Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky (PS3) Review

The newest Atelier game comes almost a year after the last console iteration.  Atelier Escha & Logy offers players the choice of which of the two heroes (natural alchemist Escha or city synthesizer Logy) to follow through the story.  The two will work together and join the R&D department in the frontier town of Colseit.

The look and style of the game is similar to previous entries.  There are cel-shaded looking 3D models, and I still like how the game looks.  Environments are filled out and enemies are detailed, although they are mostly the same enemies you have seen in the Atelier games before.  One complaint I have is some of the text not fitting in its area.  It's not a huge thing, but it just looks sloppy.  Audio-wise, the game offers both spoken English and Japanese for the characters, so everyone can be happy.  Most of the dubbed voices are fine, with Logy sounding flat some of the time.

The basic premise of the game is that both playable characters have just joined the R&D division of the government in one of their frontier towns, Colseit.  Escha has grown up there, but Logy volunteers to be assigned there.  They both have to work together and improve the town, explore ruins and make items using alchemy.  One famous part of the Atelier games is the 3 year time limit.  This is broken up into four month increments, with certain tasks being required each time.  The task are now laid on on a grid, with the main one being the center.  The eight around it are secondary tasks that will reward the player with bonuses when they are completed in groups of three (think bingo).  Around them are tertiary tasks that will give some points toward your rank if completed.  Finishing all the tasks in a given four month period will give you another bonus.

Moving to a dungeon (or back to town) will take a few days.  Thankfully, moving around the different areas of the dungeon will not.  Each day in a dungeon has ten segments, which are taken up when fighting battles or gathering items.  This is fairly standard, but there are some new things to make it easier and better to make your way through the game.  First is the new meter that you build up in each dungeon.  Gathering and fighting will raise it, and when it is over 100%, you can use it for a Field Event.  Field Events can do several things, like make monsters stronger, find a rare artifact, or gather all items in the area.  Very useful when used properly.  Mostly, I used them to gather rare items in an area so I wouldn't spend so much time to gather them manually.  It was also good to use it to acquire relics.

Second would be the battle items, like crafts, bombs and healing salves.  They can be used a few times, but are now refilled when you go back to town.  Wow.  This might be my favorite new thing added to the Atelier series, and I hope it returns for future games.  Spending days to make a really powerful bomb now pays off in spades.  Lastly, you can spend your money on research that improves various thing, like taking less time to gather or travel.  Previously, there were items you could create and equip, but I think I like this better.

Battles in Atelier Escha & Logy are similar to the Mana Khemia series.  All participants in the battle are on a moving line based on the characters' speed and the wait time of their previous action.  When someone's turn is up, you decide what they do.  There are ways to delay an enemy's turn, which moves them farther back in the line.  It's nice because you can see who goes when, and plan your moves accordingly.  Plus, skills and items that do damage for a few turns actually show on the line when that comes up.  I really liked that aspect of Mana Khemia, and I was happy to see a similar battle system in Escha & Logy.

A new aspect to the battles is that now you have 6 characters in your party, 3 of which participate at a time.  When a character's turn is up, you can switch them with the person behind them, and that character gets to take a turn.  The assist meter is still present, and lets you chain attacks together.  When you have a full party of 6, doing enough of these assist attacks can result in a special assist, which stops the combo, but allows the character to use a powerful and fancy attack.  Thankfully, the main characters can now spend their MP on battle skills, making them much better in battle than previous entries.  Couple that with the replenishing battle items, and the main characters are a force to be reckoned with!  Outside of actual boss battles, I rarely needed to heal because of this.

Of course, being an Atelier game, you must also gather ingredients and make items using alchemy.  While it has no impact on the overall item, Escha is the one who uses the cauldron and makes the items, while Logy can use specialized equipment to make/improve weapons and disassemble relics found in the field.  As you level up your alchemy level, you learn new skills to make the process easier than ever to manipulate.  While it sounds complicated when you are first starting, after some experience and skills, you can make high quality items.  My personal favorite skills so far are one that allows you to add an ingredient twice, and one that takes three earth points, but adds either another use to an item or makes one more.  Very useful and easy to do!  I'm sure long time fans may not like that you cannot craft items above your alchemy level, but you level up so quickly that it was never an issue for me.

There are 9 assignments during the story, and each took me several hours to complete, so overall it take at least 40 hours to complete.  There is some replay in using the other character as you main, or trying to complete every part of every assignment, or getting all the trophies.  The trophies are fairly standard for the Atelier games.  You get one for completing each assignment, and ones for seeing special scenes (usually accompanied by a special image).  If you are interested in going for the platinum, you will have complete the game as both characters, which will take a long time.

I'm not a fan of the time limit in the Atelier games, but it was barely an issue in Escha & Logy.  The battles were easier and more fun because of the item refill.  Alchemy is now easier (for me at least) to manipulate the final outcome, and the skills are very useful.  I felt like I had enough time to fight for experience, get lots of materials, and make lots of items, which is a first for me in the series.  It's my favorite so far, because even though there is the time constraint, I rarely felt the pressure that accompanies it.  While not as hard as the previous entries, I love all the improvements it has made and hope they return for future installments.

Atelier Totori Plus (Vita) Review

Atelier Totori Plus is a PS Vita port of a PS3 JRPG, but adds in the DLC characters and a new end-game dungeon.  Players will guide Totori on her quest to become a great adventurer, perfect her alchemy and possibly learn the fate of her lost adventurer mother.  This game is a sequel to Atelier Rorona, as Totori has become Rorona's student after the events of that game.

First off, I am really impressed with the graphics in Totori.  They just look great on the Vita.  The dialogue pictures are of course really well done and detailed, but the battle graphics are just as good.  The game appears to be 3D cell-shaded, and looks wonderful.  The character models and locations are really well done and a joy to look at.

The game has dual language Japanese and English.  Quite a bit of the game is spoken dialogue, and the voices sound good.  The music is nice and fitting, and people who played Rorona will find some familiar tracks while playing the game.  Sound effects in the game are also pretty good, my favorite being the noise when you defeat an enemy.  I don't know why I like it, but it reminds me of air being let out of a balloon, so I almost picture the enemies deflating when they are killed.

After a small introductory portion, Totori makes her way to Arland to apply for an adventurer's license.  She receives it, but will have it revoked after 3 years if she doesn't perform adequately as an adventurer.  This is how the game imposes the famous Atelier 3 year limit on you.  However, there are intermittent goals every 3 months or so, or anything else like that.  Just "you have 3 years, go do stuff".  I really like this, as it makes it more laid back in terms of progression.  Performing certain tasks, like finding all the gathering points on certain maps, killing x amount of y enemies, and fulfilling x number of requests will give you points on your license.  When you have enough, traveling back to the adventurer's guild can get it upgraded to the next level.  It's fairly open-ended and I had fun doing what I could to upgrade my license, and it wasn't too hard in the early going.  Be warned that if you do not rank up enough by the end of the 3 years, it's still game over.

However, if you can attain Diamond rank (right after Platinum) before the 3 years are up, something awesome happens.  You get a license extension!  This allows greater freedom in an Atelier game, since they are pretty strict with the time limit.  Honestly, this feature is my favorite part of the game.  As much as I like playing them, the time limit is always at the back of my mind, so being able to double that limit is very exciting!

Time can be quickly lost in Atelier Totori.  Moving to different areas quickly eats up the time you have, as even moving between the main towns takes almost two weeks until about halfway through the game (make sure to save a Bounce Stone).  Each gathering spot in a given map takes about half a day, so stocking up by grabbing everything there might not be the best option.  I'm an item hoarder, so it's hard to not just grab all of the items so I can maximize my time.  Battles also take time that makes the deadline come faster and faster.  Items do exists that cut down on all the time spent doing things like travelling and gathering (these are also in Atelier Ayesha, if you have played that before).  It takes longer than I'd like to get them, but they really help, so get them as soon as you can.

The combat is fairly standard, turn-based JRPG faire.  When your turn comes up, you can attack, use a skill (or item if you are an alchemist), defend or run away (cue the Monty Python voice).  Like Atelier Rorona, the two other party members can fill a meter that allows them to either follow up one of Totori's attack or defend her from an enemy's attack.  Totori must use an item to have the option of another party member follow it up.  In the previous game, Rorona, party members could follow up the basic attack, and I wish Totori had followed suit.  Using your other party members to shield you is really useful, since Totori herself is somewhat fragile.

The skills that characters get can be very powerful, but take enough MP that you can't just throw them out willy-nilly.  Unfortunately in the beginning, only one of my characters had a usable battle skill.  The other party member, Gino, only got one after giving him an item, which took too long to get.  The first character that could replace him was too low a level to be of any use.  Given the limited time in the game, I didn't want to spend the time grinding her level.  After a while, I was able to add Rorona to my party, and she helped a lot, which made things a bit easier.  You will want to use everyone to get their endings though.

Atelier Totori has a balancing act of finding ingredients, fulfilling requests and fighting monsters.  Early on I was pretty good at it, but as I increased my rank, I would open new locations with monsters that were stronger than my party.  I needed to synthesize things to make better armor and weapons and spend precious time fighting enemies at my level so I could adventurer further out.  Normally, this is not a problem, but I always feel the time pressure on every action I take (or waste).  As I went along, I got much better at balancing out all of the different aspects and had a smoother experience.

Now on to the trophies.  A large bulk of the trophies are for viewing special events that contain a nice picture and getting the various endings of the game.  While getting all the different endings is easiest with multiple playthroughs, it is actually possible with one run.  Be prepared to follow an exact list though.  There is a new game plus, which keeps your current equipment and your money.  It would be nicer to keep more of what you earned, but this is at least nicer than starting over with nothing.  With a little planning, you can make subsequent runs much easier and maximize what you keep.

If you like JRPGs and have a Vita, I'd definitely recommend picking up Atelier Totori, even over the PS3 version.  It looks great and has added content, and no touch screen interaction (other than optionally on the save screen and tapping the back screen for an extra animation) to smudge up the Vita's beautiful big screen.  I had over 40 hours of playtime (that seems to be common for my first run through RPGs nowadays), and plan to make at least one more run through it all.  Unless you follow a guide letter by letter, you too should get multiple runs through the game and Atelier Totori is well worth the asking price.