Atelier Rorona Plus Review

Atelier Rorona Plus

 

Developer: Gust Entertainment

Publisher: Koei-Tecmo

Genre: RPG

Platform: PS3, Vita

Release: 6/24/2014

Availability: PSN, and other online stores.

Mode: Single-player

Disclaimer:

- I played the PS3 version

- I like management sims

- I like RPG's

- Screenshots from official website

http://www.ateliergames.eu/roronaplus/#home

Info:

          Atelier Rorona Plus is a remake of the 2009 “Atelier Rorona” by the publisher NISA. The Atelier series is a long running series that started in 1997 and through 16 games, not including remakes and ports, is about alchemy. Atelier Rorona Plus is a remake of the 11 game of the series. At the time, the game was very hard, with the game-play being tough to figure out. When Koei-Tecmo acquired the right to the series, they started working on plus versions of the Arland Trilogy and the Dusk series for the PS Vita. These plus versions, contained all the DLC integrated in the games, had various game improvements, and extra content not found in the PS3 counterparts. This time, they decided to release the Remake on both the Vita and the PS3 with the same content.

New features:

- New graphics. No longer chibi like

- Garden to grow things

- Decorating the workshop to boost players abilities

- Costumes to change character's looks.

- Four new Characters

- Overtime mode has a new story and events.

- New dungeons in Overtime mode

- Battle and synthesis system are based on “Atelier Meruru Plus”

- New Assignment system with optional assignments to get rewards.

Story:

This is how cutscenes are presented. Sometimes they have an original drawing.

          Atelier Rorona Plus is about a young Alchemist in training, named Rorona, who one day finds out the workshop is going to be closed by the king unless the workshop completes assignments to prove it's worth. Rorona's lazy master decides that she will inherit the workshop and leaves her in charge of everything. So it is up to Rorona to keep the shop open and prove her worth as an Alchemist.

The story for Rorona is light hearted and simple. There is no epic good or evil storyline. It's mostly a slice of life story about an alchemist keeping her workshop open. The writing for the game is lighthearted. It's not serious, but it's not obnoxious ether. Non playable character or NPC, dialogues change as you complete each assignment which builds into their own little storyline. There are events that are scattered through the game where you see the character interact with each other or reacting to story events. You will be replaying this game at least 9 times if you want to see all events and endings.

One of the alternate costumes you can unlock.

At the end of the game you will unlock a new story. This story does contain some spoilers from the two sequels so if you don't want to be spoiled, then you should put off playing it. The spoilers are not big, but it might bother some people. Overtime has it's own separate character events and events from the main story can't not be done in overtime.

Graphics:

Visually, the art style is cell-shaded which gives the game a Japanese animation or anime look. The 3D models look exactly like their 2D counterparts so the switch between the two is not jarring. It has a soft look to it while being very detailed. There are not too many animations for both the 3D and 2D characters, so you will have seen all of them within the first hour. The game is displayed in 1080p at 30 fps.

Game-play:

Combat:

Combat is the typical RPG turn based type. You chose how you fight through a series of menus for each character. You have your normal attack, skills that use magic points (MP), guard, and choice to escape from battle. The turn order is represented by a series of cards with your characters and the enemies faces on them. This is affected by your characters speed or SP stat, The enemies SP stat, whether the enemy is alive or not, and the action you chose for your character.

Levels of characters don't play a big role in this game unlike other. While leveling up does improve character's stats and unlock new skills; weapons and gear are far more beneficial especially making your equipment. Weapons and equipment are not common so you need to ether find them in dungeons, make them or exchange lots of vouchers with Etsy. The best equipment is the ones you make yourself. You might find a weapon that does 100 damage on it's own, but if you make it, you can have it do 200 damage plus fire, ice, lightning, earth, and various status effects.

Each character has their own strengths weaknesses and abilities. While they are not completely unique from one another, there stats and abilities do help define them. For example, you get three swordsmen with one focusing on strength, one on seed and damaging multiple enemies, and one that focuses on a balance. Each one of them have different skills with one focusing on status effects, one focuses on lightning and multiple enemies, and one that focuses on lower skill cost. With each character having there own events when traveling to dungeons, the characters manage to be different but, not too different where choosing one or the other would make things too difficult.

Unlike most RPG's, only Rorona can use items you collected or synthesized in battle. She isn't as strong as other characters so she acts as a support for the team. This plays an important part in battle as the items you make will greatly the outcomes. The items you make can cause status affects, damage many opponents on screen, and do massive amount of damage. Another interesting feature is the Assist function. This function only applies to Rorona and it is built up by fighting in combat. When it's full, if Rorona is going to be attacked, she can be defended by the other characters or if she uses her skills or items, the other characters will help out with a bonus attack. Once you have leveled up to around 20-30, all enemies except for the target monsters will be easy to fight.

Traveling to dungeons on the over-world takes days. At the dungeon, you play through a small area where you can gather items and fight monsters. These areas have simple layouts that can have obstacles that block your path or multiple exists. To get past the obstacles, you will need an item that you can synthesize to continue. Using an exit in an area, opens up a new area to travel to and access anytime without having to backtrack through old areas. However, the deeper in the dungeon you travel, the more days it takes to reach the next area and the harder the enemies will be. You can only collect a certain amount of items in your basket and you won't be able to travel through all area's of a dungeon at first. In fact, you will be traveling through dungeons, repeatedly to gather items, and see new character events.

Outside Combat:

Gathering icon

The items and the quality of them

Outside of combat, you navigate your character through your environments. When an icon appears over your head, you can interact with it to talk to someone, go to another location, or gather from that spot. In the city, you can wander on the streets and talk to NPC's for fun or get free water from the well. Most of your navigation will take places in the menu's to visit the stores, the palace, or your workshop. The palace is where you turn in assignments and accept quests, and your workshop where you can synthesize items and rest.

Alchemy involves using one or multiple ingredients to synthesize an item. Each ingredient used can affect the quality and abilities of an items. Creating a high quality item gives more points towards applying that ability to an item. A higher quality item is more useful, worth more, and gives you more experience to raise your alchemist level. Making items takes a certain amount of days, and mp to create that will become more lenient as you level up your alchemist level. Your alchemist level affects, how many items you can make a day, the success rate of making an item, and what new recipes you can unlock.

Before you synthesize an item

The results of your synthesis

Each trimester, you get a main assignment you must do in order to continue with the game. Time will past when you travel to dungeons, entering a new dungeon area, resting at home, or synthesizing an item. These assignments require you to make 3 items from three choices. You can have 2 of item A and one of item B and still be able to pass. However, if you want a better rating, you will need to make plenty of items of good quality. The assignments usually require you to find these items in the dungeons and can vary in how hard they can be to find. While they maybe intimidating at first, they become rather easy to complete once you get use to it.

When you receive your main assignment for the trimester, you also receive a handful of optional assignments. The optional assignments can be simple as using an item, gather materials, or harder ones like synthesizing a complicated item. These optional assignments also have to be done before the due date to get the vouchers for them. Completing them will give you a stamp for your bingo card which can get you status improvements and other items. You don't have to do all the optional assignments to complete the bingo card, but doing more will still get you vouchers. It does get harder to complete the bingo card in each each semester as some of the assignments can take quiet awhile to beat. These vouchers can be given to Etsy, who can give you hard to find, quality items, or useful equipment.

You also can receive quests from Etsy. At first, these quests involve just synthesizing an item before the due date, but soon, you get bonus requirements, and bounties. Doing these quests earn you money and popularity so you can get more quests. You will need to plan and manage how you will do your quests otherwise use will lose popularity for failing to complete them or they disappear if the deadline for them ends soon. The quests are randomly generated and will spawn new quests a day latter when they are completed or removed because of their deadline. It can be a tough balancing act do do the quests, while completing your assignments, synthesizing items, and exploring dungeons. There are plenty of tutorials for every feature that is introduced to the game.

Only the yellow stars matter

The only technical problem with Rorona is the random, minor frame-rate drops, it isn't a big deal and it's only noticeable for a few seconds. Another minor issue is if you manage to get close to characters fast and talk to them, the screen will shake and make it difficult to read. It goes away once you are done talking.

Audio:

Atelier Rorona Plus has both English and Japanese voices with the English dub is pretty good. Many of the actors do a good job conveying their characters personalities without sounding flat or too unnatural. The voice actors for Rorona and Pamala don't do as well compared to the rest. Rorona is okay, but she tends to fails to display the appropriate vocal tone when displaying anger or shock so it comes off as rather muted. Pamela is the worst as she voices always voices her character so slowly with a monotone voice. Others such as Cory, do a good job and suit the character well. Also, the English dub is also missing a few minor lines, like Tiffany's greetings, or Rorona's cheers when synthesizing an item.

While I don't know too much of the Japanese language, I do some words to have a vague idea of what may be spoken. Listening carefully, the English dub's subtitles don't seam to be bigger or different from what is spoken in Japanese. I only noticed some minor misspellings and words choices is a few conversations, but they don't change what is being said. The tone of some of the characters is slightly different with the Japanese voices. For example, Iksel sounds less hyper compared to his English counterpart.

Atelier Rorona Plus's soundtrack is a cute, upbeat, and lighthearted which suits the game. By it's self, doesn't have many songs so it can get repetitive hearing them over and over. However, you can customize the soundtrack with songs from all the Atelier series anytime. So including the songs from the other games, there is over 80 songs to chose from. All of them tend to be lighthearted with a few are more dark and action orientated.

Thoughts:

Atelier Rorona Plus is a relaxing RPG with some lite management simulation elements. It isn't a hard game, but it's an enjoyable one with elements you don't always see in other rpg's. The synthesizing ingredients for items and using them to complete quests was a fun feature to me. It allows you to make use of items that have low value and make them worth something. The story isn't an epic quest, but it's a nice change of pace and the writing helps make it enjoyable. English voice acting is good, but I think the Japanese was better in terms of tone and conveying of emotions. There some replay value in trying to see all the scenes in the game and unlocking all the endings. It isn't for everyone, but I think it is worth checking out, especially if you want to try something that is different.