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Atelier Totori Plus

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Title: Atelier Totori Plus
Developed By: Gust
Published By: Tecmo Koei | Mindscape (Australia)
Based On: Atelier Totori for the Playstation 3 – Third installment in the Alchemists of Arland series
Console: Playstation Vita
Genre: RPG / Alchemy
Classification (AU): This title has been rated R18+ for References to Sexual Violence
Review Conditions: Australian Edition, Playstation Vita, Digital Download
Special Thanks: Mindscape Australia for kindly providing a review copy of this title

This nation has a job called “adventurers”. It all happened before Arland became a republic. People wanted to explore, adventure or develop the frontier. The knights of Arland were weak, so the citizens joined them and helped out. It happened gradually, but that system was later institutionalized. Adventuring is now a real job. My mother was one of those adventurers. I hear she’s actually famous too, but we haven’t heard from her in years…

My father and sister both think she is dead already… but I don’t think so.

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Given that the appearance of Atelier Totori Plus on the Playstation Store was a surprise to all, up to this point the only references to the English launch of the game on The Otaku’s Study is based around the surprising decision of the Australian Classification Board to give it an R18+ title – allowing it to join an exclusive group of games such as God of War and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. Having already played the Playstation 3 edition of the game I was left curious as to what new additions could have warranted the change from the initial PG rating to R18+ for “References to Sexual Violence



and you know what…. I still have absolutely no idea. Either way, read on for my review for this Playstation Vita port of Atelier Totori Plus.

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Storyline

While the Playstation 2 installments in the Atelier franchise focused on RPG aspects with the emphasis of alchemy helping set it apart from the crowd, the Atelier games on the Playstation 3 have switched the focus and have greater focuses on alchemy with an RPG backing to it. The first game for the latest generation of consoles Atelier Rorona lacked that balance and turned out to be a pretty hit or miss title – while Atelier Totori turned out to be much better balanced with less restrictions and more of a chance to do more than sit in a workshop and synthesize pies.

You start the game as Totooria Helmond (Totori), who lives with her sister Cecillia (Ceci) and her almost non-existant father who grew up without her mother who had disappeared while trekking out on an adventure. Sometime before the events of the game, she came across and was trained by the (debatable) highly skilled travelling alchemist Rorona – and actually manages to grasp some skills. While she lacks the competence just yet – she is encouraged by her long-time friend Gino to become an adventurer, and is led on a quest to not only develop her alchemy skills but also find her mother whom she does not believe to be dead.

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Unfortunately if you are not a fan of time restrictions, this game still retains them as all Playstation 3 installments have. However unlike Atelier Rorona you are no longer limited to three-four month periods with a certain item to collect and submit – however a key element requires you rely on both adventuring and alchemy in order to progress through the storyline. Due to a recent surge in Adventurers Licenses being handed out, new adventurers have three years in order to reach a certain rank or face having it withdrawn. Therefore, for the first three years of game time, Totori’s quest to become an adventurer like her mother as well as discover her whereabouts are dedicated to gathering items in bulk, travelling the world and trying to reach the level so Totori can progress to the second part of the game. This time is used to introduce all the characters to your party, hopefully build up your character relationships to get fragments of character development and come across the seemingly random events that you would need a guidebook to find each one. While it does not deliver a stellar storyline performance, it does do a nice job at getting you in to the gameplay while rewarding your efforts at using different characters and travelling around the world – including the occasional swimsuit fanservice event or a cook-off against Iksel (A character from Atelier Rorona).

However past this point, you are left with a much stricter time limits and if you do not recognize the proper ending criteria and set aside enough time to complete them. Essentially provided you receive your proper license, it is valid for another two years – and this time there are plot twists which bring the main storyline about Totori searching for her mother to light and expands the gameplay to facilitate it – but of course you can just continue on your adventuring if you choose until the games fixed end point. While I thankfully was able to reach a satisfactory end in my playthrough of the Playstation Vita version… it fared less well during my very first playthrough (See: The Otaku’s Log #1: Sam Reaches the Bad End of Atelier Totori).

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Taking a focus onto the characters and their development, I do love the personality of Totori. She has that happy-go-lucky innocent personality however can strike critical blows against others such as telling the bar owner he has no customers or making awkward comments about Sterk’s face. She may seem like she has the ditzy innocent girl personae, but the writing is creative and implements a lovable personality that works well with both storyline and comedy alike. I also found a new liking for Rorona – more so then her game, and a mixture of being like her master but still the same klutz at times. Taking a look at the other characters – Sterkenburg (Sterk) is the only returning playable non-DLC character and the game tries to dig into his personality a bit more, however the new characters Melvia (Panty flashing and skirt flipping jokes ahoy!), Mimi, Marc and Gino all hold interesting personalities but I do not think their storylines held up to those of the Atelier Rorona cast (With the exception of perhaps Mimi).

As this is the Playstation Vita edition, there are a few extra additions to the mix which should appeal to fans both new and like although none of these really had any impact on the storyline. The three originally DLC characters – Ceci, Cordelia and Iksel are now included in the mix for free and have been slightly better integrated into the storyline, however in terms of storyline are still lacking in comparison to the original playable character cast. As for the game now being classified R18+ up from PG for supposed references to sexual violence…. I didn’t come across anything that I would regard in those terms.

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Design

I was skeptical about how this game would look having been ported from the Playstation 3 to the Playstation Vita…. and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with the result. While there were a few noticeable graphical glitches which unless isolated cases in my experience should have been picked up in testing – but otherwise the visuals really do shine on the smaller screen. Many of my comments in terms of the design itself remain the same from my original review:

The design is one area which I think has been improved upon the most. I liked the 3D models of the original game, but could not deny that they were going for the cutesy semi-chibified design – so it was a welcome change to see they included a bit more realism with their character, allowing them to not only have the characters match their character portraits and CG Designs but allow them to express emotions and not rely on their portraits in every single scene. The 3D models are well suited to the intended environment with bright colours and creative designs for every character. Character portraits are of comparable quality to the original, but the original characters do get redesigned (To suit the 5ish year time jump) and the new ones are solid. Environments are of comparable quality as well, however had a more diverse set of settings which made traversing Arland’s many different regions more tolerable alongside being less linear and could be perceived as more open-worlded..

A few problems must be noted however – No free camera again which leaves you at the mercy of the game to give you the best viewing position. 90% of the time this is no problem, but the times where it really matters are when the camera obscures a monster or search point behind a boulder, tree etc which results in minor frustration. As a more minor complaint, they still remain lacking in the diversity of special effects during battle. Despite these, the design has been enhanced and should not disappoint. Also… the mini-Chim’s are ADORABLE!

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Music / Voice Acting

This game uses a mix of new songs for the game and those from Atelier Rorona, which makes for a nice combination – with the new songs being appropriate and enjoyable. While the original music DLC was split over several installments unlike Meruru and Ayesha which featured a single music pack for a set price – as this is Atelier Totori Plus all the DLC song packs are included in this game to give you quite a lot of choice in terms of what music plays while in town, in battle and on the world map to name a few examples.

The original English dub has been included in this release and for the most part it was strong – especially with the female playable characters and Sterk.  A particularily low point was for the character Gino, which wasn’t up to the standards of the others, but I did appreciate the effort and heartiness put into the role of Rorona as well as Totori whose voice actress portrayed the innocent character role effectively.

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Gameplay

Aside from the return of a brand new dungeon from Atelier Rorona, a handful of costumes and the appearance of DLC characters – there is very little in terms of new content gameplay-wise and many core features have been present in all three parts of the trilogy or at least the latter two.

The first thing you will notice upon starting the game is that the world is much more open then Atelier Rorona, so instead of having six to eight different maps with a number of areas within them, you are presented with a world map, with areas being unlocked every time you level up your Adventurers License allowing you access to new areas with tougher enemies and better points to gather items. To progress the story and unlock new areas you have to collect points to rank up which works similar to an achievement system. Everything from synthesizing items or a set of items, to completing quests, defeating monsters or even finding landmarks can result in you getting points towards your rank, which requires anywhere from 100 points initially to 1,500 points at the end. I found this system much more adaptable to my playing style, even if the last few points needed to rank up felt purposefully tedious.

Of course, as with the original game you are required to have money and lots of it to be able to purchase random materials and alchemy books. You do so by undertaking quests that require you to have X amount of an item or kill Y of a monster and in return you get a set number of cole and provided you didn’t pass off D or E rank items, can get a bonus synthesis item with your submission. You will find making money rather difficult in this game even if all skill books are available at the start. This is in part due to the quest seemingly not giving out as much cole as previous, but also due to the time restrictions. Everything in this game takes up time – and a lot of it. For example – getting from Alanya to Arland takes a total of 21ish days by foot for example, followed by a day lost for every time you exit an area and rather hefty chunks of time taken out every time you loot or battle an enemy. You learn to take in bulk to refrain from further trips – and while some may find this an incredibly annoying feature of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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The turn based battle system for this game as it was with Atelier Rorona is not a key element of the game, however you will still be using it quite a bit in materials collection. The battle system is easy to grasp as it is very simplistic, with gamers only starting off with Attack, Guard and Flee (In the case of Totori and Rorona, you can also use attack and heal items you can synthesize) – later followed by the ability to use skills and special attacks once reaching certain level milestones. Through the creation of cloth and ingots you can create new weaponry and armor for your characters but skill and leveling prove to be the key factors in battle success. You can easily obtain the ability to attack first by attacking the enemies in the field (Generally there are only a handful per field) but until you reach the final few areas of the game, they should prove little problem.

If one thing has remained the same over these games, it is the alchemy system. This game relies heavily on your repeated use of the system to clear quests and unlock new rank tiers, but also at a certain level to complete the game without endless reloading of the game. The system allows you to covert anything from one items to many of them into brand new updated items – so for example, any one item can be converted into a supplement but making Ingots require specific ores and other items. The system works well and does get you out into the world and searching – however one complaint I do had was that found myself not needing to dive into all the items, as there was only a specific items I seemed to always be asked for.

From experience and several playthroughs, a single run of Atelier Totori Plus should take you around 20 hours approximately to finish, and unless you are very creative with your save files or have a guide you are looking at several runs to see and unlock everything you have to do.

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Final Words

As this is essentially a faithful port to the Playstation Vita with DLC unlocked and a few nice goodies, there isn’t that much to offer the returning player. That being said while there are low chances of the first installment in the series Atelier Rorona being ported alongside with it, it serves as a great introduction point into the series and hopefully we will see Atelier Meruru Plus released down the track as well…. hopefully less suddenly.

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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