Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists ~Ateliers of the New World~

Genre: Management Simulation / Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists is a Management Simulation with some light Turn-Based JRPG elements released in 2019 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch as a part of a 20th Anniversary celebration of the Atelier franchise, with characters from throughout the Atelier franchise popping into this game’s world via some sort of ancient portal technology or something (those darned ancients apparently forgot to turn off their contrivance machines again!). As such, this game is a spin-off game and not a part of the mainline Atelier franchise, as will become quickly evident with this game’s gameplay, which is nothing like anything else in the Atelier franchise.

Nelke is not an alchemist, unlike pretty much every protagonist throughout the series – she’s a bureaucrat. As such, she’s not setting out to go on an adventure or establish a business for herself, and she won’t be synthesizing any ingredients or coming up with any recipes – that’s someone else’s job. Rather, she’s been assigned to a remote town with the goal of ensuring that it flourishes into a successful city. And meanwhile, Nelke can enlist the local townsfolk to help her investigate reports of a mythical tree said to be in the area.

Pretty much everything you do in Nelke is menu-based. Gameplay alternates between work days and holidays. On work days, you will direct construction workers to create new buildings and roads,assign employees to different facilities, direct farmers what crops to grow, direct alchemists what items to create from raw ingredients, and direct shopkeepers what to sell. Then on Holidays, you have a finite amount of time to spend, distributing between upgrading character relationships to make your townsfolk more productive, or exploring out into the surrounding area to find new ingredients and uncover new places to explore.

When exploring, your characters will proceed through an area automatically, stopping only when encountering resources or monsters to fight. Combat here works as a sort of streamlined, minimized version of what players of the Atelier series are already familiar with, although there are a few nice twists, such as support characters who act on their own volition, and even the ability to make combat automatic. Players can also opt to make their characters sprint through an area, meaning that they won’t collect items, but if they reach the end of the area in time you’ll gain access to a new area in the future. This entire portion of the game feels very reminiscent of the game Miitopia in how it simplifies and automates much of the Turn-Based JRPG formula, and as a result this feels like a fairly minimal part of the game.

The gameplay here is a fairly unique and interesting mix of ingredients, but there are issues with this recipe. Firstly, this game very much wants to be story-heavy, which means that players focusing on the Management Sim elements of the game will find themselves constantly interrupted by their characters having conversations with one another. I understand the appeal of this element – a part of the selling point of this game is that characters from throughout the Atelier franchise make appearances, can be hired by Nelke to work in the town, and have healthy conversations with one another. However, as nice as these conversations may be, they really break up and slow down the flow of the rest of the game.

Another issue is one of depth and complexity. This game begins with a pretty lengthy demo where players are railroaded into performing one task after another without really absorbing how to do things for themselves, and as a result they may be left confused when they finally have free reign to act on their own. Ironically, despite this confusion, Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists is fairly simple as Management Simulations go, and doesn’t provide players with much in the way of options. Even the area they’re given to build is extraordinarily small, only big enough to fit maybe a dozen or so facilities prior to being upgraded. And your choices of facilities are also very limited (at least early on).

There’s another area that disappoints, and that’s the visual presentation. Where Atelier games tend to have magnificent cel-shaded characters, Nelke’s 3D characters are merely okay, and the world they walk through is extremely simple-looking and unimpressive. Despite this, there’s plenty of aliasing and slowdown. A game that looks this basic and frankly ugly should not perform this poorly. However, even this underwhelming 3D presentation tends to take a back seat in favor of still character artwork through the game’s conversations, which will take up a large portion of the game’s play time.

At the very least, this game has the usual Japanese-voiced characters, and a solid soundtrack with remixes of songs from throughout the Atelier franchise, with great songs like Story of the Seagull Who Couldn’t Fly, Let’s Go Outside, Criss Cross, and Aerial Party, to name a few.

Those who have been reading my Atelier franchise reviews may find it surprising that I’m breaking with my standard formula for reviewing these games when it comes to Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists, and that’s because this game simply does not compare to the other games in the Atelier franchise – it’s an entirely different sort of thing. However, just for old times’ sake, I’ll go ahead and throw in a note that this game doesn’t make use of the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen or gyroscopic motion controls.

If anyone thinks I’m being harsh on Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists because it’s different, let me put those thoughts to rest – I love Management Simulations, and I’m amused by the notion of running a town full of alchemists doing my bidding. Unfortunately, this game is both too over-complicated and too simplistic with too few options for players to build their growing town the way they want to, and much of the charm of the Atelier franchise is lost on this game’s disappointing graphical presentation. If you’re a die-hard fan of the Atelier games who loves Management Simulations, you may find this game touches a soft spot in your heart, giving you a chance to spend more time with characters you love. However, if you do not fit that description, you’re better off sticking to other games in the genre.

tl;dr – Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists is a Spin-Off game within the Atelier universe, but not a part of the mainline series, and unlike other games in the series, this is a Management Simulation with only light Turn-Based JRPG elements. It’s a promising idea, but this game is both too over-complicated and too limiting and simple, a bad combination for Management Simulations. In addition, much of the series’ charm is lost due to a poor presentation. Fans of this franchise may thrill at the opportunity to see all their favorite characters again in a different setting, but most players are better off skipping this one.

Grade: C

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