The Atelier series is best described as a slice of life role-playing game. Instead of focusing on combat-heavy, epic story arcs involving evil and powerful megalomaniacs bent on conquering (or destroying) the world, they tend to zoom in on the day to day lives of a handful of characters with a greater emphasis on character interaction and a deep and involved crafting system that is based upon the fantasy version of the real world alchemy. Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings for Nintendo Switch is the concluding game in the “Mysterious” trilogy for the series, but it doesn’t exactly require you to have played the previous entries in the sub-series to know what is going on. This is well and good, because this marks the first time that a mainline Atelier game has come to a Nintendo console- previously, only spin-off games were made for the portable line of Nintendo consoles.
Story
You are cast into the role of twin alchemists Lydie & Suelle, whom have made a promise to their later mother that they would have the best Atelier in the kingdom. Standing in their way, is a lack of experience and a competent, but absent minded and kind of deadbeat father. It is established early on, and we are frequently reminded of, how irresponsible their father is, which is one of our main motivators early on. We need to have the best Atelier in the kingdom, but our father can’t help us achieve that since he is always ditching his duties to paint in the basement, spending all of our earned quest money, and literally running away from every opportunity that he has to try to make things right. Roger (our father), seems to have been written as the comic relief for the game, but really his existence is only amusing the first time that he runs from his responsibilities. After that, he is just annoying. Enough about him, for now, though. Because of this promise to their dying mother, the girls must achieve greatness, and shortly after we establish a few basic gameplay mechanics through tutorials, and we are introduced to the local competition, a proclamation is made that the kingdom will be instituting a ranking system for alchemists, and as you become ranked and advance through those ranks, you will be paid a salary for your efforts. This serendipitous occasion is a perfect premise by which we need to become better alchemists through the gathering and mixing of ingredients.
While alchemy is the primary focus of the game, and it is a system that is well implemented and satisfying to work with, it is not the only mechanic that we will explore. Above, I mentioned that this is a role-playing game, so there are many side quests to be performed for citizens of the township in which we reside. While they are side quests, they give direction to the grinding that is necessary to advance through the game. As you can imagine, alchemy and crafting require a lot of materials to work with, and while you can explore outside of the castle walls whenever you want without a quest, side quests will reward you for exploring more of those areas, and encourage you to seek out new materials, areas, and enemies to fight. You will do a lot of fetch and kill quests, but it is more rewarding to be on that grind when you are also mining for craft materials to synthesize when you return to the atelier.
Combat
Lydie & Suelle each have their own strengths in battle, and you can eventually recruit up to four more people as you make your way through the story. To start off with, though, you will have Lydie acting as your healer and party buffer, and Suelle as your revolver-slinging combat specialist. You start off relatively weak, but it’s just hardy enough for you to survive the few enemy encounters that you will have while you fill your basket. Whenever you are collecting materials, you have a basket with a limit, and that limit is usually reached at about the same time as your party members are starting to run low on health and mp. Combat is simple, but satisfying. It is a pretty standard turn-based system, with an active timeline that determines who gets to act next. You will learn attacks or spells that can affect this timeline, and hitting your enemies with certain items can stun them or push them back further on the timeline, which allows you to attack more often than they do at times. This is only a little bit of strategy, but it does make the combat more enjoyable than just having attacks and defense. You may also use items in battle, most commonly those that you have crafted, but items can be acquired through shops and as quest rewards. Leveling up in battle leads to an automatic skill acquisition system, but I really do wish that they had made a skill tree system that was as varied as the alchemy crafting system. However, Atelier games, as mentioned above, focus on their crafting system, so it really isn’t a surprise that combat-related levels result in achieving specific moves at predetermined levels. Combat levels also don’t affect your alchemist level, which only increases when crafting new materials.
Crafting
Speaking of the alchemy crafting system, let us explore that a little more thoroughly, especially because this will be what you dedicate most of your time to in-game. First, there is the gathering of materials. Your most common means of gathering materials will be to simply run around and gather up glowing objects. The majority of these will be on the ground and harvested just as if you were picking a flower. Other means of acquiring materials in the wild is to either beat the crap out of and take what it breaks down to (logs become timber, rocks become various types of ore and gems), or whack it around and take what falls off (knocking fruit from a tree). You can also buy materials later on, and they might be rewarded to you for completing quests. Monsters will drop different materials, and sometimes leave behind a treasure chest that contains more. As you harvest more and more materials, your knowledge about them increases, which leads to you unlocking recipes that will enable you to craft more items. Each item that you harvest has a level of quality, attributes, and enhancements. The quality level determines how well made the item is (obviously), the attributes determine how best to place the object in your cauldron during synthesis, and enhancements can influence any bonuses that the end product will have. Once you have gathered materials and learned recipes, you return to your Atelier. At your Atelier, you go up to the cauldron and choose which recipe that you wish to make. From the recipe, you will be given the option to choose a component from each category, and from there you will add your ingredients to the cauldron. During this step of the process, you will place the ingredient on a bubble grid, and which bubbles you occupy in the grid relative to other ingredients can determine various features and attributes in the final product. This makes the crafting experience into somewhat of a puzzle game, and is surprisingly addictive and satisfying.
While Atelier Lydie and Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings has an intriguing story, charming characters, and some humorous dialogue, it is very obvious that it wasn’t the primary concern of the developers. They really want you to focus on becoming the best alchemist that you can be, and the story is secondary to all of that. While I did enjoy the story, it isn’t breaking any ground or treading any paths that haven’t been well traveled in the past. The crafting system is great, but can start to feel repetitive at times. All games have tedious components, though, but it becomes more difficult to stick with the story as you go. Thankfully, the game allows you to fast travel anywhere that you have been to before, and at a moment’s notice. If you do become bored with what you are currently doing, it is really easy for you to warp back to town, drop off your materials, maybe craft some new items, and then head over to the castle entrance area to take on a new quest with a different objective. The titular Mysterious Paintings are a nice addition to the game, as you can jump into them for special materials and to follow up on some interesting information.
Conclusion
Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings for Nintendo Switch is a nice addition to the Switch’s growing library of role playing games, but it is definitely more of a niche game in the genre. While many fans of micro-management will love the deep alchemy system, not everyone is going to be into the crafting of alchemical items to begin with. Atelier Lydie and Suelle is an accessible introduction to the sub-genre, but it will probably not bring in any new players, and more experienced players will most likely judge this game against its predecessors. As a newcomer to the series, but an experienced role-playing game fanatic, I enjoyed my time with the game. It was a bit of a slow burn, but once you get into the meatier crafting elements about 4-6 hours in, it becomes a lot more intriguing. I struggled to want to go back to the game before I hit that point, but fortunately, the story started to really take off the ground at about the same time as we were getting into a more interesting crafting system. The graphics are passable, but really not very pretty. The character models are lovely, but everything else looks a bit dated. Overlook the blurry grass, however, and you have a lovely game to play. There are also minor, but frequent frame rate drops throughout the game, but it isn’t game breaking.
