. The allure is in all the crafting. I just wish they'd go back to dubbing the franchise. I haven't played anything since Firis because of that...freaking jerks.

Atelier Fructis

Alanna82 posted...

Not sure why everyone seems to hate them. Hubby and I liked both Ryza and Sophie. Sophie has the better combat system but Ryza 2 I liked the plot better than Sophie 2. (but both had good plots)

Most people don't dislike Ryza that's just an Arti thing.

Most people dislike Sophie, though, because the plot and cast are extremely boring and the gameplay for both combat and alchemy is clunky at best. The whole Mysterious trilogy (or Quadrology now I guess but I haven't played Sophie 2) has easily the worst crafting in the series, especially.

But yeah generally I consider the Dusk trilogy of Ayesha, Escha&Logy, and Shallie to be the safest bet to start with because all of the games in it are good.

I liked the combat in Sophie 2. Not sure if it is the same as the original though.

Husband prefers Sophie 2's alchemy to Ryza's. I liked both ways. Ryza's is more straightforward but I enjoyed the tetris playing of Sophie 2's.

Also is Mana Khemia part of the series? I played both those games and they are very similar, but I never hear anything about those two games.

The only ones worth playing at Mana Khemia 1 and 2 but they're more like spin off games.

Alanna82 posted...

Also is Mana Khemia part of the series?

Spin-off of a spin-off; the Atelier Iris trilogy was an attempt at more traditional JRPG gameplay and Mana Khemia was the successor to their style. IIRC Mana Khemia's credits did refer to it as the ninth game in the Atelier series (Project A9 or something to that effect), so it *might* be more closely considered part of the franchise than I give it credit for.

(Love Mana Khemia 1 and really enjoyed Sophie, personally.)

Mana Khemia is officially part of the series, yeah, though it was marketed separately in the west. IMO, it's better than any mainline Atelier game, and 2 is great too.

I did dabble in Mana Khemia a while back and liked it!

someday we'll get re-releases of all the pre-Arland stuff

someday

I just want them to make a Mana Khemia 3.

Mana Khemia and Ar Tonelico 2 are the best Gust games. Shame about the absolute game breaking bug in Ar Tonelico 2 that requires a fan-made patch that renders official disc play impossible.

Ciel no Surge is great but it's only in Japanese and didn't get localized because "Visual Novels don't sell!" mentality at the time.

Lord Ephraim posted...

Shame about the absolute game breaking bug in Ar Tonelico 2 that requires a fan-made patch that renders official disc play impossible.

It does not. I beat the disc version of AT2 no problem. You just have to beat the final boss before it gets 3 turns, which is fairly simple if you're trying to do so.

And yeah AT2 is the best Gust game by far. I keep hoping the remastered versions of the Nosurge games will come out in the west but no dice so far...

Yeah AT2 is the best game in that series. The 3rd one was complete crap though. Came out on the PS3 but someone how managed to look worse than the first 2 on PS2.

I never played the Ar Tonelico series but was always kinda interested in them back in the day. Are they worth playing today, you think? Not that many games coming out this year I'm interested in so have some time to play random other games.

The first Ar Tonelico is fine. Misha best girl, but the protag is a dunce and overall just not as high quality as the second game.

The third game downgrades just about everything. The graphics, the music, the gameplay especially the gameplay. It's a low quality action RPG. The main gimmick of the series, the cosmosphere, focuses on fetishes than fleshing out the heroines.

Ciel no Surge and Ar Nosurge are sort of similar to Ar Tonelico. Ciel is a girl raising sim/visual novel while Ar Nosurge is more of a standard JRPG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulM2iGH6nt8

I really wanted to like Ar Tonelico [3 maybe?] but I got real dang bored of the combat and I couldn't even reliably do the input for the sexy bits, and the music and characters couldn't quite make up for it

I wish I knew what happened to my copies of Mana Khemia and the sequel then. I might have sold them, or given them to my brother when I moved in with my husband. (I know he would love those games)

Mana Khemia still has one of the best plot twists in any video game.