Arland’s Greatest Hits.

While Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists succeeded in the daunting task of featuring almost every main character in the series 20 year run, it fell short in actually feeling like an Atelier game. Despite being a long time fan of the series, I found its mechanics and gameplay loop tiresome after a short while, and felt a greater desire to just play a more familiar game, in line with the rest of the series offering.

Thankfully, Atelier Lulua, the fourth and last of the Arland saga that began on the PS3, was just the right game to scratch that itch.

The cast is a mix of old and new faces.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PS4, PC. Switch
Played on: PS4 Pro
Voice Acting: JPN only
Length: 30~ hours

As the daughter of the legendary alchemist Rorona, Lulua aspires to be a great alchemist just like her mother and help the people of Arland.

Unfortunately, despite lessons from her capable teacher, she finds herself quite lacking in this regard and one day comes upon a book she names the “Alchmyriddle” which only she can read. As the book shines with light and begins to give her hints towards improving her alchemy skills, she decides to follow its guidance hoping to become an alchemist that would make her mother proud.

As is typical of Atelier games, the stakes here aren’t world breaking as this is more of a story of self improvement that escalates to wanting to help those that are most important to Lulua. As the fourth game in the Arland series, characters like Rorona, Totori and Meruru make their appearance as important figures in the story. Even though many years have passed, the characters look more or less the same as the cute bubbly anime girls they were in their own featured title. It’s a bit disappointing to see how little their designs have changed, but interacting with them to see how they have grown more mature as individuals was charming and enjoyable.

One odd thing to note with the storytelling in Atelier Lulua is the amateurish camera work and stiff animations during cut scenes that really take away from some of the drama and humor from these scenes. This is an odd thing for me to notice, much less complain about, but for this title in particular, I couldn’t help but constantly see oddities during cut scenes that took me out of the moment.

Swirllllllll Swirlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.

Alchemy, the process of synthesizing items, weapons and other useful knick knacks is a pillar in the Atelier series, and the interpretation present in Lulua is a good one. Outside of having the right combination of items to fulfill a recipe, it’s important to take a look at the various elemental attributes tied to those items. Hitting certain thresholds with a certain element often increases the power of the item and sometimes makes it have entirely new effects, and many recipes required me to delicately balance the right ingredients in order to maximize the potential of the item. On top of that, there were item traits that were special modifiers that fused additional skills and effects, along with the overall item quality which could go up to a maximum of 999.

A bomb synthesized with sub-par ingredients without any care for its traits will end up doing about 60~ damage but one that was created with the best possible traits/effects has the potential to thousands. The variance between the minimum and maximum is higher than ever, and even though it can take hours just to plan for the creation for one of these “Ultimate, Perfect, Optimal” items, the results can be immensely satisfying.

Combat on the other hand is left as a fairly simple turn-based affair. The main mechanic in combat was the ability to break enemies to skip their turns and make them more susceptible to damage by doing a certain amount of damage to them. My party members could also be broken for the same effects and, generally speaking, a strong offense trumped a strong defense in this case. Alchemists were also uniquely equipped to interrupt the flow of combat by using items in between turns, and given how devastating attack items could be, it was always nice to have three in the party at all times.

Sterk, Knight Supreme!

Outside of combat, I was given goals to fulfill, many of which would appear in the Alchemyriddle after a certain story events, and figuring out what needed to be done was fairly simple and the rewards for completing full chapters worth of riddles were worthwhile and always had me chasing the next goal whenever I had the chance.

RIDDLE ME THIS

Atelier Lulua is a solid, albeit safe final entry in the Arland quadrilogy that does an admirable job of bidding farewell to a lovable cast of characters.

Fun Tidbit – Goodbye frilly skirts, hello short hotpants!

Review copy of game provided by publisher.