Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk

Video Game Review

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Title: Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk
Developed By: Gust
Published By: Tecmo Koei / Mindscape (Australia)
Based On: Atelier Series
Console: Playstation 3
Genre: RPG / Alchemy
Classification (AU): This title has been classified as M for Mild Sexual Themes, Fantasy Violence and Coarse Language
Review Conditions: Australian Edition, Playstation 3, Physical Media
Special Thanks: Mindscape Australia for providing a review copy of this title

Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk follows the story of Ayesha Altugle, a girl who has been living alone in a secluded workshop ever since her grandfather died and her younger sister went missing a few years ago. She supports herself by making and selling medicine. As the story begins, she finds out that her younger sister IS alive somewhere in the world. Now, she must devote herself to finding her younger sister. Her journey to keep her promise begins…

After three releases already on the Playstation 3 as part of the “Alchemists of Arland” trilogy, Gust have finally decided to move the Atelier series from Arland to a brand new world – with new areas to explore, completely new characters and new storyline events at its core. While I am sure there are some fans out there who would have liked the title to return to its more RPG roots as seen in Atelier Iris (The first trilogy of games released internationally), it actually feels that while they have laxed the time demands just a little bit the game is more about alchemy than ever before. Keeping that in mind how does Atelier Ayesha fare from its predecessors? Read on to find out!

Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk 1

Storyline

Atelier Ayesha begins quite differently from games set in the world of Arland. While Arland is portrayed as a growing Kingdom – and to some extent your characters have some part in ensuring its prosperous development, in this title before you even meet the main character you are introduced that this land is slowly in decay. Despite this, people make by and on the outskirts of the towns that sparsely litter the region lives Ayesha, an apothecary who makes a living from making medicines using herbs and other items she finds in the areas nearby. Living by herself since the mysterious disappearance of her sister Nio, one day upon visiting her grave she comes across the ghost of her sister. With the advise of wandering alchemist Keithgriff she comes to realize that her sister has not simply passed away and that the key to saving her lies in the power of alchemy. Packing up shop she goes on a journey to find a means of restoring Nio to her human form.

While other titles in the Atelier series have been more directed, Atelier Ayesha makes it pretty clear from the start that you have three years (Until Year 4 Month 4 to be precise) to rescue Nio and from that you are pretty much free to do anything you want with only mild direction if you choose to follow it. While generally you are not left without any direction, I found myself aimlessly wandering around at times trying to find out where I needed to go next. Even when taking that into account however the shorter year allocation from previous titles did not really hinder the experience – and it is perfectly possible to complete the game in under two years game-time.

The games overall storyline is decent, although in comparison to other Atelier titles and given the reduction in game-time felt like it fell just short of its predecessors in terms of quality. But as with Atelier Rorona it felt like it was setting the scene up for another trilogy of games – introducing to concepts of this new world and so forth. Events were delivered through visiting locations in towns or occurring when reaching certain spots on the world map – and if you do have a backlog of scenes to watch (They do build up at times), you can expect to be listening to nothing but storyline for five to ten minutes at a time. However with no such goal as meeting deadlines to keep a workshop (Rorona) or developing a whole kingdom (Meruru), on the plus side they were given more freedom to focus on the core storyline and they did so quite well.

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Atelier Ayesha has a playable character cast size of around that of Atelier Rorona, although with a slightly heavier emphasis on female characters rather than males (5 Female vs 2 Male). While some of these characters are more interesting than others, and will will find a rather sizeable gap of time passes between unlocking the first three and the last three, each of them receive ample character development that is spread out over the three years and gives you a purpose to use all of them to unlock the wealth of scenes and gameplay events associated with each of them. In addition to the playable characters, there are a set of additional characters such as merchants, wandering travellers and even a “cowgirl” who have storyline events, CG artwork and trophies associated to them – ensuring you are not short of character paths to follow.

While there are some storyline events required to be completed before the main game, it is no longer the end once you finish the main story and you can continue to continue down character paths of explore more of the world upon rescuing Nio until the games only time deadline. Overall while I still would have liked more from the main storyline, the character development paths were interesting and I hope to see further development of at least some of them in the upcoming Project A15.

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Design

As with Atelier Totori and Meruru, the game is visually pleasing. Character designs for the games rather sizable character cast are all individualized and well designed, from the more mature personality of Keithgriff to the witch attire of Wilbell… every character stands out in their own way. On the other hand the environment designs for each of the areas you visit stand out from earlier titles are are generally more open and varied than before. As you may notice from the screenshots in the article when compared to those of other reviews in the series – Atelier Ayesha stands out aesthetically from the use of colours that suit a more natural world rather than the developing and expanding world of Arland. While it does take some time to get used to, in the end I think the visuals suited the game environment quite well – and was a good choice on the behalf of Gust.

While the battle system doesn’t change that much, the animation of it has improved, with more active movements of the characters during attacks with a number of enjoyable character animations when using skills and special attacks. That being said, there are frame rate issues that occasionally rears its head, but in comparison to other titles this feels more intermittent than anything else.


Opening Sequence “Trailer” for Atelier Ayesha – Released By Gust prior to Japanese launch

Music / Voice Acting

Atelier Ayesha boasts an extensive soundtrack, with a wealth of songs for use in all occasions from battles to cutscenes and most are of the quality you would expect from the Atelier series. However, while my reviews do not generally take into account any DLC content – I would recommend checking out the music DLC released for the title on the Playstation Network for <$5. As with Atelier Meruru, this unlocks a sizable number of tracks for you to play during battles, in the workshop, towns and basically any area of the game without a specialized soundtrack or cutscenes. While you are given around five tracks for each of the earlier Playstation 3 games for free, this pack unlocks almost the entire soundtracks for many Atelier games (Including Arland, Iris etc), tracks from a number of their other games, remixes and more. But whether or not you pay money for the pack – the soundtrack is enjoyable.

Fans of Japanese dubs will be disappointed to know that Tecmo Koei have chosen this to be an English dub only title – with no way to unlock the Japanese dub at this time. The voice casting is a mixed bag with some better than others. The most noticeable issue is that only a small portion of the game is dubbed, and many scenes I think would have gone well dubbed were just text. If this is reflective of the Japanese release or if this was a localization decision I don’t know.

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Gameplay

As mentioned above, unlike the series’ Playstation 2 predecessors, alchemy and exploration are considered the core aspects of gameplay with the games battle system to some extent taking a back seat. While fans will feel right at home with all the features and functionalities of this release, there have been changes made across the board – some good, some not so good. Unfortunately one of the systems which has been streamlined is the alchemy system and in what seems to be an attempt at making it more accessible to gamers took away the complexity of what made it an interesting system to use.

In earlier games you would need to roam the world looking for items that had specific traits to use in alchemy. For example, if you wanted to forge a weapon with at least X Attack – you will need to find an ore with that trait and then add it to the ingot during synthesis. Unfortunately this time around it felt to be more about quality and number of traits added to determine what pre-defined abilities you receive on your synthesized items. While the traits you earn are generally good on the items… I felt that it cheapened the system more than benefiting it.

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Atelier Ayesha removes the middle man when it comes to the quest system. Rather than go up to a counter and accept requests, Ayesha has to visit one of the games three towns and accept requests directly from the townspeople herself. The time limits are pretty lax when it comes to this (Quite often you are given several hundred days) so they felt to be simple means of making money and items from your synthesized items than being an integral part of your success in the game.

When it comes to harvesting items, this system has also changed in the fact that you no longer get shown a list of items and instead mash the X button until the harvest point is exhausted. In return, your party members will also contribute their services and build up your item pile at no additional cost to your time limit. While in earlier games this would have been a hindrance due to the limited number of items you could carry, with the exception of support and attack items – your basket is not limited to how much it can carry – just how many item types are inside it.

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While on the outside the battle system of Atelier Ayesha has not changed much, some rather substantial amendments have been made to it. Once again the game returns to the three character Turn Based Battle system, which works well for the title. However no longer are characters required to stand in nice straight lines and can essentially be moved 360 degrees around the enemies – placing them either infront, behind or the side of the enemies they are up against. Depending on what location they are in there are pros and cons – if they are positioned behind the characters they can deal more damage but at the same time as many support items/skills are area-based, they are left vulnerable to having greater chunks of their HP knocked off.

The AC support system returns again, but unlike previous games are no longer limited to defensive or other simple attacks. In addition to defending one party member against attacks – you can also pursuit/back attack enemies, choose to have other characters in the area leave the field for a particular attack, restore MP to the character in question or even give yourself some decent stat boosts depending on what character is performing the skill. In addition, apart from regular attacks, party members other than Ayesha are able to build up special move gauges which allows them to perform powerful attacks against an enemy on the screen – almost a must for boss battles. In return for not having a special move, Ayesha is the only character who can use items in battle – and there are a great number of attack and support items to incorporate into your battle strategy.

An interesting feature to add to the game is a memory journal, where during the course of the game you can spend points on writing notes in her journal thus unlocking new items and stat boosts for her. As these stat boosts only affect Ayesha, it is possible to make her one of the stronger party members in the game by pooling your points into the right memories – with her HP in particular potentially being double or even triple that of her friends.

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Fortunately as you are not restricted to time as much as previous titles, you are given the freedom even from your first playthrough to (Provided you don’t slack off for the first year or two) enjoy some of the other features the game has to offer. Every month in the town of Vierzeberg they hold a bazaar where you can purchase and build up the store levels of Ayesha’s friends and twice a year you can go up against other characters in a contest of fine items where people compete for the highest value. In addition to this, for the first time the world map has freely roaming characters whom you can come across and purchase more unique alchemic goods and items from. As you can tell, most of the initial events and minor features do focus on alchemy in some way.

As mentioned earlier, until the set end-date of Year 4 Month 4, you are free to continue the game even past the main storyline. While you do have to actively seek out these post-game goodies, the game does not leave you with nothing to do with many character events, boss battles and endings to achieve. Upon completion of one playthrough, as usual you are able to begin a New Game+ with a couple of things carrying over from the previous playthrough (Money, Weapons etc).

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Overall while I personally would have liked more from this game, the improvements to the battle system were welcome alongside the strong visuals and music made this a solid title in the Atelier series. There are several characters I would like to see more of, and given the world building so far I wouldn’t mind another title or two set in the some world as this. With Project A15 currently being promoted by Gust in Japan, I hope that the new international publishers Tecmo Koei will continue to support the series and its long history in our market.

FINAL SCORE
Storyline/Character Development: B
Design: A-
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Gameplay: B
Replayability: B+
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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