Game: Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World

Genre: management game

System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, PS4)

Developer/ Publisher: Gust/ Koei Tecmo Games

Age Rating: EU 7+| USA 10+

Price: €59,99| £49.99| $ 59.99

Release Date: 26th March

No review code was provided, I bought the game myself

Is this a good celebration of 20 years Atelier?

If you are a regular reader of LadiesGamers.com, it can’t have escaped your attention that I am a fan of the Atelier series, made by Gust. If you don’t know the games: Atelier games are RPG games where the protagonist roams the world to find ingredients. These can then be used in Alchemy: combine base items into better new objects. These objects can then be used to make better weapons to fight monsters you meet in the field. Or you can fulfil all kinds of quests for the townsfolk.

There’s something all of these games have in common: they are always about teenage girls on the threshold to adulthood, most have a very cheerful disposition and chirpy voices. Lots of attention is given to the artwork. The clothes the characters in the game wear are really something else; I suspect most people see the way the girls and guys are portrayed as very pleasing to look at.

There have been 20 main games plus several side games in the series that celebrated its 20th Anniversary in 2017. The Atelier games were right at home on the Sony systems (aside from a few outing toward the DS, GBA and mobile). I’ve played many of them on my PS Vita, but I was pretty chuffed when the series made the jump to the Nintendo Switch.

Nelke is no Alchemist

Back to the game at hand: Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists. Nelke von Lestamm, an aristocratic civil servant, is this games’ protagonist. Which is surprising for an Atelier game, as this girl has no ability to do alchemy. No, instead she is tasked to try and develop the small frontier village of Westwald into a thriving trading hub. And while doing so, she gets help from unexpected places, when our favourite alchemists make their entrance one after another.

Nelke took this challenge on because she wants to prove to her overly concerned father that she can stand on her own feet and do a stellar job. Plus, she wants to find the Granzweit Tree, a relic of the Granzweit Saga nobody has ever been able to find a trace of. Starting out, she travels to Westwald with her trusted maid Misty and meets up with Knoss (the major of Westwald) and Hagel (the local blacksmith/builder). Familiar faces!

And that is exactly what the appeal of this game is to a lot of the fans: it’s like meeting old acquaintances again. Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists pays homage to the history of the Atelier series and celebrates that by bringing all the past heroines and some heroes back to life.

Not only that though, this game is a very different one from all the other. Don’t expect a standard Atelier experience, and you won’t be disappointed. Instead, for the fans this will be a wonderful time of recognising faces from the past.

My mistake: very different gameplay

When I first started the game I made a mistake: The mistake of thinking this would be a game that would fit the Atelier mould, which led to a feeling of disappointment. You see, I try not to read too much about a new game I’m looking forward to beforehand. Don’t want to spoil the experience, otherwise I can’t give an unbiased review on here. So for Nelke, I knew town building would be included, and that we’d get to celebrate 20 years of Atelier games.

To tell the truth, I was sorely disappointed. Where was my cauldron? Where was my faithful book of recipes so that I could get going mixing things. Would I be able to forage for ingredients in an open world like in Atelier Firis, or would I be dependant on areas unlocking like in most other games?

Well, none of the above. If you are looking to play a regular Atelier adventure, I would advise you to wait for Atelier Lulua that will release at the end of May. If you are curious about very different gameplay and want to try your hand at a very addictive management game, then I’d say: read on!

Spin-off management sim with visual novel elements

The game is very good at giving you a thorough tutorial. The first time I started I wasn’t in the mood to pay attention, as all I could think was that this wasn’t what I had expected. Soon though I felt the game at least deserved a chance, so I started over. And took note of what I was supposed to be doing.

Pretty soon after Nelke and Misty arrive in town, the first Alchemist Marie drops in unexpectedly. A good thing too, as Nelke needs her to kickstart the town. It seems Nelke lives in a separate dimension from the worlds of our original Atelier games. And all the familiar faces dropping in get there it seems by accident while tinkering with synthesis.

The game consists of two parts alternating in one turn: weekdays and holidays. On weekdays, you will be busy setting all in motion to get good sales and thus, grow your town and your bankbook.

When it’s holiday (weekend, if you will) Nelke focuses more on chatting with people, raising friend levels and you can go out with a party to forage and fight monsters for items. All in a set amount of time of 12 time slots though, no different from our own weekend.

Working and spending free time

In a new turn, you start off with Work. When the full game is unlocked you can tinker with what to build in your town, what to produce in your ateliers, what to make in the gardens and groves, and what to sell in your shops. The more people come to your town, the more workforce you will have. Every Alchemist arriving will bring some recipes for you. And once they bond together, they will come up with a whole bunch of new ones. What you can make or grow is limited by the sort of items you have already discovered in your investigations of course.

Holidays can then be spent growing relationships with the characters that have found Westwald. They will give you requests too, to strengthen their friendship. The Alchemists can bond together to do research, to better the facilities and expand the town. You can take a party to explore areas through investigations. They walk without being prompted in a linear path, on their way foraging stuff and fighting monsters. If there’s enough time, they will discover a new area at the end of their walk.

All of this is designed like a virtual novel, even the foraging and the fighting. You can take part by giving them commands, but they do pretty well on their own too. No need to make sure they have the right weapons to do battle, they don’t deplete either. You can put the battles on auto or semi-auto, and that works pretty well. So in a way, you can be a spectator without doing much.

Bottlenecks and deadlines

Every good Management game has bottlenecks and deadlines, and Atelier Nelke is no different. In fact, there’s a reason the tutorial is so extensive: there are a lot of them. By the time you master all of the settings in each turn you really feel as if you’re Nelke herself. This is no game for you if you don’t really enjoy management sims, as you will have to dive deep to really get into the flow.

Once you do though, it’s a very good experience. Constant new faces, new recipes, new areas and new items means the game stays fresh and never boring. The town building itself isn’t what I had expected though. Building something is fairly easy, and you see you plot from the top. I had hoped for something more like in a good town builder game, seeing the building go up and maybe having to wait a bit for that. But you choose a building, select a plot and it’ll be done in the next turn.

The buildings you can have are divided into Ateliers, Stores, Farming Patches, Landmarks, Decorations, and Roads. The landmarks are added once one of the people referenced to it. Having that character take care of said building helps of course in levelling up. You can switch to 3D view when Nelke decides to look at her progress, but you can only look. Ever the spectator.

Not the spectator kind that does nothing however. You pull the strings behind the screens, manage what to grow or sell. What to produce and by which alchemist. What items do you have, what are you missing? Which request is almost due, what do you have to do to take care of it? And while this seems easy after you understand the tutorial, the bigger the city gets, the more you have to organise things in the best possible way. I love the way that I can look at genuine graphs and listings! They aren’t here just for show. If you learn to read them, it’ll really help in managing it all.

Chirpy voices and lovely graphics

As in every Atelier game, the graphics are good. Colourful, inventive clothing, a sight for sore eyes. The surroundings are a bit static though, when a conversation takes place you will view it as cut-outs of the characters against a static background.

The soundtrack is decent enough, but the Japanese voices are something you will either hate or love. I must admit I’ve toned down the sounds, the chirpy voices do grate on my nerves. The conversations the characters have are pretty laid back however, and give you the happy feeling Atelier games are well known for.

Is this the game for you?

Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists is not for everyone. You may have noticed that the reviews online vary a lot, and I think there’s a reason for that. If you jump in like I did expecting a full fledged Atelier game, you will be unpleasantly surprised. This is a spin-off title that isn’t a Crafting RPG, but a Management Visual Novel instead.

The price is that of an AAA game, as all Atelier games before. I have gotten so used to Indie game prices that this seems steep, but I do realise that is what you pay for games released by the big companies.

However, if you like management game with a strong organisational element this might be one for you. Exactly what makes the game interesting and so addicting is that you are tempted to do just one more turn. “What if I tweak the sales just a bit? What if I add another atelier, do I have someone to work there?” The need to earn money is very clear and after a while I found I really wanted Nelke to succeed.

The fact that I’m playing this game alongside My Time at Portia is a testament to how much I’m liking it. I really need more time in a day! I’m giving this game a wholehearted I like it a Lot!

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