Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

Atellier Annie is the first Atelier game outside of the Iris trilogy to make it to the states. Atelier Annie hover in more of a management sim then a RPG. Like other's the main point of the game is to gather up items and create new items with Alchemy.

Building a resort!
The story revolve around Annie, a lazy girl who is kidnapped by her grandpa and is force to take part in a renovation effort to turn a island into a five star resort. the competition works by having alchemists build and manage attractions. The money is gain through the attractions along with winning Contest, Contest reward large sums of money and generally require you to make a certain item, as all the the quest do. Each attraction can also be upgrade twice to increase the maximum amount of money you can gain. To level these up you have to do facility specific quest witch all amount to get this or get that. This get's tedious really fast and the "dungeons" where you get this stuff doesn't help each consisting of one area. that's write, no exploration for you.

Combat
The Combat in this game actually felt tacked on to appease the fan base, but end s up being pretty boring. each character as three attacks, one normal, and to special, use these to beat the enemies. though most of the time all you'll need is a stander attack. This brings us to to the game's biggest flaw, to unlock new areas and gather points, you need to level up, but the game never actually tells you that that's how you unlock them, instead it just tells you that talking to people will unlock the area. instead you have to gain a certain level then go somewhere to trigger the right scene. This makes doing some of the later missions a pain, as you will have no access to the items you need and no way of knowing you you gain access other then luck.

All in all this is very disappointing compared to the other Atelier games, but with the other titles to come out this year from Gust/Nis, is it really any surprise?