The Atelier games are quickly becoming my favorite series. Didn't know if anyone else was excited for the launch.

I don't think this particular Atelier series is for me. I have Totori but I really, really didn't like how you just monkeyed about until enough time passed for a story beat or that the combat was pretty plain or having to synth the eff outta everything in almost every Gust game I've played.

I loved Atelier Iris 2 and thought Ar Tonelico had it's moments but I haven't played a Gust game since that I remember so fondly. Totori was close, just if it didn't have that monkeying-about-style story progression.

Do you still do whateves in this game until enough time has passes as well?

I just picked one of these up and will play it eventually. The series has always looked like it might be my particular brand of crazy. Am I excited for this release? No. Am I happy that another JRPG-esque game is being released this generation? You betcha. We don't see enough of them nowadays.

I just wish they would make a new Atelier Iris.

I didn't even know what the hell it was until I saw this thread.

I've barely been following it, so I'm not excited. The only other game in the series I played was Meruru and although it was fun enough to play a bunch of things that seem like mainstays in the series bugged me. If I remember right, isn't this an English dub only release as well?

lol no.

@soapy86: Iris was kind of a side story for the series. Aside from that only really a handful have ever made it to the states. If you liked Iris you might want to play the Mana Khemia games. They are almost exactly like Iris, but they take place in an alchemy school.

@superwristbands: The time management stuff is kind of a core element of the main series; everything takes so much time to do and you have to plan out things so you don't run out of time before a deadline. I never really notice that much time between story beats, and was mainly only annoyed when I would come back to town from gathering or something and have three or four different character events trigger. They were normally pretty well done and enjoyable, but when you are planning on returning just to save or make a quick potion before going out again/turning off the system it is kind of annoying that you would have to sit through Astrid trying to molest one of her students.

Are you the only one?

I liked Atelier Rorona, but I haven't gotten around to picking up the rest of that particular trilogy. Time permitting, I'd like make my way over to this one.

I wish Japan would take its time-management/dating-sim garbage out of its RPGs and maybe put some of the fun and sense-of-wonder back in.

I teach middle-schoolers in real life. I get enough time-management and angsty teenagers at work.

@brodehouse: I think I might be

@sinusoidal: Maybe you should stop playing JRPGs and stick to American RPGs? This is a series that has been going pretty strong for 15 years now with somewhere around 26 title releases. I mean, I am sorry that you don't like a style of game but don't expect everything that comes out to be entirely geared towards your taste. Some of enjoy this type of game.

After about ten hours of Rorona, the only way I could recommend these games is if you really want to play a JRPG and have already played every other JRPG ever made. If you need to get your Gust on, firing up the PS2 is the only way.

I don't disagree, but then I've been playing Persona 3 and it's a fantastic game.

@believer258: Persona 4 is a great follow up if you need something after that. It is like they fixed all the rough edges from the previous title.

Waiting on UPS to drop my copy off. While I own the Arland Trilogy I actually haven't played any of them. Eager to play Ayesha though because of the fact it is closer to Mana Khemia in terms of quests and alchemy.

@yadilie: yeah, waiting a bit to pick mine up but I am still looking forward to it.

@gillman: Big issue is that I moved to an area where UPS generally drops off packages closer to 8PM. So, there goes my relaxing two days off with a brand new video game and a Tombstone pizza.

@yadilie: My delivery people are normally cool enough to leave stuff at the rental office so I don't continue to get "Attempted delivery" notes on my mailbox or, even worse, the package just laying outside unattended. Too bad that the office closes exactly at 5 PM which is also known as when I get out of work. This basically means that to get a package I either have to wait until the weekend or ask one of my friends who works weird hours to swing by my place and grab my stuff.

Eating pizza and playing games sounds stupid amazing at this moment, just so you know.

I'll just finish watching the Persona 4 Endurance Run instead. It does seem to have fixed P3's rough edges as far as dungeon crawling and combat goes, but it screwed-up by making the dialogue incredibly repetitive and the characters seemingly unable to put two-and-two together.

@believer258: So they made it every video game that has ever been made ever?

Huh, I kinda figured it might have been a mainstay but since I've only played two Atelier games (Iris 2 and Totori) I thought they might not all be like that, but what you have said actually doesn't sound too bad. For sure in Totori I didn't feel like I saw events very often. They happened but a lot of them were tied to characters and only triggered if you used them and since I stuck with two characters for most of the game I didn't see those that often.

Well, Ayesha is on PSN meaning it'll always be there (digital is a blessing with these niche games) and it could go on sale at some point. I might pick it up if it does.

@petiew: I've been hearing it is English only. While I wouldn't use the Japanese voices personally (judging by Totori these games get very good English dubs) it seems baffling that they would not do their best to include the JP voices considering the market this game is catered towards.

@gillman: Add in some IBC Cream Sodas that are chilled in glass bottles and you're in heaven.

@superwristbands: Yeah, the "true endings" require everyone to like you to some degree so you are kind of expected to take them out on adventures. Aside from some real oddities there really aren't any worthless characters in the games either. Granted, by the end of most of the games you are creating weapons of insane power by using alchemy making any of the people that can use those items a little broken-- although there is something rewarding about destroying bosses with things that you made with ingredients you gathered.

@yadilie: We can't be friends any longer. You make me want things that I don't have access to at this exact moment.

@superwristbands: Money. Plain and simple. Atelier Ayesha is the first game to be released and published since Gust got bought by Namco Bandai. They used to get their games localized by NISA who would do such things and still some how stay in business. Namco is a lot more protective of their money especially when it comes to a niche series in the West. It's sort of a backhanded blow due to how popular these games are over in Japan which bascially caught NB's eye. But what can you do? This is where you sort of see "fans" true colors. I find people dropping a game because it doesn't have their glorious nihon language in it to be absurb, but opinions are opinions. Although these opinions could quite literally kill any more Atelier games from coming out over here if too many people don't get it.

If Namco looks at a series like Tales and feels that it has issues being a profitable localized game then just imagine at how a series which is tremendously smaller has if Namco starts thinking the same way.

@yadilie: Yeah, that's a bummer about Tecmo Koei. Though I believe that this game was still localized by NISA, and published by Tecmo Koei, so the quality should still be there (just minus the special edition of the game).

As for the fans true colours, I think that's a little harsh. I'm sure a lot of fans want the "Japanese experience" and that is a totally valid reason to be interested in something. If it's not there and they lose interest, well, that's totally reasonable.

@gillman: I just wanna say that incredibly esoteric requirements on True Endings is the thing I hate most about JRPGs.

@superwristbands: I totally agree. I have looked at some of the other odd Gust games and made every effort I could to avoid anything along those lines, but the Atelier games are different. Most of the time the true endings just involve doing everything in the game, and while difficult due to the time limit in place, are normally something that you can entirely do. Don't get me wrong, they still have the "how do you expect me to do that" endings, but most of them are either zany or involve the cast opening a hot spring for some unknown reason.

@superwristbands: If fans want the Japanese experience then they'll learn Japanese so they don't have to deal with altered and localized scripts. As someone who can't read any form of Japanese I will gladly take a game with removed voice acting if it allows me to actually play said game. If someone came up to me tomorrow and was like, "You can play Yakuza 5 RIGHT NOW but it has no voice acting in it." I would mug that person and run away with a copy of Yakuza 5, even though I absolutely love Kazuma's VA. I'd take being able to understand the story over voice acting.

This is truly all opinions, but it's sad to see series hurt by people refusing to buy something because it doesn't have something that adds to core of what a game is about, the gameplay. Although I am in the very small camp of absolutely hating most voice acting. Always too rigid and way too many pauses between people. I truly find it heinous at the amounts of money that developers throw at voice acting for video games. It's almost as bad as them just throwing money away on worthless advertising.

Also the endings in the Atelier series are not truly that hard. They have very cut and dry things needed for them. Rorona is pathetically easy to do once you get a hang of what to make and not to make. Not to mention when you get into NG+ and are rolling in dough you can get 10 stars super easy on the assignments in the very first day they're released. Allowing you to get the City Approval and Friendship up without worrying about failing your assignment. It's just the games throw a lot of shit at you at first that people start thinking it's confusing. Only the Character endings are a little weird but even that just involves doing every single character quest with the one person you want to get the ending with.

*EDIT*

Also, I'm dumb. I got my publishers confused, thought it was NB but it's KT, which is even odder seeing as how they love their original Japanese tracks. And yay! My copy has just arrived. So stoked.

Judging from the current state of the JRPG, I'd guess that's what most people are doing. I can understand why. The JRPG used to be about exploration and wonder. Saving the world and what-not. Albeit often with angsty teenage characters. Now they're more and more often about maximizing efficient use of your time and choosing between interchangeable moeblob anime chick #1 and #2. I'm not saying there's not room for some of that stuff, but stop making it the focus already.

@sinusoidal: I don't think that the time management stuff has really infected the genre like you might feel but the moe characters are more and more prevalent.

You just gotta stay out of the Gust/Compile Heart/and probably Idea Factory market if you don't care for that stuff. You might want to look at the PSP if you want JRPGs similar to the ones from the PS1/PS2 era.

I was really looking forward to it since I really like the other PS3 Atelier games but my first impressions (at least two hours in) are not so positive. A major annoyance is going up to NPCs individually to initiate and complete their requests, instead of a front desk to handle them (maybe that will change later on?) and I can't see where these quests are listed, if anywhere (other tasks and goals are in the notebook but not these NPC ones).

And you can't seem to choose what to pick up or leave at a gathering spot? And I don't like it taking in-game days to pick up a few things in one area (that might have been in Meruru? It's more noticeable here).

There are some smaller annoyances. There are frame rate problems and NPCs take a second or a few seconds to appear when entering a location (more annoying than in previous games which might have had that because NPCs matter more). And vastly different exits from one location lead to the same place.

@aarglefarg: That is really weird as Meruru seemed so polished in so many ways.

@aarglefarg: Picked it up last night. You are totally right about the gathering being weird and there being odd slow down during play. Aside from that it kind of seems like another Atelier game, a fact that I am mega happy about.

@gillman:After playing a few more hours, I think the game has improved because now I'm going through each area to collect everything and kill all the enemies there, and that is done fine. The issues are still there, but better things have appeared.

@aarglefarg: I just got to the "big" town, or the second one at least. There is some chugging that takes place in the market area, and I did notice some of the pop-in of the characters. Honestly the latter example is something that has just kind of happened on this engine for the entire generation. You can see it in every Gust game that they put out, but they have normally found interesting ways to either work around it (Neptunia Mk2 almost getting rid of the town interface for something closer to twitter) or my either making the areas small enough that it wasn't an issue or having enemies/character away from the entrance so you can't see it as badly.

I guess you could say that the gathering thing has kind of sped up the game play from the previous ones, since you can't choose I just normally jam on the A button and sort it out when I get back to town. Granted that has the downfall of making me not really know what I have in stock or if I got something awesome, but oh well.

The only Gust games I've played are the PS3 Atelier games. I noticed the pop-in previously but it's more important in this one because NPCs matter more. As I play more, I'm thinking that requests aren't half as important as they were in other games so it's not mattering as much as it initially seemed. :)