Atelier Lydie & Suelle Review
The way Gust always works in the Atelier series, is that they work in threes. This game is the third in the Mysterious series, set eight years after Atelier Sophie and the Mysterious Book and four years after Atelier Firis and the Mysterious Journey. The story follows the alchemist twins – the reserved but caring Lydie Malen, and the eccentric, carefree Suelle Malen. They both work alongside their father at the family atelier.
Their mother has died some years ago, and it seems their father hasn’t gotten over losing her yet. He is an alchemist too, but doesn’t amount to much. The twins are pretty much left to take care of themselves. Due to his inexperience in alchemy they rarely see any customers. Their daily life changes when the duo uncovers a mysterious-looking painting, and as they reach out to investigate, the girls are drawn inside a world bountiful with rare materials perfect for alchemy.
Assignment after assignment: better get synthesizing!
Atelier Lydie & Suelle is the nineteenth game in the Atelier series, just about every year a new installment is released. Most of the time on Playstation devices, but this one made it to Steam and even to the Switch. Even though I’ve played all the other games on the Vita, I was happy for the slightly bigger screen of the Switch to sate my Atelier hunger.
As was introduced in this trilogy and used throughout, synthesizing isn’t just a matter of throwing ingredients in a pot. A puzzle like template is used to put the ingredients together, aided by a catalyst that can change up the puzzle. The story is progressed by doing assignments, that follow the Alchemist ranking system. But in order to do that, the twins first have to make sure their notoriety goes up by doing various tasks in their Ambition Notebook.
Anyone who has played an Atelier game before knows how this works, and the crafting is one of the soothing parts of the game. Fiddling around with traits and special effects to get that elusive special item that is requested. I really like doing that!
Back to small town living
In Atelier Firis we got to explore at random, without having to go from A to B; the developers have abandoned this open world concept again in favor of living in a small town. Probably because I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed the open world concept in Atelier Firis a lot!
I guess it makes sense too, as it’s the mysterious paintings that give the sense of exiting horizons to explore. It’s one of the things that makes the game interesting, wondering what kind of world you’ll see next. New enemies, new materials to gather. And enabling the girls to come up with new ideas too.
The paintings unlock slowly: first you have to do the tasks in the Ambition notebook, then the tasks acquired to gain another Alchemy Level and then you get to see a new painting. The paintings are a nice touch and they make the adventure a bigger and better one.
Turn based fighting with added features
All Atelier games have a couple of staple components: crafting, assignments, people stories and turn-based fighting. Crafting the best possible equipment and bring along all sorts of bombs you can make is the way to go.
Once you come to the point where you can add more people to your fighting team, you can put them in the front row for attacks and the back row for support. If Lydie or Suelle is in the back row, they can even perform a limited kind of synthesis to help the battle. Everyone takes attacks in turn and provide follow-up support depending on their placement in the lineup.
Later in the game the twins are able to “paint” over the battlefield using special items, granting passive effects that correspond to each of the game’s Mysterious Paintings.
Easy travel and lots of guidance
The travel system in the game is great. I like it that I don’t have to trudge through the streets to go from A to B. It’s quick and efficient, and the game guides you buy adding a star next to where you need to go to progress the story. And an ! for a destination that’s a sub-quest.
With the usual dungeon areas, the town itself and the various painting, this could have gotten cluttered. But they solved that nicely by adding screens for the outskirts of town, and on for the paintings.
I do like that, but when you’re rushing through, you don’t have an eye for the beautiful surroundings anymore. Because visually, the game is really nice and colourful.
Characters can make or break a game
For me, the Atelier games are synonymous to good stories and finding out what makes the protagonist tick. I’ve loved seeing Sophie grow from a good and kind girl to a competent and kind woman and I rooted for Ayesha as she went out to find her sister.
This is where Atelier Lydie & Suelle disappointed me the most. The sisters are annoying and tedious in equal parts, each in their own way. Suelle just shouts at everything, is belligerent, screams at bugs and just tends to be obnoxious. I’m playing as Lydie, as she is slightly more acceptable to me, but the way she blushes at everything and portrays such a weak damsel in distress really makes me impatient.
The other characters are just weird. Hagel, the manly Smith? Eeew! The twins father Roger has no idea what his daughters are up to and is just out of it. Seeing familiar faces helped a little. Fritz Weissberg and Corneria and of course Sophie and Plachta. Firis and Liane made an appearance too, though once again, Firis and her creepy doting sister Lia annoyed me. Firis seems to have grown up a little but her sister really says the most cringe-worthy things!
Juvenile writing
On top of the characters it’s the things they say! In some cases I just couldn’t believe what I read, the writing is so juvenile. These are thing young teenagers say to impress their friends! And even though I know the twins are indeed teenagers, this isn’t what I want to see in an Atelier game.
It doesn’t help that for the first time, the game isn’t dubbed in English. We have to make do with sub titles and endure the baby-talk voices in Japanese. After a few hours I just turned the volume way down, it really got on my nerves.
Conclusion
It really saddens me to say this, but I can’t give the game more then a 6,5 out of 10. This game feels as if they made a quick new entry, wanting to bring the Mysterious trilogy to an end and having to put out one game a year.
The battle and synthesis system is what we have come to expect from an Atelier game, and having the storyline revolve around small town living is okay. The landscapes look pretty and the music is good too. For that, I added 0,5 to the 6 I had originally wanted to give.
The characters and the writing aren’t okay at all, it’s what annoyed me the most in this game. Sure, the protagonist can be young and it’s nice to see them evolve as a person. But they don’t have to be so weak and infantile!
The mysterious paintings are a nice new addition, which I hope they will keep in the next Atelier games in future. I guess I will plod on for some time though waiting for another game to catch my interest.
Review kindly supplied by YvoCaro. Follow her @YvoCaro and at Ladies Gamers.
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