Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World Reviews
long as you can get past the frustrating first hour, Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World opens itself up to be a rewarding and engaging experience that’s surprisingly hard to put down.
Nelke and The Legendary Alchemists is a celebration of the Atelier series in the truest sense. Putting forward an experience both accessible to series newcomers and engaging for veterans, it does a brilliant job of captivating players despite its relatively easy to grasp gameplay loop. Though slightly let down by its RPG elements, it's a game I can recommend for anybody who enjoys careful planning and watching their efforts slowly come to fruition; your ideal town is right at your fingertips.
The name of the game is simplicity. Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World offers an experience that takes aspects of many genres and boils them down to the basics, for better and for worse.
Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists is a completely different experience to a traditional Atelier game. It focuses more on building and establishing a successful town than doubling down on the mix of alchemy and turn-based battles. It is essentially offering fresh gameplay opportunities with cameos from familiar faces.
But in the end, if all you're interested in is the crafting system and making in-game profit, those aspects are so well-developed that even the most avid fans of the city-builder genre will feel satisfied.
Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists is a title that celebrates the Atelier series and, at the same time, brings a new experience to its players. Administrating a city and watching it slowly growing and developing was a pleasant experience which I hope Gust keeps improving in the future.
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Not everything works about the title, like the investigations and opening portions of the adventure. Particularly the latter could've been so much better by not throwing me into an unskippable tutorial. Once you get handed the reigns over the journey, it is a surprisingly fun town management game I couldn't stop playing.
The bright, charming, and community-focused story, in a world without a great evil or catastrophe to reveal the ugliness of humanity, means that Nelke, like every other Atelier title, is the perfect foil to the unrelenting angst and anger of so many other games out there.
I found it to be a joyful blend of simulation and JRPG that at once will please Atelier fans looking to extend their time in this universe and for series newcomers who fancy a JRPG that offers a genuinely different and challenging adventure.
As an Atelier fan, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World.
Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World is a unique crossover that tells a great story that fans of the series will love while trying something a bit different from the norm gameplay wise and only partially succeeded in this regard as the lack of real challenge from the JRPG side of things drags down the solid city management mechanics.
I won’t say Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists ~Ateliers of the New World~ is a bad game; it’s just not a very exciting one. The game looks good and has a wonderful soundtrack, but the gameplay is just kinda boring. After around 25 hours of playtime I was totally burned out on the city building. The lack of exploration, way dumbed down alchemy and combat really hurt this one. It is wonderful to see all your favorite alchemists from previous games hanging out and having fun together. These interactions are pretty much the highlight of this game, and everything else is lacking. At $59.99 I would only pick this up if you are hardcore fan of the Atelier series. For everyone else I’d recommend you hold off for the upcoming Atelier Lulua ~The Scion of Arland~ to get that alchemy fix.
What Nelke presents is an embarrassing attempt to shoehorn battle sections in that bore the player to tears.
This game is addictive as hell and although it gets repetitive at times I found myself blowing away a large part of my weekend
Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the World is a unique look at the Atelier franchise’s worl outside of the mainstream titles. Lighthearted as it may be, it still feels shallow, though well-designed and full of things do to on a casual level. While fun, interest easily wanes after an hour or two, though its art, voice acting, and overall scope should not be taken lightly. Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the World is a niche title best suited to those that are deep in the fandom of the Atelier Franchise.
Considering that I’m limited in my exposure to this franchise as a whole, I found myself engrossed in what this game has to offer. This is a decently crafted side game with enough heart to make it competent enough to play, but a tasty side of fanservice for those who’ve been really digging alchemists and absurdly long game titles for 20 years.
Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists ~Ateliers of the New World~ is the perfect 20th anniversary special for the Atelier franchise. Despite the game simplifying the combat and almost eliminating the exploration segments, the strategic and puzzle-like city building mechanics more than satisfied my enjoyment of this new take on the series. If you didn't particularly like the city building aspect of Atelier Meruru ~The Apprentice of Arland~, you most likely won't enjoy this game either as it's more of the same only more advanced, deeper, and the focus is now set on the building aspect first.