The Atelier series of games has been around for over 20 years, with one of the more sizeable total of titles in a franchise. Unlike some other franchises, though, the Atelier games are often broken down into sub-series, which often revolve around a certain theme. The most recent release, Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is the final part of the Mysterious series. Though it follows the releases of Atelier Sophie and Atelier Firis in 2016 and 2017, respectively, Lydie & Suelle isn’t a direct narrative continuation, though those who have played the previous games will recognize some returning characters and references.
Lydie and Suelle are twin sisters from the town of Merveille, where they operate a relatively unsuccessful alchemy business. Along with their oddball father, who locks himself away to paint in the basement, Lydie and Suelle spend the majority of the game attempting to gain recognition for the alchemical work, by passing tests, serving customers, and researching new recipes. It’s a strange mix for a JRPG, as you’ll spend as much time hunting ingredients as you will hunting monsters, but the mixture of gameplay elements and somewhat lack of linearity means that you can often switch focus of the experience at your own leisure.
The town of Merveille and the surrounding areas are set up in a similar way to recent JRPGs of a similar vein, where you’re shown the town map on screen, and asked to pick from a list of various locations to visit. Each area of the town has a point of interest to visit, such as the blacksmith, the church, or the castle, and visiting particular locations at certain times can trigger optional background story to help fill in details about the characters that you’ll into on a regular basis. You visit the outskirts of the city to collect ingredients, which can be done passively, by picking flowers or mining rocks, or in battle, where defeating an enemy will often reward you with something useful. Fighting seems to have a little less focus than other games in the genre, though you are still able to add members to your party and learn new skills and abilities by leveling up.
Building up your alchemy business is a crucial aspect of Atelier Lydie & Suelle, and though it starts off fairly simply, it gets more complex as you make your way through the game, which allows for stronger items to be created. This can be through using items as catalysts, mixing ingredients in a certain order, or taking part in a basic puzzle game that requires you to lay out elements in their correct places on a grid. To make new items, you often have to follow clues that are laid out in your recipe book, rather than have them handed to you on a plate. These often follow fairly logical pathways, such as stronger bombs being made from weaker ones being mixed with a new ingredient, or healing items coming from new types of plants.
Early in the game, you’ll place your Atelier on a ranking system, which determines how respectable your store is in the community. Your increase your rank by taking part in tests, which often require you to create a particular item to a high standard, or to find a rare ingredient in the wild. To get to these tests, however, you have to perform tasks for your Atelier, and these can vary from defeating a particular monster, to putting up flyers around town, or to speak to a certain number of characters. Though it’s not entirely accurate, you’ll spend a lot of time feeling as if you’re actually working towards improving your store, and ignoring the fact that it follows a fairly linear path, it does feel genuinely rewarding when you manage to increase your Atelier’s rank.
I think that what I enjoyed and appreciated most about Lydie & Suelle was how it subverted my expectations of what I was getting myself into when I first started the game. With recent JRPGs that I’ve reviewed, I’ve mainly found objectionable depictions of the female characters, and an abundance of lengthy cutscenes and overwhelming tutorials that throw tons of information at you. Lydie & Suelle is cutesy in a typically Japanese way, but is respectful of both its two leads, and the rest of the cast, who are predominantly female. The game also does a great job of side-stepping the second issue too; while there are a lot of mechanics to learn, the teaching of them is well spaced, and gives the player chance to explore what they’ve learnt, before showing them something else.
Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings isn’t anywhere near being a standout JRPG experience but is totally fine for what it offers. This isn’t the kind of experience that I would recommend wholeheartedly, but it is entirely functional, and does offer something different from the typical genre offerings, with its focus on growing a business. If you’ve been a fan of the Atelier games in the past, or if you’re looking for a JRPG experience that offers something a little different, then Lydie & Suelle would likely press a number of your buttons. However, this is very definitely a middle of the road experience and isn’t something that you’re likely to rush out and tell your friends about. It doesn’t do a whole lot wrong, but it also doesn’t do much that you’ll remember a few months down the line.
