14 DAY TRIAL // 
The Atelier series has yet another entry in the form of Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World, only this time the series take a new turn as far as gameplay is concerned.
The premise
You play the titular character of Nelke Von Lestmann, an aristocratic alchemist who now has to administer an entire village and turn it into a flourishing town with a well-developed economy. She does this by gathering resources, processing them and selling them for profit, all while also balancing somewhat of a social life with the townsfolk, as well as meeting her father’s tasks, as he is the lord of the region after all.
Along the way she is joined by an ensemble cast of characters which may be extremely recognizable, especially by those of you who’ve played other titles from the Atelier series before. These characters can help Nelke in one way or another, either by helping her with administering the city, or by joining her in combat.
Anime, Anime and even more Anime...
The game is a city builder with a few extra (heavy emphasis on the word “extra”) steps, as you are enveloped by cut-scenes after cut-scenes rendered in beautiful 3D graphics and even the occasional 2D anime cinematics. You get to see the typical anime tropes, such as relationships you may end up rooting for, fighting for honor and friendship, unbridled loyalty, over-the-top voice acting, combat that is all flashy and jaw-dropping, etc. I have to admit that as far as I am concerned, I didn’t even realize a few good hours had passed while I was playing, since the story really got to me, and it felt more like a binge session on Crunchyroll rather than playing a city-builder for the sake of a game review. As far as the story goes, you have your minor goals which you may or may not complete, but you also have important ones that come straight from Nelke’s father. The story is so well developed that you almost feel a personal need to complete your father’s tasks, and not just treat them as new entries in a long and boring lists of things to do.
City-builder meets JRPG
A great departure from the other Atelier series is the core gameplay of this title, which focuses more on a city-building style of gameplay while treating the alchemy-based crafting system the series is known for as more of a secondary aspect.
The JRPG part of the game is seen especially through the encounters you have with the various monsters you meet during your explorations. Fighting is turn-based, and all characters have access to a set of moves they can use. From what I could see, combat isn’t exactly the high point of the game since even late into it I have yet to experience a fight where even one of my characters was brought to 0 HP. Note that as far as expeditions are concerned, once an area has been cleared for the first time manually, you can send NPCs to scout them and they will gather resources at a normal rate, but no combat will take place.
The city-building part of the game isn’t played in real-time, instead choosing to adopt a turn-based way of progression. At the beginning of a weekday, you give out your various orders, such as production goals, synthesis (processing) goals, expedition and building-related orders, and once all of your orders have been confirmed, you let the turn unfold and see the report at the end of the week.
Between these work days you also have holidays, which are a different type of turn where you spend your time visiting the various characters in your town in order to build a solid relationship with them, get quests, learn new recipes, and investigate new areas. One thing worth remembering is that during holidays you have a gauge of 12 action points, thus limiting you in how many things you can do.
Have all of your characters bond with each other
A great emphasis is put on the relationship Nelke builds with everyone else in town, as an improved relationship translates into faster leveling up, and thus greater performance in either their administrative duties in town, or their combat prowess during combat. This means that it is important to try and balance out your loyalty level with all characters, even if that would mean using up all of your holiday time.
The problem is that as your city gets bigger and bigger, so does your roster of characters. At first you may be like “more is better, right?”, but the problem is that the characters are so many in number that administering their jobs and your relationship with them becomes a quest in itself.
You’ll eventually reach a point in the game where it would take a few good minutes just to give everyone their work orders for the next week, only to realize that you’ve messed up half of them after you read the weekly report. But I don’t see that as a problem, as it kept my mind sharp and never got boring at all.
A PC title that's not very PC friendly
In theory, you can play Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World with a mouse and keyboard, but only if you are a gaming masochist. The controls are so godawful that you get the feeling that this was a console exclusive that was made PC-compatible in the very last minute. Not only that, but the game also suffers from a common issue seen in Japanese games, and that is an extremely convoluted UI, and menus after menus that aren't very intuitively arranged, so you'll be spending a good first part of the game trying to remember by heart where you can find the info you need. I used the word "trying" because you'll still find yourself randomly looking, regardless oh how good your memory is.
The Good
- Plenty of recipes to learn
- Large roster of recognizable characters
- Catchy story
- Detailed city customization options
- An anime lover's dream come true
The Bad
- Japanese dubbed
- Stiff 3D character models at times
- Sometimes glitchy during character interactions
- Becomes hard to manage later on in the game
Conclusion
You’ll laugh, cry and want to know as much as possible about the various characters that join your city, and you may feel an inner sense of satisfaction when you increase your friendship level with certain NPCs. The story will capture you and you’ll be loving, crying, hating or rooting for pretty much everyone at one point or another.
But in the end, if all you’re interested in is the crafting system and making in-game profit, those aspects are so well-developed that even the most avid fans of the city-builder genre will feel satisfied.
