Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX has had quite a history behind it. It’s the latest release of Atelier Rorona in a line of two remakes and an expanded port of the original 2009 version. This DX version brings some much-appreciated convenience features, additional content, and even more to this alchemy JRPG.
For those less familiar with Atelier, it’s a huge series spanning over 40 games, with most individual titles belonging to a subseries. While most Atelier games are relatively standalone, this is the first of the four installments of the Arland subseries and is a good jump-in point to get to know Arland and its characters.
Is There a Plot Here?
There isn’t exactly much of an overarching story to Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX.
Rorolina “Rorona” Frixell works for an alchemist, but the kingdom wants to shut their business down. To give them a chance to save themselves, the palace sends orders saying they can stay open if they complete 12 assignments set over the next three years. Rorona’s master then says that Rorona is now in charge of the atelier (another term for a creator’s workshop) and has to learn alchemy and deal with these assignments to keep it open. Unsurprisingly, Rorona is not very impressed with her but deals with the requests.
Depending on your actions during the game, you can get one over a dozen possible endings, ranging from the character-focused to the absurd.
While there’s some background about a character who wants to get it shut down, why Rorona is helping out, and why the atelier needed to be shut down, these don’t get mentioned often. It makes for quite a thin plot, particularly when compared to titles like Atelier Ayesha or Ryza. This isn’t helped by a lack of peril, between the cartoonish evil of the enemy (thumbtacks in Rorona’s supplies is one example of their antics) and a lack of difficulty meeting the goals.
Instead, the narrative focuses more on many short stories about the cast of characters and moments spent in Arland.
Questing for Characters
Atelier Rorona has quite a charming cast of characters. Rorona herself is rather simpleminded if I’m putting it nicely. She’s somewhat timid, kind of an airhead, and doesn’t really understand what’s going on all the time. There’s also her harsh but sweet childhood friend, an excessively shy performer who soon gets attached, an overly serious knight, a flirtatious musician, and quite a few more. There are 11 playable characters here, and even more non-playable ones that you can befriend including the local shopkeepers.
A lot of the interactions between these are rather humorous. Whether it’s Rorona accidentally insulting a friend and not realizing it, her harsh friend getting teased by her master about her lacking height, or repeatedly pointing out the blacksmith’s baldness by accident (which he’s sensitive about), the game focuses on these silly interactions.
Despite a large cast, most of the time the conversations are one-on-one or only involve a few people. There’s no party dynamic here, but I did appreciate the few background crushes, friendships, and rivalries we do get to see. Little touches like seeing one of the knights from the palace and the general store shopkeeper drinking together help to make the town feel more real.
While I enjoyed the more comedic moments with the other characters, I do wish it went more in-depth with their stories. While serious topics do come up on occasion, they’re often short or broken up by something to lighten the mood. Admittedly, over a dozen characters having events does make up for this. Still, it’s not too satisfying when issues appear and then get resolved almost immediately.
What could be an issue for players is how many of these scenes are accessed. Rather than standard questlines, the more important character scenes typically appear after building up enough relationship points by answering quests they set at the palace. These quests appear every so often and ask for a semi-random item. If you’re lucky, they’ll ask for something you have. If not, they might ask for something that’s a huge challenge to get the components for. It’s relatively easy to miss out on seeing a lot of character events, especially during the first time playing or if you’re less familiar with Atelier games in general. Some are even locked behind obscure requirements, which is a difficulty with this game generally.
Main Quest
Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX has four main activities: Exploring, gathering ingredients, battles, and alchemy.
The palace gives you a time limit of three months per assignment. It also hands out a list of optional assignments for bonuses, which typically link into these activities. When traveling, using alchemy, or resting to restore HP and SP it uses up days, pushing toward the deadline when you’ll be evaluated.
The first eleven assignments are extremely easy to get 10-star evaluations on. I was often done within the first week, leaving the rest of the three months for that assignment to clear up the optional tasks. You actually only need 3 stars to pass at all and a total of 95 of 120 possible stars even for the best ending.
The assignment was usually to create items with alchemy. Sometimes I even had what was needed in my inventory on day 1. An unlockable auto-item creator could often be set to take care of things and relevant components could be bought in the store. Just how easy this was did undermine the story’s premise.
Fortunately, some of the optional assignments were more difficult, as were requirements to go beyond the basic endings. There are plenty of optional bosses to defeat, difficult items to unlock, and more. These often had particularly helpful rewards, so it encouraged trying out different things.
Sidequests are available too, which can be more of a struggle to stay on top of. These are usually item submissions or monster-hunting quests. They affect your popularity within the town and are required for most endings.
At first, I felt like there wasn’t much to do since the assignments were cleared so quickly. But I found that there really is a lot to explore and do in Atelier Rorona.
Exploring Alchemist
Rorona and two of the hireable characters can use up days to explore nearby areas which unlock as the story progresses or you fulfill other requirements.
Each area has several stages. The stages are all quite small, but filled with gathering points to pick up items, enemies to defeat, and occasionally item chests. There’ll also be one or more exits.
Exploring can be a little awkward, and this is one way that Atelier Rorona feels dated. Finding the exit to an area is usually straightforward, but a lot of the stages within areas and even exits within a stage look similar. When selecting an exit, it automatically uses up travel days and then brings up the menu asking which area you want to travel to. Not having any sign of whether the exit is a previously discovered one or any sort of minimap available did lead to me accidentally wasting days more than a few times, especially when coming back to an area to explore more after a few in-game months. There are quite a few little annoyances along these lines like item sorting not persisting after closing a menu.
What I did appreciate more is that exploring felt rewarding. To complete the game, you don’t need to go to all of the areas or fully explore them. There’s even a completely hidden area to find that’s only accessible if you engage with the game’s mechanics beyond what’s needed. Optional bosses are found in some of the deepest areas, as are some of the best recipes for alchemy.
With that said, some areas are locked away with little clue on how to access them. Blocking a path with rocks is a standard method. It’s made clear that bombs are needed to blow them away, but it isn’t made clear that the only bombs that will work are those with certain traits, nor details like how to get them or a need for high quality bombs only. While the heart of alchemy is experimentation, it is a theme throughout all parts of the game that certain gameplay elements are at times frustratingly obscure.
Alchemy for Profit and Fun
Alchemy is another area where the basics are explained, but more detail is left down to the player to figure out, often without clues.
At its simplest, finding a recipe and plugging in the ingredients will get you through the game. At its most complex, the experience of this game is searching the world for components with the best traits and making them into items which can then be made into other items. Want that ultimate weapon? It’s not just made by sticking in the highest quality metal you can find. You’re going to need luck in getting the best traits on items you find and a clear understanding of how combining traits and transferring them works.
While I preferred the alchemy loop in the Atelier Ryza series, and in particular had some issues here with how item quality averages out causing difficulty due to bad luck in gathering, it’s still an engaging system. Finding out how specific items helped in alchemy felt like my curiosity in trying them out was being rewarded and discovering combined traits by chance was always a pleasure.
Throwing Items and Magic
Battles involve a typical JRPG turn-based system for the most part. The only major difference is how items are handled.
Only Rorona can use items, at least until the postgame. Alchemy links in here, as while some basic items can be bought, the best ones will need to be created. You’re not going to find an Elixir that can revive your entire team and set up a constant regeneration on the shelf. As helpful as some of the character’s spells are, they just don’t compare.
For tough fights, items are absolutely essential. Planning ahead to create the best items and gathering what you need is all part of this important loop, as is tactically using the items. Defeating some of the more difficult bosses feels extremely gratifying as these are moments where all parts of gameplay come together, especially given some of them are huge challenges; there are bosses that managed to one-hit kill my characters even when over-leveled.
How much you engage with this game is up to you. All bosses are essentially optional and regular enemies are far too easy, often taking me one or two normal hits to kill even before I optimized equipment or even weapons. I have mixed feelings on this, as it reduces combat down to something that isn’t particularly engaging outside of bosses, but it does make sense that a JRPG where alchemy is important would make gathering components from battles quick and easy.
Endings and Post-Game
As mentioned, Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX has a lot of endings. What it doesn’t do is explain how to get any of them. Most of them generally equate to getting above or below a certain amount of assignment stars and popularity, along with getting all of a character’s events and the highest friendship level. After your first playthrough, this is a game where I’d suggest using a guide. Otherwise, you’ll have no clue that you should actively be trying to become less popular when aiming for Lionela’s ending or more popular for Cordelia’s for example.
At the end of the game, you can choose to either go to New Game+ or move on to the post-game. This gives you an extra in-game year with more optional objectives to complete and a small amount of story focusing on the characters of the next two games in the Arland series (Meruru and Totori). It’s a nice addition and the bosses here are extremely challenging, so it’s a reward for those who did go into the systems and build the absolute best equipment and items. It can also be a reality check for those who didn’t and get hit with an immediate full-party wipeout. It might be a good idea to try it after a New Game+ playthrough or two.
Visuals and Audio
Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX is an enhanced port of a PlayStation 3 game and it shows. The highest resolution (on the PC version) is 1600×900 and while the models have been improved, it does overall look like a 2009 game. It’s not bad, but it does show it’s age. Beyond that, the camera angle is fixed which sometimes felt awkward when going around curves and it did cause a few run-ins with enemies that I couldn’t see quickly enough when I was running. The game does use the camera to its advantage in hiding chests though.
The art style is another matter. The character designs for the Arland series were done by Mel Kishida, who also did Blue Reflection. These look great, as does the CG artwork that occasionally shows during story moments.
The background music is good, which is no surprise for an Atelier title. None of it stands out too much, but it all fits really well. One little touch I enjoyed was how the music for the stores is the same, but uses a different instrument, tying them all together while differentiating them.
Even better, the DX port brings in a menu to change the background music for any area to that of a huge range of previous Atelier and related titles. Atelier Rorona’s own music is good, but there are some honestly amazing tracks from the other titles here as well.
Both English and Japanese dubs are provided. Both casts fit the characters well enough. I didn’t note any amazingly standout performances, but this may have more to do with the story and how most moments were very casual. It’s hard to stand out when you’re talking about making pies.
Verdict
Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX is very much a game where you’ll get what you put into it. If you choose to breeze through, you probably won’t enjoy it very much, but if you engage and learn the systems, there’s a great gameplay loop here. While it is marred by some frustrating elements, as long as you know what you’re getting into, it’s an enjoyable JRPG, if perhaps not reaching the heights that some other Atelier titles do.
ATELIER RORONA ~THE ALCHEMIST OF ARLAND~ DX IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another Atelier title review, you might want to check out our review of Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist & The Mysterious Dream. Or, if you’re interested in another JRPG series, check out Monster Hunter Stories.
Many thanks go to Koei Tecmo for a PC review code for Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
