Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg
Developer: Gust
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), PC, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: July 13, 2023
Price: $49.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
Back in 1997 a Japanese developer named Gust managed to make their mark on the RPG genre long before the Western world even knew their names. The team released the very first game in the long running Atelier series, a franchise that has now spanned across six series, seen multiple spin-offs, and reached fans the world over in its twenty six year history. Now, after concluding their most successful series yet Gust and Koei Tecmo have returned to their roots by bringing the very first Atelier game to the West for the first time ever with Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg. Serving as the starting point for an RPG with a different style than most, is this return to basics still worth diving into?
Story
The world has begun to fall into chaos as powerful monsters have begun to roam the realm and wars have started to break out between nations. That has little to do with a girl living in the city of Salburg however as she is more concerned about the fact that she is the worst student in the entire Royal Magic Academy and is about to be expelled. Marlone, called Marie for short, has been given one last shot to try and prove that she has what it takes to be a gifted alchemist. Marie has five years to try and create a worthy item in the atelier that she has been given to prove that she deserves to graduate, but should she fail she will be expelled forever. As such, Marie must make the most of the time allotted to her and with the help of her friends and some hired help, she might just succeed despite her scatterbrained nature.
Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is a bit on the simplistic side as this isn’t a tale of heroes and devils or even of mysteries that would bring about the end of the world. This is a story of a girl building friendships and developing her skills while living in an active city with a colorful cast of characters that happens to be surrounded by plenty of resources, danger, and some serious threats but players can choose to not interact with some of these elements entirely if they choose to. New to this remake compared to the original are various tasks that Marie will be assigned by her teacher Ingrid with most of these tasks simply being to craft a certain number of items, visit new locations, gain enough knowledge, etc. but they serve as a good structure to encourage players to interact with Atelier Marie‘s systems and sample the game’s story elements.
Since Atelier Marie takes a hands-off approach to events, players must trigger them themselves and thankfully the game has provided a laundry list of event trigger details that often range from having a high enough level of friendship with certain characters to trigger a story event with them, craft an item and see how things play out from there, explore a certain location, fight a boss, etc. This is a unique feeling system that encourages experimentation but also one that has a few downsides to it and a lot of this comes down to the limited nature of the game’s timing system. Some events can only be witnessed on exact days and, in a few cases, only once throughout an entire playthrough and if players aren’t careful they may easily blow past an important date while gathering ingredients or fighting enemies while other character specific events rely on bringing a certain partner to try and fight a boss.
The problem is, should that boss already be dead there is no way to trigger the encounter again, meaning players will have to play through the game again to try and obtain these scenes. This is a bit of a disappointment as the game’s cast is charming with nearly every interaction with Marie being a worthwhile one, especially when it comes to her friend Schea. Losing out on these scenes is losing a sample of the story and there are also some notable character details that players may miss out on entirely if they let a date slip by or defeat a boss early. That being said, the length of Atelier Marie is on the shorter side compared to later games in the Atelier franchise and it has obviously been developed with multiple playthroughs in mind as not only does the title offer a New Game+ mode but also appears to only allow players to witness one ending at a time, even if players have cleared every ending event requirement.
Gameplay
Despite being the original Atelier game, Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg still features all of the standard mechanics fans of the series have come to know and love. Players will make use of Salburg as their home base where Marie can craft items in her atelier, talk with people in town to learn rumors about new gathering locations, monsters, and even recipes, hire friends and mercenaries to fight alongside her while traveling outside of town, and of course taking on quests for the guild. The biggest focus of the title is to craft an item of high enough quality to pass Ingrid’s test, though there are a number of extra endings as mentioned before, and time management plays a big role in this aspect.
Every action in Atelier Marie takes time, meaning a journey to a gathering location five days away will take five days there and five days back, with players not being able to travel to other locations without returning to Marie’s atelier. Even after arriving at an area time will often feel like it melts away as every gathering action or battle against an enemy will cost players a day. In fact, even the simplest items players can synthesize still take a minimum of one day per item with some of the more complicated creations taking up to a month of precious time. Sometimes certain ingredients can only be found during specific seasons, meaning players will need to capitalize on when rarer ingredients become available or find themselves waiting an entire year for spring to roll back around. That being said, there are a number of ways to optimize time, be it purchasing tools that will reduce synthesis time or hiring helpful fairies that can be assigned to collect or craft items at a slower pace depending on how much players are willing to pay them.
Combat is incredibly simple with players encountering enemies either during their travels or in a gathering area. Enemies struck in the field will immediately give Marie and her party the first few turns of combat that takes place on a 3×3 grid for each group. Party positioning can play a small role in providing buffs with characters in the back dealing more magic damage and having higher defense while fighters in the front can deal more damage but also take more as well. Any character has the ability to use items that they have equipped to them, though they must be equipped prior to battle, though Marie can eventually unlock a skill that improves the effects of whatever item she uses. For the most part, nearly every character players fight with spends most of their time with only a standard attack and one skill, eventually gaining a second skill and improving the power of their original skill upon reaching a certain level.
Along with the combat, item synthesis is also a fairly simple affair, especially compared to recent games. While every recipe will require time, there is no quality of ingredients, traits, or even elemental properties to worry about. As long as players have the time and ingredients they can craft anything they have a recipe for and while it is possible for Marie to fail an item synthesis due to fatigue, it never happened a single time throughout our playthrough. Alongside these standard elements there is one thing unique to Atelier Marie and that happens to be mini-games. Occasionally, depending on the item players synthesize, ingredients they may have gathered, or even if they are rechallenging a boss tower too soon, a mini-game can be triggered. These mini-games are simple enough and often have special rewards such as doubling the items gathered/created or rewarding extra money while some are devoted solely to securing an item and not losing your hard work.
Now, as mentioned before Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg’s biggest component happens to be time management but players can choose to turn this off should they please. When starting a game players can choose to play in an “Unlimited” mode that will remove the hard time limits on Ingrid’s tasks and of course the final test of the game. This does come at the cost of having a few events being completely inaccessible but it is also worth noting that, especially veterans of the franchise, most players should not need unlimited mode to see most of what Atelier Marie has to offer, with our own playthrough seeing us completing the most difficult alchemical creation with over a year left to go.
Visuals & Audio
Since the original game featured only sprites on a limited set of backgrounds back in 1997 Gust has chosen to take a more chibi approach to the remake, offering a cute and charming art style that works quite well for the game’s design. The character models are detailed enough with some nice expressions and work well in combat, though more enemy variety would have been nice while the gathering environments could also use a little extra variety. The character portraits that are used in visual novel scenes and most dialogue feature quite a lot of detail with some gorgeous looking designs. There are also a number of impressive looking CG scenes that have been created for major events that players can encounter.
This release of Atelier Marie Remake does feature a solid Japanese voice track that is used for most scenes in the game, though not every scene which is a bit disappointing since the cast handle their characters well. The soundtrack features a great collection of music that works perfectly for the series and players can choose to listen to the newly arranged songs or even swap back to the classic soundtrack if they want to.
Overall
Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg serves as a satisfying way to experience the game that started a massive franchise that is still going strong over twenty five years later by bringing the franchise back to its roots and while those looking for the same level of complexity of current games may be a bit disappointed; this RPG’s tone, storytelling, and relaxing style of gameplay remains incredibly charming to this day, even if things can be a bit too simple at times.
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