Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg Review (Lollipopcop94)
7/10 Absolutely needs to be purchased on a sale, otherwise a really great, albeit easy and short, game.
Like most people in the west my first outing with the Atelier series was Atelier Iris as the first trilogy was not localised in Australia. Really excited to play the game that kicked off the franchise that spawned one of my favourite childhood games. Hope they continue the trend and remaster the Iris trilogy as well!
The gameplay of Atelier Marie reminds me of a simpler version of the later Mana Kehmia spin offs. You are a student given 5 in game years to become a master alchemist. Each action takes up a day and you must also account for travel time. You need to create an item of at least 6 stars of a possible 8 by the end of your playthrough. New areas open up as you progress and talk to townsfolk. Combat is a very simple turn based affair and you can choose to gather using either a more modern 'wander around an environment and look for items/battles' or the original simple gathering where you are randomly given either items or a battle. There are multiple endings based on how well you do as well as multiple characters to befriend and level. In the limited time you have you will be lucky to fully level up more than a few.
I had heard that the reason this game was not originally localised outside of Japan was because it was to difficult and unforgiving for western audiences. Armed with this knowledge I decided to play on normal and found it very easy once I had gotten the hang of things. So much so I had already completed all bar two objectives before they were given and completed the remaining two with months to spare. It has decent replay-ability for the two best endings (I had not completed the philosophers stone as there was one item you need that only appears on one day of the year and I missed the other as I didn't fully level the main character's defacto best friend).
All in all I had a truly wonderful nostalgic yet new experience with this game. Which is a feeling the new more slice of life/friendship simulator style atelier games just don't give me.