Atelier Marie, Elie & Anis GBA

[AaronChance]

It's an enhanced port of one of my favorite dreamcast games of all time (which was a port of a PC version of a port of two Saturn games...), but the only place that seems to sell it (Himeya) wants $60 for it, not including shipping, which seems a little steep for a GBA game. I've checked VGD, NCS, the Rage, and even Toys n' Joys, but none of them are carrying it for some odd reason.

[jiji]

Yesasia is your friend. Unfortunately, they're charging about $60 as well, and their prices are often more reasonable than NCS's. The yen price for the game is Y5800 ($49), which probably explains why it's so expensive everywhere.

[Captain Vegetable]

Hey! Check you out! Just the person I've been wanting to talk too!

I've been eyeing these for a while now:


Atelier Marie


Atelier Lilie

How are they? I'd rather not buy something I know nothing about...especially since a return is out of the question.

I'm particularly interested in the PS2 game. If you could give a tiny review on them, or point to a site that has a review for them, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[AaronChance]

I actually haven't played the PS2 version, but from screenshots it looks like it plays almost identically to the other games of the series. The story of the first games was a student in a alchemical school, while the story of the PS2 game is the founding of the school. I believe there's a special edition of the PS2 one that was released later with some gameplay enhancements so you might want to hunt around for that if its been released yet.

Yep, I was right:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/data/14890.html

And here's my impressions of the DC game, which should be pretty similar:

http://www.ammadeau.net/dreamcast/atelier.htm

Originally posted by jiji
Yesasia is your friend. Unfortunately, they're charging about $60 as well, and their prices are often more reasonable than NCS's. The yen price for the game is Y5800 ($49), which probably explains why it's so expensive everywhere.

Thanks for the heads up. The fact that they have free shipping lessens the blow a bit. Though I ended up paying for shipping anyway since I'm impatient.

[Low]

Yesasia also has the DC version of Marie for under $10, this according to www.insertcredit.com

*-neo

[AaronChance]

The DC ver includes both Marie and Ellie. Highly recommended, even though the GBA ver promises to improve on them even futher.

[jiji]

I don't see the DC version anywhere on Yesasia, but last I checked, there were many, many copies of the LE version of it on ebay for around $10 apiece.

*checks*

Okay, they're not quite as common as before, and they're going for around $15, but they're still around.

I've been kind of interested in this series for a while...maybe I'll pick up one of them and give it a try sometime.

[AaronChance]

There's a faq for Marie which makes it easy to get into. Actually, a bit too easy in some ways. Since Ellie is an enhanced version of Marie, the only thing you would need to know after playing the first is the new features of item customization and the yearly test, but you can still do pretty well without knowing either of these.

Oh, it also supports VGA and is high rez sprites, though the animation is pretty limited.

[Tsubaki]

Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
How are they? I'd rather not buy something I know nothing about...especially since a return is out of the question.

I'm particularly interested in the PS2 game. If you could give a tiny review on them, or point to a site that has a review for them, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Ammadeau's review is a nice brief summary of the events. To expand on it a little more, the Atelier series follows the life of a female alchemy student who is failing her class. She will be given a 5 year timeframe to make something that will impress the teacher in order to graduate. Thus the game begins.

The gameflow is basically you walk around town, acquiring information, recruiting people, and accepting jobs through the bar. See, the only money you get in this game is through performing jobs. Jobs are things you can acquire or make. They may give you 500 gold in exchange for 3 of a specific herb, and you'll have a time limit of 20 days to do so. But to get herbs, you must venture outside of the town. Each day you spend at a location outside town, you acquire herbs found in that particular location. But each day you spend traveling, or staying, is an opportunity to be attacked. So you'll fight RPG battles as well. You'll level up in typical RPG fashion, and thus will be able to handle bigger monsters. Recruiting party members in town becomes crucial as the enemies become harder.

While you can obtain basic ingredients this way, the main focus of the game is creating herbs. You'll learn recipes for herbs through reading books bought at the shopkeeper's. See, the money you earn from your jobs can go to 1) buying weapons/armor for fighting 2) books for increasing your alchemy knowledge and 3) you can buy some basic herbs as well. Once you have a recipe, it tells you how much of each ingredient you need to make an herb. Some herbs allow you to use them in battle too. Others are merely for fulfilling jobs.

So that's kinda the game in a nutshell. You need money to learn how to make bigger and better things. So you accept jobs which require you to make things. To get the ingredients, you must go outside and gather ingredients as well as fight battles.

As for your question about Lilie, well.... I only own Atelier Marie & Elie DC, and have only played Marie thus far. I've been told by Atelier fans that Marie is the best to get into because it's the easiest. Not to say that Marie is easy (there's several endings in each game), but that Elie was that much harder. My friend actually has the guidebook and is fluent in Japanese yet couldn't get the best ending with Elie. And the PS2 ones (Lilie, Judie) are reported to be even harder than Elie. Basically every turn you make is that much more crucial in the later Ateliers. I would recommend starting with Marie if you're going to play this series. You can get Atelier Marie on Playstation or Saturn for very cheap. Or if you want, the DC Marie & Elie gives you the first two games and you can play on VGA.

Starting with Lilie may sour your experience.

[Kidnemo]

Sounds cool.

Don't think I'll be playing it unless it comes here, or I can read the language though. :/