Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg Remake is a remake (a doi!) of the original Atelier game, arriving just in time for the series’ 25th anniversary. Earlier this year, we got the newest entry in Atelier Ryza 3, which was a ‘Barrel of Fun!’ as I put it. It’s really nice to get the chance to see the newest and oldest entries in a series in the same year. How does this remake hold up? Does it stack up to Ryza 3? Is it faithful to the original game? Read on to find out! But first, before jumping into our Atelier Marie Remake review, let’s study up with a dose of history and comparison!
Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg first launched on PlayStation on May 23, 1997. The game has gotten a sequel and various versions and spinoffs that mix things up, expand the subseries, and add more content to the original title. The original concept’s aim was to provide a cozier RPG experience compared to the large-scale “save the world” mentality of its contemporaries. The more laid-back experience and shoujo manga inspirations have been around since the series’ inception, and many key elements have stayed at the forefront. You can clearly see this at play in the intro to the remake even! However, the recent Atelier games do have a touch of large-scale “save the world”, partially forsaking the original intent.
The Bare Basics 101
I touched upon the concept in the last paragraph. However, I feel that sharing the tagline will help push this idea all the way: ‘I’m done saving the world! A carefree, cozy, RPG adventure…’. Yep, that’s the premise. I love it! I love RPGs that put a spin on RPGs as much as I love RPGs that follow the grain! (enough RPGs?)
The basic gameplay loop involves getting alchemic recipes, venturing into the wilderness, defending yourself, gathering materials, and then synthesizing new items! These items are integral for story progression and can be used to make money or improve your combat prowess!
Good Grades!
The best part of Atelier Marie is how all of the mechanics tie into one another. The way the flow of time creeps on and works with your synthesizing, battling, and event progression is what makes the gameplay loop sing. The Time Limit is the glue that holds everything together and provides purpose to every action you take.
For an RPG series that prides itself on crafting, I do find some joy that despite the first entry’s crafting system is paltry compared to its sequels; it’s still about as deep as most modern RPG crafting systems.
The characters are trope-y, don’t have much dialogue, have a ton of stuff you can miss, and are dead simple. I love them! I don’t always need melodrama (though I do eat it by the spoonfuls when provided!). I like being able to relish some vanilla and tropey anime characters from time to time. I say this with nothing but adoration in my heart. You do get some neat events and such, to be fair. Several endings depend on your interactions with a character, and some characters have hidden and cool ties to other elements found within the game.
There aren’t many songs in the game but what you do get is pretty nice. I also really love the graphics. Each area is like a stylized diorama, akin to how the HD2D games handle some aspects of their presentation. The one quibble I have is that I think the shader used on the characters isn’t the most satisfying.
Extra Credit
Atelier Marie Remake touts new features, new Quality of Life features, and new Events. I don’t have a reliable way to compare the original events to the remake’s, but there’s supposedly a 30% increase in the game content volume. You really can’t complain about some new events, and to the game’s credit, I felt like I was always getting events. If you befriend people and put in some elbow grease, you’ll always have something to chew on story-wise.
Unlimited Mode is a pretty cool addition. It lets the player not have to fret over a time limit and have the opportunity to do all of the content that they wish in a single play-through. There are some ‘limits’ to this mode. The game itself warns you that some events are gutted in this mode. Pick this mode if time limits make you obscenely anxious. Although the time limit is super generous, in my honest opinion. If you trust in my appraisal, then you should also know that replaying this game is a cinch anyway. I beat this in under 4 hrs in my first playthrough.
These are, of course, very nice additions! Who can complain about a new mode and more events that flesh out the characters and world even more? Well, the thing is; I think a little more could have been added. A couple of new areas would have been awesome! Yeah, the new events that are added are neat, but let’s be honest here: Events are mostly still some dialogue boxes and character portraits. The game is definitely more for having them, but that’s definitely on the cheap side of content.
I’m considering all of this stuff as ‘Extra Credit’ because I don’t feel comfortable detracting new additional content from the game’s merits and adding some of it to the ‘flaws’ pile. These extras are a bonus on top of a pretty nice remake. It’s just that the additions leave some wanting… just like some of the base game.
Subjects That Require More Study
While many aspects of the game are enjoyable due to their simple quaintness, this can leave much to be desired. Just about everything is enjoyable, but it leaves you yearning for something a bit more substantial. I’m trying to be as nice as I can as I did enjoy my time with the game, but sometimes I wanted more of the individual elements to be more fleshed out.
I do think that the gameplay, generally speaking, keeps up with the theme of going against the grain of your typical RPG fare. There’s not a large combat focus, and it’s all relegated to a fairly small scale. However, some of the things you can do and the subsequent endings you can achieve make me feel conflicted on this matter. There’s basically a local demon lord you can defeat, which makes me feel that the team at the time couldn’t quite figure out how to escape the typical genre trappings. It’s still small-scale, and it’s admittedly played as a semi-joke in some endings. So, it’s fairly harmless but leaves it feeling half-baked.
Combat only has a few available actions, and very little depth is added by incorporating item usage, special attacks, and the turn order systems. In fact, the aforementioned special attacks and item usage are what make battles a complete breeze once you get your bearings straight. With a smidge of understanding and preparation, you can blast your foes to dust by spamming powerful items and intense special attacks. To be a bit fairer to the combat systems and difficulty, there is a small learning curve, and preparation is required to achieve what I described. However, learning and preparation are the name of the game. This does intertwine nicely with the themes and synthesis gameplay to create a satisfying loop. This is a staple of Atelier’s flavor of RPG and could be a potential issue in most entries for some. However, future games have more going on under the hood than Atelier Marie, meaning that the battles are inherently less barebones.
After playing newer Atelier games, I expected some sort of grid, matrix, or tree for synthesis. For example, the Ryza games used an extensive crafting tree that lets you use more than the required materials to really power up and customize synthesized items to fit your needs. I thought that was gonna be a series staple! Nope! turns out that to craft items, you only the items the recipe requires. Nothing more, nothing less. All it takes is some in-game time to craft. It’s very easy to understand but not nearly as engaging as newer entries. I don’t hold it against this game in any way due to my knowing its age, and the first of a series. I will say it’s neat that you need certain Utensils to craft certain things, but those are all beyond easy to obtain and don’t really make anything more interesting as they act as “key” and don’t even offer much in the way of visual differences to your synthesis.
Much in the same vein as the synthesis, gathering your materials is really simple as well. You don’t have to gather new harvesting tools or upgrade old ones! Marie has everything she needs from the start. You go somewhere, and you can get your wanted item! It’s nice in a way to get anything you want with ease. There’s even a ‘Simple Gathering’ option where Marie will automatically and continuously harvest materials until you stop her or get interrupted by the occasional beastie. I mostly think this suffers from being overly simple. I also think it’s quite funny that each time you gather a single item, it ticks one day. Like wow, it took Marie a whole day to pick a handful of fruit! No wonder her grades and reputation start off in the dirt!
Instead of getting new or more items with tools, the seasons actually determine some of these aspects. All of this is neat, but even the season mechanic doesn’t have much to it. Each area has, like, two seasonal items or monster spawns. This is a neat mechanic, but it doesn’t have much content tied to it.
Oh wow! There are a few minigames to spice things up! Well, sadly, the main positive point for me is that I appreciate how they come out of nowhere and sideswipe the player. There are very specific triggers for these minigames, such as making cheese for the first time. This is sure to shock and delight first-time players. However, once you’re assaulted with the triteness and nothingness they provide, you may not feel so delighted. I don’t wanna be mean and say they have no place in the game at all; they certainly do break things up and add some flavor. I will say that they feel like filler, though. For some, these will be a neat little distraction, and for others, they will be an annoying few-minute aside from the main course.
However, I think harping on these points too much is missing the point entirely. Everything is simple. That is very obviously the point. It’s very nice to play something and take it for what it is. Enjoy a low-stakes, simple plot with neat li’l characters, easy-to-understand mechanics, and fun happenstance events. The player is meant to revel in a cozy, simple, and fun RPG and, for this entry in particular, replay it several times.
Report Card
Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is a really cute and simple game. Simply cute! The art, music, and neat characters warm my heart with the essence of the good ‘ol days of interestingly fresh RPGs. The game’s strengths come from the interweaving of simple mechanics and ideas, while the cracks begin to show when said simplicities are individually scrutinized. This remake is a splendid time if it meets your expectations of a simple and quaint time, but can leave those looking for a richer experience yearning for more.
Disclaimer: Koei Tecmo provided Final Weapon with a PlayStation 5 copy of Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg for review purposes.
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