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IGN Review of Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland
I love an inappropriate, flirtatious RPG starring underage girls with huge racks as much as the next guy. Generally, though, I want them to have a solid game to entertain me between the weirdness. NISA's newest RPG, Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland has all the bouncy physics, red zone comments, and "shy" girls that wear bras for shirts, but is missing that part where the game is compelling and fun.
It's almost worth picking up Atelier Rorona for the story. Almost. This is one of those boundary pushing, dances the line between funny and creepy, RPGs. Whether it's Rorona's master that makes jokes about molesting her while she sleeps, or the nice shopkeeper who gets drunk and actually does molest her, everyone wants a piece of Rorona. The American version changed the character's ages, making Rorona 17 instead of 14, but that only barely makes things better.
Did I mention the creepy androgynous robot child who may or may not have been alchemized using horse dung and human semen? I don't use creepy here lightly, folks.
Most of the game is voice acted, so some of the funniest lines in the game get butchered by annoying voices. There is the option to turn on the original Japanese voices, which is nice for those people that tell themselves that's somehow better. Personally I enjoyed that there was an option to turn them off entirely.
Unfortunately, the gameplay for Atelier is not nearly as exciting as the bizarre dialogue. The main goal in the game is to complete 12 Assignments given by the King in order to save the alchemy shop from being shut down. The problem with the game is that it's just plain tedious. At a glance it could be likened to Harvest Moon, but there's a lot less interaction going on. Instead of harvesting crops, you travel to areas and stuff is just there for you to take. Once you have ingredients you select the recipe and presto it gets made. There's absolutely no skill required.
The challenge in the game comes from the time limits set for each Assignment. Each assignment has to be completed in a set number of days. Everything Rorona does in Atelier takes time. Adventuring, alchemy, or sleeping all spend days, bringing you closer to the deadline. I can't sit there and level grind until my characters are all powerful because each zone takes a certain number of days to travel to, and there is a finite number of monsters each time I went to it. So leveling up is a very deliberate process, and it can bite players in the ass if they aren't on top of their game.
What Atelier does offer is a level of freedom a lot of RPGs don't give the player. If I want to focus heavily on the adventuring side and find bosses to battle, I can do that. Or if I want to level up the Alchemy side and really perfect the items I'm making, there's that too. Or maybe I want to do favors for everyone around town because every single person has a crush on my character and she's too dumb to realize it. Each of these strategies leads to a different ending (something like 15 in total), and that would be an incentive to replay the game, if the endings weren't simply a single still image with some narration.
©2010-10-01, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
It's almost worth picking up Atelier Rorona for the story. Almost. This is one of those boundary pushing, dances the line between funny and creepy, RPGs. Whether it's Rorona's master that makes jokes about molesting her while she sleeps, or the nice shopkeeper who gets drunk and actually does molest her, everyone wants a piece of Rorona. The American version changed the character's ages, making Rorona 17 instead of 14, but that only barely makes things better.
Did I mention the creepy androgynous robot child who may or may not have been alchemized using horse dung and human semen? I don't use creepy here lightly, folks.
Most of the game is voice acted, so some of the funniest lines in the game get butchered by annoying voices. There is the option to turn on the original Japanese voices, which is nice for those people that tell themselves that's somehow better. Personally I enjoyed that there was an option to turn them off entirely.
Unfortunately, the gameplay for Atelier is not nearly as exciting as the bizarre dialogue. The main goal in the game is to complete 12 Assignments given by the King in order to save the alchemy shop from being shut down. The problem with the game is that it's just plain tedious. At a glance it could be likened to Harvest Moon, but there's a lot less interaction going on. Instead of harvesting crops, you travel to areas and stuff is just there for you to take. Once you have ingredients you select the recipe and presto it gets made. There's absolutely no skill required.
The challenge in the game comes from the time limits set for each Assignment. Each assignment has to be completed in a set number of days. Everything Rorona does in Atelier takes time. Adventuring, alchemy, or sleeping all spend days, bringing you closer to the deadline. I can't sit there and level grind until my characters are all powerful because each zone takes a certain number of days to travel to, and there is a finite number of monsters each time I went to it. So leveling up is a very deliberate process, and it can bite players in the ass if they aren't on top of their game.
What Atelier does offer is a level of freedom a lot of RPGs don't give the player. If I want to focus heavily on the adventuring side and find bosses to battle, I can do that. Or if I want to level up the Alchemy side and really perfect the items I'm making, there's that too. Or maybe I want to do favors for everyone around town because every single person has a crush on my character and she's too dumb to realize it. Each of these strategies leads to a different ending (something like 15 in total), and that would be an incentive to replay the game, if the endings weren't simply a single still image with some narration.
©2010-10-01, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved