The Gust Thread (Atelier and Ar Tonelico)

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Atelier Ryza piqued my interest but when I saw how the DLC was priced (the whole game was +100€ even during a -50% sale) I decided to just pirate the damn thing. Still haven't played it though, look promising nevertheless.
 
Ryza 1 and 2's sales dwarfed the last 5-6 installments combined. So it looks like we'll be getting more Ryza, possibly forever.

Artornelico really has not aged well and the last western release was on the PS3 and it didn't go over well.
 
Never thought I'd see an Ar Tonelico thread here! The music alone makes the series one of my favorite Jap rpgs. Akiko Shikata is an amazing vocalist with a scary amount of range.

Hopefully the first two games get remastered. They do deserve a good face lift graphically (gimme that infel and nenesha fight in 3D pls). Though, not a fan of the third game myself. It was a bit too fanservicey.
 
I learned of the Ar Tonelico and the Atelier series back in 2011 cause people were uploading the games' opening CGs onto YouTube and I really dug the music of both. Ar Tonelico has by far a more interesting setting and concepts behind it, with a nigh-autistic level of attention to detail going into the song magic system and Reyvatiel lore, going off the handful of articles I've read on the EXA_PICO wiki.

I can't really bring myself to play titles from either series though. Maybe it's because I'm not a teenager anymore and don't really have time to commit myself to multiple video games at ta time, but Atelier's premise isn't really my thing, and I can only really listen to so much Akiko Shikata at one time before her songs begin to sound samey, at least regarding Ar Tonelico. I do like a lot of her other tracks though.

Also, is Atelier Iris generally disliked among Atelier fans? I've been told it isn't well liked because it tries way too hard to be a standard JRPG with an Atelier skin.
 
Okay so the multiple trilogies....which ones are considered the best? (It looks like they are all DX versions on switch lol)
I heard Dusk doesn't rush you.
 
Scarlett Johansson said:
Okay so the multiple trilogies....which ones are considered the best? (It looks like they are all DX versions on switch lol)
I heard Dusk doesn't rush you.
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Arland trilogy (Rorona, Totori, Meruru) without any doubt. Rorona is the most polished out of the three games due of being originally a remake (Rorona Plus on PS3/Vita) and it's structured well enough to finish it without strong struggles. The real challenge is when the game expects you to synthetize better items in order to overcome side bosses for bonus stamp points (unlocking items and stronger character stats). Totori, while being the direct sequel story-wise, is actually the oldest game in terms of release therefore a bit rough on the edges by comparison (it's also the most difficult game to achieve the proper ending). Meruru is somewhat more of a kingdom management simulator, and has a couple of QoL gameplay changes that were introduced and made way into Rorona Plus later on.

Dusk trilogy isn't a bad deal either, but I say that Escha&Logy is where Gust starts to drop the ball pretty hard for the franchise (time limit gets far too lenient there before it disappears completely in Shallie, where the plot only advances by completing small tasks). The lead and character design artist, Hidari, was a hard carry for me. Ayesha is the best game out of the trilogy with best boy Keithgriff.

I never really touched the Mysterious trilogy, because it was back when Gust stopped releasing the Vita Plus versions with all the DLCs bundled in, but I remember hearing mixed opinions about the games.
 
Mysterious trilogy is only worth it for Sophie and Firis, third game with the twins is ass, then they made another Arland game which was also ass, and then Nelke which was a town management sim with mixed results.

They're making a new Sophie game so if you're playing anything from the Mysterious Trilogy, play Sophie first because the sequel will draw everything from that.
 
So then from what I can see

Dusk and Arland (plus the one that has the girl with the long purple hair?) are the best trilogies?

How is Ryza? I have heard that in getting pitted against 2 its very divisive in that to some it improves on things but to others the first installment wins (I'm pretty sure that the first one is extremely pricey?)

I think I am leaning toward Dusk. The girl in the first Dusk game looks pretty. I read an article and it said the time limit isn't bad in the first two. So its like a slower Harvest Moon or Persons 5 clock?
 
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Scarlett Johansson said:
So then from what I can see

Dusk and Arland (plus the one that has the girl with the long purple hair?) are the best trilogies?

How is Ryza? I have heard that in getting pitted against 2 its very divisive in that to some it improves on things but to others the first installment wins (I'm pretty sure that the first one is extremely pricey?)

I think I am leaning toward Dusk. The girl in the first Dusk game looks pretty. I read an article and it said the time limit isn't bad in the first two. So its like a slower Harvest Moon or Persons 5 clock?
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Can't say about Atelier Lulua (because I didn't play that one either), but yes your best bets are Arland (for a more classical-type of Atelier gameplay) and Dusk (overall less difficult due of time limit progressively phasing out). You can't exactly go wrong with either, but I suggest maybe buying a single game (either Rorona or Ayesha. E&L is very lenient for newcomers too) if you don't want to risk wasting a lot of your money into three games at once, of a franchise you have no personal experience.

Ryza 1 was garbage because it was exceptionally linear and too hand-holding (you do what the game exactly tells you to do instead of being let loose to explore and play the alchemist at your own pace). And the real-time battles could be won by more or less just spamming simple attacks while rising up the number meter at the side of the screen (with another press of a button) for stronger normal attacks, and sometimes activating the item synthesized into the equipped weapon. Any attack and skill with long animations were an actual liability. It's also a DLC-fest where characters routes are locked behind a paywall. I didn't bother with the sequel in risk of being bamboozled again.
 
I'd love to play Ryza 2 on PC after borrowing it from a friend, but its still seriously 60$? 42$ on sale as of now but thats still way too rich for what the game is. Its like how Activision is still charging a base price of 60$ for Infinite Warfare on Steam.
 
Scarlett Johansson said:
So then from what I can see

Dusk and Arland (plus the one that has the girl with the long purple hair?) are the best trilogies?

How is Ryza? I have heard that in getting pitted against 2 its very divisive in that to some it improves on things but to others the first installment wins (I'm pretty sure that the first one is extremely pricey?)

I think I am leaning toward Dusk. The girl in the first Dusk game looks pretty. I read an article and it said the time limit isn't bad in the first two. So its like a slower Harvest Moon or Persons 5 clock?
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Dusk and Arland are going to appear archaic in a few instances because the battle system is incredibly basic. The third game in the dusk trilogy itself is also incredibly lackluster.

Arland and Dusk if you're playing the DX versions they came out years later after the originals, but they're still weighed down by having a ton of missables which plagued the earlier atelier games. So if you want to see everything and get all the endings, you'll need a guide because it has a bunch of bullshit conditions for those games where you may have a short window of time to see an event trigger and you have no way of knowing.


Ryza is probably the most open game in the series because you're going to be spending your time opening up and exploring new areas. Once you get The hammer and few other exploration tools you can open up a few of the optional areas. There's zero time constraints however there's a larger focus on battles because there's around a dozen post game bosses. The appeal for ryza is to use the items made by alchemy to explore all the hidden areas to find rare materials, those in turn make the most powerful items.

It has a large alchemy buffing systems where you take gems and use them to enhance your base stats, people are able to abuse this system and take red crystals and turn them into philosopher's stones, reduce them into gems, and then use the gems to duplicate more red crystals. You can get incredibly overpowered through alchemy this way, it's probably the most overpowered in the whole series. Ryza itself doesn't really need a guide because you can't miss anything in the game.

I'd say the three entry points to the series are Ayesha, Sophie, and Ryza. Everything the Arland games did the Dusk games did better, so if you like Dusk then maybe go back to Arland and check out the earlier installments.

If you go with Ayesha and want more, play Escha next and then maybe go back to the DX version of Rorona or play Sophie

If you liked Sophie, play Firis next and then go to Ryza and Ryza 2

If you liked Ryza go to Ryza 2 then go to Sophie if you have not,

The next game in the series is Sophie 2 so you're going to eventually want to play Sophie at some point.
 
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I remember og Rorona for ps3 was pretty hardcore with time limit, though it might be me being a newcomer and not knowing how busted items are. Totori I got the best ending on the first try with an extra year (mainly by really minmaxing time usage). Meruru was a lot of fun. Lulua was a huge disappointment for the weak story and not really closing any character development in the original series - nothing can change because the shippers will be offended.

Ayesha was fine overall but I absolutely loved Escha and Logy. Shallote was a bore with a pretty meh ending. The whole series was about recovering the earth from over usage of alchemy, but it's never really used in an interesting way despite it being a really cool hook.

Sophie wad good, though a bit too much yuri bait, I didn't like Firis since the devs seemingly tried to make an open world game despite really not being prepared for it. Didn't play the last game.

Ryza 1 was great for being more story focused game, but 2 really dropped the ball quality wise and I have a huge rant on it on some thread here.

Nike is kind of too basic and doesn't really have a good usage of the all-star cast, it doesn't help that the characters in the series are kind of samey. I got near the end, then realized I fucked some part of the city management and will need a new game plus to get the true ending, said fuck it and never continued playing.

Overall I'd recommend the Arland trilogy.
 
Okay I'm playing Ayesha and tbh it is....rather frustrating. The battles...the time limit is stressing me out though. I'm currently on 6/18 at the bazzar having just gotten the alchemy book from the two girls. How do you manage to do everything and have time left lmao. I only have three people in my party tho. Is that normal?

Obviously I'm not concerned in regards to Shallie but Ercha and Logy......
 
Scarlett Johansson said:
Okay I'm playing Ayesha and tbh it is....rather frustrating. The battles...the time limit is stressing me out though. I'm currently on 6/18 at the bazzar having just gotten the alchemy book from the two girls. How do you manage to do everything and have time left lmao. I only have three people in my party tho. Is that normal?

Obviously I'm not concerned in regards to Shallie but Ercha and Logy......
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Might help to read through a guide for what dates you don't want to miss because game wide character arcs happen without any real notification.

The time limit for the games was ever really done well and for the most part came off as annoying, which is why future games made it very generous(Sophie and Firis) or ditched it entirely(Ryza 1 and 2).
 
Scarlett Johansson said:
Okay I'm playing Ayesha and tbh it is....rather frustrating. The battles...the time limit is stressing me out though. I'm currently on 6/18 at the bazzar having just gotten the alchemy book from the two girls. How do you manage to do everything and have time left lmao. I only have three people in my party tho. Is that normal?

Obviously I'm not concerned in regards to Shallie but Ercha and Logy......
Click to expand...
You're not supposed to do everything in your first playthrough, your main objective in Ayesha is to save your little sister from being stuck in the weird dimension within 6 years, everything else is pretty much optional including specific character routes & endings. Past Atelier games were meant to be played in several playthroughs with NG+ (with the money and equipment carried over), and I recall only Atelier Rorona allows choosing among several character/event endings if all their conditions were properly met (while other games like Totori can lock you out of other endings).

Three people in your party is normal in Ayesha. E&L is the one where you can have 3 main members in battle and 3 other characters in reserve

In case you're worried for the sequel, Atelier Escha&Logy's time limit is a joke in the sense I always had 2 months and so of free time after completing each main assignment, to the point it was actually a bit annoying.
 
BananaSplit said:
You're not supposed to do everything in your first playthrough,
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Entirely not true at all, you can do everything in a single playthrough with ease, outside of maybe the occasional post game boss battle.

Most guides say that it takes one and then anything difficulty related for NG+ is a speed run where you do skip everything.

Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk - Guide and Walkthrough - PlayStation 3 - By Malduke - GameFAQs

For Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk on the PlayStation 3, Guide and Walkthrough by Malduke.
gamefaqs.gamespot.com
 
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Just because he can do everything in one run doesn't mean he should. OP seems already stressed enough to deal with the time limit that imposing him to keep track of all events flags is a good stupid way to frustrate him even more. Not to mention Keithgriff's route is definitively the hardest of the bunch.

And reading a guide really does spoil the sense of adventure and journey for a first playthrough imo although I'm not going to dictate OP on that.
What I'm saying he should just keep in mind of the main task and not go for a completionist run, especially as a newcomer.
 
BananaSplit said:
Just because he can do everything in one run doesn't mean he should. OP seems already stressed enough to deal with the time limit that imposing him to keep track of all events flags is a good stupid way to frustrate him even more. Not to mention Keithgriff's route is definitively the hardest of the bunch.

And reading a guide really does spoil the sense of adventure and journey for a first playthrough imo although I'm not going to dictate OP on that.
What I'm saying he should just keep in mind of the main task and not go for a completionist run, especially as a newcomer.
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The Atelier games were originally meant to have guides, they were designed around that. Gust sold many games with guide sales in mind and the games had design problems around that mentality. I mean most of the shit wasn't quite on par with the classic Square Enix PlayOnline Final Fantasy 9 bullshit, but it was certainly close.

Once they got to Sophie though it started to change, Shallie was maybe the first one to show early signs of this since the game was only like a few hours for each girl's playthrough even when collecting everything. Shallie you really couldn't miss a ton of stuff like earlier installments. Ryza you can't miss anything and every piece of possible info is easily divined in the game itself.
 
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