Review: Atelier of Arland & Dusk Sagas

Review


Today I am gonna review one of my favourite RPG series for the PS3:

Atelier of Arland & Atelier of Dusk

Right now 5 titles of the very long Atelier series that is available for multiple consoles and handhelds has been released in the West for PS3. It is a series of JRPGs focussed on features such as making your own items with Alchemy while those can be gotten through gathering and battles. It is is known for lovable, though often stereotypical anime characters, which work however, their own story and character development, a beautiful art design and a very lovely soundtrack that either fits the moments. The main story normally is not such a big deal, though existant but sometimes it very well centers around some very deep character moments, thoughts and events such as Atelier Totori and Atelier Escha and Logy.

Story:

Contains Spoilers

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Rorona: The first of the Arland saga. Main character Rorolina Frixell (Rorona) who is 14 years old (17 in the West) works for workshop ran by the incredibly skilled yet lazy and excentric Alchemist Astrid Zexis. Rorona slipped right into this business when her family was not able to pay Astrid for the medicine she gave to Rorona's mother Laura. Eventually Astrid passed down the shop and all of her work to Rorona - though she pretty much let her do everything before anyway. With the king of Arland most of the time not being here every important decision about what shall be built is made by another part of the government so Rorona has to prove herself being a worthy Alchemist and fulfill the tasks they give her. One of the government who is more interested in all the technical stuff and weapons and all that crap does not care about Alchemy and wants the workshop to be closed but together with the friends she finds she succeeds in doing what people want from her and gets a brilliant Alchemist. The character events of heer new friends tell more abotu what kind of person they are and who they become, as it is normal for the Atelier and are also normally connected to their respective ending - though there is a canonical ending, a true ending in every Atelier story. The character events per sé are also canonical, however. In the end she has become a master alchemist and goes travelling as her master Astrid does. This leads to Atelier Totoi where Totori has founds Rorona and Rorona became her master.

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Totori: The protagonist of Arland 2 is Totooria Helmold (Totori, ~12 years old) who is a Beginner Alchemist and has learned those skills from Rorona when she met her. She is a very skilled Alchemist, lives a bit far from the main city of Arland, in a village which is still part of the kingdom and dreams of leaving the village and becoming and adventurer as her mother Gisela, the most powerful adventurer and character (with Gio, the king of Arland) in the entire Arland saga. She wants to find Gisela as she left the village for one of her adventures long ago and has never returned since then. With the first of her normal friends Totori leaves the village after convincing her older sister Cecilia (Ceci) and having permission of her father, a very well known ship maker. She encounters Sterk from Arland 1 who joins her and travels through the kingdom with her friends, also those who she also meets newly and then eventually hears from the Flauschtraut a giant infamous sea snake. Her familiy tells her when she was younger parts of Gisela's ship were found as she was probably attacked by the monster and that Totori forgot it after a while but remembering that and believes her mother is still alive. Guid, her father helps her by making a new ship and together with her friends she sets sail. They encounter the fierce Flauschtraut and see that it has a giant scar on its head which was obviously caused by Gisela. Then they scare it away and reach the farthest village.

In the village they see a single grave. The grave of Totori's mother, Gisela Helmold ...
Totori can't stop crying at the grave after seeing her mother's place of last rest.

But then she gets to know that Gisela reached the city injured and left it after a while after helping the villagers. As they thought she did not survive they honored her with the grave. Before Gisela left she fought the devil Evil Face, a demon that has been sealed away in a tower and was never defeated by the power of man. She however was able to survive the battle and push it back into the tower, being on par with the devil. Together with her friends Totori faces the devil and with their powers combined they destroy him.

True Ending

Many months later, the journey is over already, one evening a small ship arrives in Arls and a lady has finally come home ...
Astrid, Rorona's master helped her to survive. She enters her home after a long time and causes the greatest surprise of all as her daughters and husband can't believe to see her alive.

Totori & Ceci "Mom?!"
Gisela (relieved): "I'm home. Sorry I'm late."

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Meruru: The main character of Arland 3 is Merulince Rede Arls (Meruru, 15 years old), princess of Arls which coperates with the kingdom of Arland. Meruru is the neice of Gio, the king of Arland, and the student of Totori. She also wants to become an adventurer though her father Dessier does not allow it. Once she proves herself as being able to travel through the kingdom and help people she actually gets her father's permission to become a real adventurer. She helps the folk of Arls and both Rorona and Totori join her. Rorona has become part of Astrid's experiment that transformed her back into a 7 year old child that also cannot remember her normal life again. While they help Meruru together with Mimi, Totori's friend, Sterk and others, as well as Gio, Astrid tries to find a remedy for Rorona's state. No matter which ending is triggered in the end, Astrid is very close to finding a cure (in one ending she does, though all four of them are transformed into 14-year olds while not being influenced mentally and normally being able to live their life as before, this is not the true ending however).
Gio and Dessier bring up the story of Sofraneis, Dessier's sister and Gio's former wife who was a master Alchemist and fought a monster with them that terrorized Arls: The Firedrake Airshatter. Sofra died after the battle. As the dragon is about to wake up, Meruru decides to fight it with her friends before it can destroy Arls and let it bathe in lava.
Together they make it and destroy Airshatter.
While in the true ending Rorona does not get back her normal form still the "before ending situation" of Astrid that she at least is about to find a cure stands. The True Ending focusses on Meruru having become a famous alchemist and running her workshop with her friends though there really is much work. Together they are happy, however and everything is fine.

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Ayesha: Ayesha Altugle is the protagonist of Dusk 1 and an apothecary. She uses smaller alchemy to make her medicine and encounters a very well known Alchemist, Keithgriff Hazeldine who does research concerning stuff left behind from ancient times such as the ruins in Dusk. In the ruins next to Ayesha's home she sees her sister Nio, who has disappeared a while ago, though Nio is in some kind of trance and cannot actually fully perceive her sister. Shortly after she vanishes again. With the proof that Nio is somewhere out there and probably nearer than she thought so she can actually find her she tries what she can with her older and new gained friends. Especially with Keith's help she finds out about some things and how they have worked long ago. She also sees Nio some times again and can talk to her a bit so eventually she approaches a solution step by step. One day she finds out Nio is used by Ygdrassil a tree and that Nio was able to appear by herself sometimes because she tried to find a way out of the dimension where she was to contact her sister. Nio does not believe Ayesha can help her anymore as the process of contacting her is very exhausting. After the tree is destroyed she pretty much is freed already and soon after gets back home. Ayesha and the others help some others with some others problems and in the True Ending Ayesha visits one town after another with Nio while everyone knows her as a master Alchemist. Ayesha prefers to be more normal, especially to be treated normally, even though she wants to help others but the people love her for what she does.

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Escha and Logy: Dusk 2 has two protagonists, Escha Malier and Logix Ficsario. Escha does Alchemy pretty old-school while Logy does his Alchemy a more modern way. The government needs Escha's help and sends Logy to help her. together they share the work and pretty much teach each other parts of what they do. While ancient ruins are researches by them, their main goal is to reach the Unexplored Ruins, floating ruins that no one has ever reached before, not even with the air balloons. They actually succeed building a Dreadnaught, one of very rare blimps, that are very stabile with the help of Threia, Keith's neice who is also pretty much a scientist, using alchemical powers, such as Gio does - even though she is no Alchemist) as well as Linca, a girl who already helped Ayesha, Nio, Wilbell, who also helped Ayesha and became her friend as well as some other friends. As Escha's mother died long ago she was raised by her father and an automaton. Automaton are artificially made beings that normally serve a certain purpose. Certain automatons, however actually really become an actually living being - in their case an A.I. - and while not being bound to mortality very well have their own consciousness, feelings, learn, et cetera. Clone, Escha's "other mother" who is such an A.I. even shows some of her limits as she already says she cannot do several things that are not thought for her but Escha says one day she will malso be able to do them (and being a normal living being with a soul and with feelings and all that really is no problem). Escha gets to know the story of the Bumblebee princess which has been written by Clone and her mother when Escha was younger but when they reach the ruins Escha finds the origin of the princess: She encounters Flameu, a girl that is known by Clone and who teh Bumblebee Princess and her story is based on. Flameu was once a normal girl who worked together with Clone to help Dusk with the overall natural living such as planting things and all. She however, was connected to a machine and when she realized she couldn't rely on others she became part of that machine (pretty much what Clone is vice-versa just that Flameu also has a biological body and had a soul to begin with, in the end she became very machine-like however) and her consciousness was in a constant trance as the machine influenced her and pretty much controlled her which led it to use her body and the powers to work alone on everything planned before without humans intefering and, if necessary, destroying them.
As the ruins start to fall, Clone follows Escha and the others go to the landing place. They intend to wake up Flameu and destroy the interface so she is finally disconnected. She however, is no longer a normal human being. She uses her powers to help others even more now, appears once in awhile and vanishes to go somewhere else. To do what she and Clone always wanted.

The True Ending I cannot tell you right now as I have not gotten it yet but the current state of the story is wonderful enough for me already so if the true ending is not a "Hah! You idiot! That was all a lie!" everything is fine.

So summarized, the strongest stories are those of Totori and Escha and Logy. There are multiple strong moments of characters in the Ateliers but directly connected to the main story Totori and Escha and Logy become very strong and so in my opinion good - and that even though Escha and Logy do not really have too much of a strong main story before you reach the ruins. The combination of just a few character moments often is enough for the Ateliers and their characters or their character development - if they don't already have that state - is often enough already to tell a great story that is somehow tragic such as the story of the lost mother that shall be found, somehow is thought to have died, then really is thought to be dead and after her daughter knows she actually never has been buried one day appears for the Happy End or the tragic story of a girl that fuses with a machine after she has lost faith in mankind and does no longer help her friend, who is an A.I. and shows more emotional character moments with her than most characters in the story who did not artificially get a soul after a while. And in the end the girl who has been her friend a long time ago, the Bumblebee Princess, who Escha knows from her bedtime stories as a younger girl, is finally released and the dream can be realized again.

So the greatest stories of the Ateliers are some of my most favourite RPG stories (though I count them as one if they are part of one world such as the kingdom of Arland and Dusk anyway - as it is normal just as is it with Final Fantasy VII or XIII - specifically however there very well are parts that are way better as they focus on one character's story and often are very touching) for the PS3.

Music: The soundtrack of the Ateliers is beautiful. It suceeds in getting fitting music most of the time and for pretty much every situation. Sometimes it is just to sad for me as in Ayesha and I don't want in in those situations, in others howeve the sadness is very good and appropriate as Flameu's theme. For the battles it has often very unique, not always perfect but still very good and catching themes. Often with lyrics, and often even with E-Guitar and everything, that is actually very cool.

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Gameplay: The gameplay of all ateliers is pretty easy to understand and yet complex with all options combined. You gather, you synthesise, you fulfill your tasks and fight but you need to understand the system and work with everything to make a very good use of it. It is great but as it actually does require much thought and planning all that "uh, it is so easy" is pure crap because they actually are difficult. They are pretty easy to understand once you do it but actually trying out all that stuff, planning, making pretty much full use of the very efficient combinations and everything to make the difficult things easy or easier already shows that the system, especially the battles that are "oh-so-easy-actually" are not oh-so-easy-actually. I can't train to become a world champion, become it them and then say, it was easy. I must not forget the training that was required to overcome that obstacle.

The gameplay is also improved in every single Atelier and that is very, very good. In Escha and Logy the Character Events and every important event, or almost every important event are even marked so you know that at that time you can trigger them somewhere. This is great as it was easy to miss many in the other Ateliers.

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Graphics/Artwork: It has beautiful graphics that get better in every Atelier and the Character Designer makes really lovely characters. For anime fans the characters should normally be likeable. I really like them, especially the Art Design just looks cool for me and the anime-cel-shading look makes it just a very good looking RPG series.

Atmosphere: The overall atmosphere from how the characters are displayed, how the gameplay, the music and the graphics as well as the art work together just let you be part of this fantastic fairytale-like anime world. The music, as appropriate as it is most of the time, makes the situation believable and the characters, as mentioned already, as stereotypical as they often are, still succeed in working the way they are supposed to.