For all the crying, moaning and self-flagellation the games industry puts itself through on a pretty much daily basis, you'd think no game had ever had a female lead character (with the possible exception of Tomb Raider). According to the received wisdom, this total lack of protagonists with two X chromosomes is apparently the sole reason more women don't play games - although one look at the fan bases for (mostly Japanese games) like Harvest Moon, Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts will likely prove otherwise. Because seemingly, Japan gets it - and with their abundance of story-driven, character-centric and colourful, cutesy games, they've created a whole range of games that girls (me included) love. And few games scream 'girly' as much as the Atelier series, a range of role playing games that see various teenaged girls embarking on epic quests - not to save the world, but to save what's important to them, whether it's searching for a missing mother, a princess trying to bring her kingdom back to prosperity, or a girl trying to save her master from exile. And how do they do that? Through alchemy of course!
Shopping for alchemical ingredients, obviously.
A surprisingly long-running series, there's been fourteen main games in the Atelier series so far, going right back to the days of the Playstation 1, with umpteen spin-offs, remakes and ports over the years. Coming into its own in the Playstation 3 years (especially on these shores), there have been five Atelier games on the PS3, split into two trilogies. With the second of these trilogies - the Dusk trilogy - soon to be drawing to a close on the PS3 with the upcoming Atelier Shallie (hype!), the story itself is just beginning to be re-told on the PS Vita, thanks to the game we're reviewing now - an enhanced port of the first game in the dusk trilogy, Atelier Ayesha. Like previous portable remakes, the 'Plus' in the game's title signifies that this Vita edition of the game is a more complete version, including all the downloadable extras from the Playstation 3 version - mostly extra costumes, party members and a couple of new areas, as well as an extra boss and a harder difficulty mode - and is the perfect place for those new to the series to find their feet.
Atelier Ayesha tells the story of the young Ayesha Altugle, a girl who, despite her sunny disposition, has been through a lot. Living in a remote workshop that once belonged to her late grandfather, she makes medicines to sell while she waits in vain for her sister Nio to return. You see, a few years ago, Ayesha's younger sister had been out gathering ingredients in a nearby ruin when she mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. Never, that is, until one day when Ayesha pays a visit to the shrine she erected in her missing sibling's memory, only for a mute version of Nio to suddenly appear, surrounded by glowing flowers. A passing alchemist witnesses the whole thing, and informs Ayesha that if she ever wants to see Nio again, she'll need to go out into the world, learn the secrets of the glowing flowers and become a master alchemist - all within the space of three years, otherwise her younger sis will be lost to the ruins forever. It's a touching narrative, helped along by a stellar cast of likeable characters and surprising sense of humour.
When even Wilbell the kooky witch thinks you're weird, you know you've got a problem...
Like the other games in the Atelier series, Atelier Ayesha is a game that revolves primarily around the ancient art of alchemy - essentially cooking old stuff into new stuff. Much of your time is spent wandering the vast role playing world, exploring dungeons, talking to villagers, and doing all sorts of traditional role playing things - but it's the alchemy giving you the reason to explore. In order to craft new things, you'll first need to harvest ingredients, foraging them from glowing patches in each of the game's areas, before you head back to base and mix them together in your cauldron, producing items for quests, or use in battle (such as bombs and healing items). Each item you want to make has it's own recipe, which you unlock as you go along, either through the story or through purchased recipe books, and tells you exactly what types of ingredients you need to put in. Items usually belong to families, such as 'liquid', 'cloth' or 'smelly', and by and large, any one from the category will do, although some will bring more useful effects than others to the table. And, depending on the order you put the ingredients in, different effects can be applied to the finished item, with many more intricacies, ins and outs and tips and tricks being revealed as you go along, experimenting at your Atelier (which is French for workshop, fact fans). Playing with this item synthesis system is fun, but you will want to be mindful of the time you spend there, as each synthesis eats up a certain number of days - and with a time limit of three years with which to rescue your sister, you don't really have six months to waste forging baguettes and bean soup - even if the time limit is rather lenient.
Where alchemy becomes particularly important is for completing various quests for the folks you meet en route to saving your sister. Whether it's a middle-aged woman wanting three detergents for washing her clothes, someone who wants to start their natural organic journey with some high-quality veggie soup or a chilly guy who could do with some fur gloves to keep the cold out - each gives you a reason to head to your Atelier and experiment, earning some money or items for your trouble. Quests are also an excellent way (but not the only one) of earning some 'Memory Points' to boot, which can be exchanged for stat bonuses in Ayesha's 'Memory Diary', which charts some of the more important events in the game's story, with entries you unlock also netting you some stat boosts. The bonus (and Vita remake exclusive) 'Album' meanwhile gives you yet another set of quests and objectives to complete, arranged in a 3x3 grid over a picture - uncover the background image, and you'll net yourself some cool bonuses, such as artwork or new outfits. Add in the quests that your friends and companions will give you too, and there's so much to see, do and make that you may wonder how on earth you'll fit in saving your sis!
Those who've played the game's sequel, Atelier Escha & Logy, will likely recognise the Album layout!
New areas to explore open up at a steady pace, meaning you've always got somewhere new to gather materials from, and often, existing areas will open up further once you've found everything there. But, like everything in Atelier, travelling between spots on the overworld map costs varying amounts of days, meaning you'll want to plan your trips fairly logically so as to minimise backwards and forwarding. Gathering materials can also swallow up days too, so you don't really want to waste your time gathering hundreds of spiky fruit and nothing else either - fortunately, each dot on the map has a list next to it of what you can find inside, so you can work out where to head next for the best.
But of course, Atelier wouldn't be a role-playing game without a heavy dose of battles. In keeping with the game's simpler, light-hearted nature, the combat here is a fairly straightforward, turn-based affair, where you and your team of plucky youngsters take it in turns smacking the local wildlife into submission. In each area you explore looking for synthesis materials, a number of (cutesy) wild animals roam around, spoiling for a fight - if you can manage to hit them with Ayesha's flower stick thing before they run into you, you'll get the first turn instead. In battle it's a simple matter of picking a command from a list, whether it's a bog-standard attack, a magical spell or a special skill, picking your target from the herd of enemies and watching the action unfold. Ayesha meanwhile, is the only character capable of using items in battle, usually ones which you've synthesised yourself, be they healing items, bombs or poison. One twist, that existing Atelier fans will already be familiar with, is the ability to have one of your companions rush in to defend you from an attack (and take a reduced amount of damage themselves instead) or all pile onto a particular enemy, providing you've built up enough energy in your 'Support Meter' bar, which charges up bit by bit with every move you make. Defeating monsters earns you experience points, which add together to increase your characters' levels, making them more powerful, and letting you take on much stronger foes.
Deploying the various AC Support actions will cost a chunk of the bar.
In fact, about the only real problem with Atelier Ayesha is a technical one - it sometimes feels like perhaps the PS Vita isn't quite powerful enough to run the game, with slowdown, stuttering and characters popping in from time to time, particularly in larger areas or busier towns. Given that it's a rather slow-paced, easy going game, it's not a massive deal, although it can be a tad annoying when it causes you to accidentally run into an enemy that just that second popped into existence, triggering a battle you would have preferred to avoid, or when you end up missing one of the foraging spots in an area because it's considered too far in the distance for the game to show. However - it's worth bearing in mind that the laggy issues are exclusive to the Vita version, and don't affect the Playstation 3 game in the slightest, should that be a deal-breaker.
Even so, if you're after a slow-paced, light-hearted, cutesy role-playing game, then you can do far, far worse than Atelier Ayesha. Slowdown in places does mar the whole experience a little, but given the nature of the game, it's unlikely to be that big a deal - after all, the game rarely requires any quick reflexes or fast button presses. And the addictive blend of exploring, gathering and alchemising, all wrapped up in a bright and bubbly tale with colourful cast of characters, more than makes up for it - in fact, you may find that once you start playing, it's hard to put down.
Format Reviewed: PS Vita
