Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book DX

Genre: Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Note: This game is included in the Atelier Mysterious Trilogy Deluxe Pack bundle along with Atelier Firis: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Journey DX, and Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists & The Mysterious Paintings DX

For those unfamiliar with the Atelier franchise, an atelier (it’s a French word that’s normally pronounced “uh-tell-ee-yay”, but the characters in these games pronounce the word “at-lee-ur”) is a workshop or studio used by a craftsman or artisan… or in these games, by an alchemist. The Atelier games are a franchise of JRPGs that focuses on young, almost exclusively female adventurers who seek ingredients they can combine and use to enhance their items, with these crafting mechanics forming a central part of the game.

These games have each been released in a subset series that ties them together with a few of the other games in the franchise both in terms of mechanics, but also in terms of the storyline. I know that for many, the Atelier series can seem somewhat intimidating, but BarrelWisdom.com thankfully has a helpful guide to introduce players to the series. However, for the purposes of this review I’ll try to address where this game fits both into the Atelier franchise as a whole, as well as within its individual sub-series.

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Atelier Primer: Mysterious Series

Atelier Sophie, originally released on the PlayStation 3 only in Japan and later released in the West on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in 2016, is the first game of the Mysterious series, the seventh series of games in the Atelier franchise, which also contains Atelier Firis on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in 2017, and Atelier Lydie & Suelle on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch in 2018, with all of these games getting improved remakes on the PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch in 2021, with all additional content originally released as DLC, as well as new content, with all platforms getting a Mysterious Trilogy Deluxe Pack compilation containing all three games. It also bears mention that there is one more game in the Mysterious series due for release long after the other three – Atelier Sophie 2, due for release on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch in 2022.

The mysterious series is generally fairly light on the overarching time limits the Atelier games are known for, with both Atelier Sophie and Atelier Lydie & Suelle not having any overall limit, and Atelier Firis having a fairly relaxed overarching time limit. I can’t say yet how Sophie 2 compares to these games in this regard – as of this writing, it has not yet been released.

Having said that, there are a few other elements that tie together the Mysterious trilogy. Each of these games adds a Puzzle game-style element to the alchemy creation process, effectively having the player slot Tetris-like pieces into a grid, with each of the games doing this slightly differently. The Mysterious games also change the way you acquire new recipes – instead of getting them in recipe books, you get them when “inspired” through the completion of tasks.

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And the Sophie Goes To…

The puns continue…

Atelier Sophie starts off a new series of Atelier games with a mix of new and old elements, trying to build on what we saw in Atelier Shallie. The overarching time limits the series is infamous for are still gone, but optional quests often have a deadline, so players can pick and choose what best fits their comfort level when it comes to these deadlines. This is probably one of the best ways yet that I’ve seen this series balance pushing a player to manage their time while balancing it out with the option to take things at your own pace.

However, the game expands on this premise by introducing a day/night cycle and a day of the week cycle, with some events and quests tied to a specific one of these. Frankly, it seems strange that this element wasn’t added to the series sooner, as it seems like a natural fit, and once again helps to push players to manage their time without stressing them out about meeting an important deadline.

Beyond this, Atelier Sophie retains many of the quality-of-life improvements made in Atelier Escha & Logy and Atelier Shallie, and brings a very nice new element to the game’s central crafting mechanic – the aforementioned puzzle-based system that has players slotting in “tetris”-esque pieces into a board to enhance the energies around them, which in turn adds benefits to the items you craft. This is a fairly intuitive process, and definitely adds to the experience of trying to craft the best items.

However, while mechanically Atelier Sophie adds some nice new elements to the gameplay that are welcome… I’ve gotta’ be honest, so much of this game feels horribly bland. Don’t get me wrong, the new additions to the gameplay here are nice, but they don’t really change up a formula that’s feeling formulaic and stale.

Take, for example, this game’s battle system, which adds new stances to augment character’s offensive and defensive abilities during battle, allowing them to react appropriately when they see an enemy preparing to make a particularly intense attack, or when that enemy becomes especially vulnerable. In theory, this is a great new addition. In practice, it adds very little to the strategy of combat – just respond to the current battle situation with the appropriate stance, and otherwise, everything else plays out as normal.

However, the real offender here is the story. While not as poorly-written as Atelier Totori, the writing and characters here are not compelling at all, and the plot from the game’s outset has what may be the lowest stakes in the series thus far – A young girl named Sophie is a mediocre alchemist, and discovers that she has in her possession a magical talking book, who fills her head with tales of a fabled cauldron that will make her an amazing alchemist. However, the book is suffering amnesia, and Sophie must help it to recover its memories of the magical cauldron by… well, essentially, by becoming a better alchemist. Right from the start, I pictured this game ending with the book handing Sophie a diploma and declaring that she had the cauldron within her the entire time and she just needed to believe in herself and every other tired cliche imaginable. It doesn’t quite do this, but I would almost respect it more if it did.

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Only So-Sophie

The voice acting this time around is decent, but the voice actors have been given nothing particularly interesting to work with. The soundtrack is largely forgettable instrumental melodies. On a technical level, the graphics this time around are quite nice… but that comes with a huge caveat. The cel-shaded character models, of course, still look fantastic (the series never seems to fail in this regard), and the environmental textures look great, with a bit more detail than we’ve seen previously. However, the actual environments being depicted are some of the most generic and lacking in personality in the entire series. It’s quite a shock after just one installment ago we had some truly imaginative locations right from the start.

Oh, and since I’ve been continuously commenting about the camera controls in this series, the camera in Atelier Sophie is… eh, okay. Still not great, and only slightly improved over what was in Atelier Shallie, but serviceable.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an Atelier review without me mentioning the lack of Nintendo Switch features like gyroscopic motion controls or the touchscreen. And… yup, they’re not here either, even when it would seem to fit the new puzzle elements of the alchemy synthesis system pretty well.

Look, given my tone, you might think I’m hating on Atelier Sophie, and I don’t. It’s fine. As Turn-Based JRPGs go, it’s fairly inoffensive, and it doesn’t have most of the frustrations that many earlier installments in the series had… but it also has very little of the charm and personality of those earlier games, either. After the last Atelier game brought improvements to gameplay and a lot of great personality, it’s something of a let-down that Atelier Sophie takes so few risks with both its gameplay and its story. What it tries to do, it generally does quite well, but it tries to do so very little. If you’re looking for an entry in the franchise that’s largely frustration-free, Atelier Sophie may be what you’re looking for, but there are multiple entries in this franchise that have much more to offer.

tl;dr – Atelier Sophie is the first game in the seventh series of Atelier games (the Mysterious series), a franchise of JRPGs with a focus on crafting. Sophie is at least on paper an improvement on the prior games in multiple respects, adding a few nice gameplay mechanics to the series like a day/night system and a Puzzle-style crafting system. Unfortunately, so much of this game is bland and unambitious, from its stale gameplay to its snooze-fest of a story. This is by no means a bad game, but it doesn’t seem to want to attempt to be a great one, either.

Grade: C+

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