Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings Review
Art Attack!
As the primary reviewer of Atelier games for the site for a decade plus, perhaps it was inevitable that one day I'd hit a wall and burn out on them. That wall appeared in 2018. I was meant to review Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings back when it released, but I couldn't muster the energy to play it. With Atelier Firis leaving a bad taste in my mouth, I had newfound trepidations that perhaps the series and I were going through an awkward breakup. I went through a brief period when I had no excitement for the series until Atelier Ryza came along and renewed my faith. However, not reviewing Lydie & Suelle back when it came out still lingered in my mind, and I decided it was time to boot it up and see if it was me not appreciating it, or burnout.
At fourteen years old, twins Lydie and Suelle have a passion for alchemy and a useless father who struggles to pay the bills. When the girls realize how much they are financially struggling, they decide to build their alchemy skills in hopes of not only bettering themselves but also putting food on the table. While practicing their alchemy, the girls stumble upon a mysterious painting in their basement and are transported to a new world, finding rare materials that could help create wondrous items and build their atelier's reputation. As Lydie and Suelle move up the alchemy ranking system, they soon learn there may be more mysterious paintings than the one they discovered in their father's basement.
The Mysterious subseries focuses heavily on slice-of-life narratives, where there isn't an overarching evil to be slain, choosing instead to detail the day-to-day lives of the heroines. Lydie & Suelle 's story is one of the twins attempting to find themselves and where their skills lie in alchemy. They have also had the hardship of losing their mother at a young age and having to parent their father, who may, in fact, be withholding information from them. The main narrative is very thoughtful and sweet, as it shows how Lydie and Suelle want to help their family, friends, and community, while also recognizing the challenges that come with such a goal. The story involving their mother is simple, yet heartfelt, drawing the player into the grand mystery surrounding her and the mysterious paintings.
[caption id="attachment_18758" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Lydie and Sue are going to knock you down![/caption]
While the main narrative is sweet and straightforward, the game struggles with the direction it wishes to take. The issue with slice-of-life stories is that when too many stories are present, it can detract from the main story that the writer wishes to tell. That is apparent here, as there are a ton of pacing issues that leave the player meandering between the various characters’ plotlines, with no clear guidance on how to move them forward. While many favourite characters return, such as Sophie, Firis, and Plachta, their stories showcase their growth; while new characters like Mathias are not given equal treatment, as his story, in particular, ends not with a bang, but a fizzle. It's not that the stories are bad; it's more that characters lack equal treatment in their importance, meaning one has to slog through the characters they don't care about to get the juicy stories for the ones they do.
A large part of Lydie and Suelle is about their personal growth and their relationship to their community. The twins can build their reputation by completing specific tasks in their Ambitions Journal, which then helps move their rank up so that they can achieve the goal they promised their mother: to run the best atelier in the kingdom. These tasks can range from defeating specific monsters, crafting items, to simply visiting certain areas on the map. While the girls are given a stipend at the beginning of each new rank, money is surprisingly difficult to come by in the game, as the main way to collect it is through completing the very repetitive notice board tasks. Many of the unique Ambition tasks are easy to complete, though as the girls move up in rank, it becomes more challenging, and not in a good way. The game does not do a good job of explaining how to inherit specific, unique traits for crafting, or even just finding items with the trait in question. There is a lot of guesswork that sometimes can feel super rewarding, but often it's more of an exercise in frustration.
Despite some questionable explanations of mechanics, the alchemy system in Lydie and Suelle is quite robust, building off of its predecessors. Atelier Tetris is back, as players gather ingredients from different locations to synthesize them by flipping and rotating components to create a final product. Players select the item they wish to make from the discovered recipes and are presented with a grid in which each ingredient has its own effects, colour components, and properties. Players can mix and match ingredients to create powerful items, and sometimes even craft new recipes through the experimentation process. Players can also add catalysts to the item they are crafting, which offer fantastic boons such as better quality and quantity of items and more unique effects.
[caption id="attachment_19914" align="aligncenter" width="640"] We are! We are! On Backen's Crew! We are![/caption]
Recipes can be learned from books, though players will also get new recipe hints through item creation. Still, sometimes the information can be difficult to decipher. Ingredients often end up with randomized properties, and making new items transfers those properties over. However, the game doesn't make it easy to figure out how to obtain some of the more unique traits, leaving the player to filter through all the traits in hopes that perhaps they can find the correct one. The alchemy system is addictive as always, and even with some of the flaws in item creation, there is still a constant desire to keep trying, failing, and trying again.
While alchemy is the core of an Atelier game, the series has absolutely upped its battle systems over the years. Unfortunately, Lydie & Suelle fall in the middle of the pack, as it's very serviceable, but not all of its ideas are fresh. Players will have three Attackers and three Supports. When a character attacks, uses a skill, or uses an item, there is always a chance that a character in the back row will use a support ability. New to the series is the Extra Mix ability, which can only be used by Lydie & Suelle , where the girls can transform an item into something grander, such as taking a basic bomb and making it more explosive, or having a heal item that can only heal one person become something that heals many. Extra Mix is a great concept, but it often feels random, so the player cannot exploit it.
The other added ability is the Combination Attack, which is obtained by completing different character sidestories. Once the characters have unlocked the Combination Attack, the Attack and Support character can build the gauge, and once it’s at 100%, players can perform the attack. Where this fails is that not all combinations feel equal: pairing Sophie and Lydie can make the gauge move quickly, while pairing Firis and Sue can feel much slower. It's a decent battle system overall; it's just hard not to compare it to the Ryza trilogy or even the older Dusk games, where speed was a big part of the battle system's design. Though decent, Lydie & Suelle 's combat overall just feels so much slower than other games in the series.
[caption id="attachment_19924" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Who doesn't love Atelier Tetris?![/caption]
One area where Lydie & Suelle falter is the amount of backtracking that really pads the overall game time. While the concept of walking around paintings is novel, not being able to fast travel to different areas, especially in the late game, is such a hassle and makes for a lot of wasted time. Since the game's story already has pacing issues, the constant backtracking makes certain chapters feel more like a slog than others.
The graphics in Lydie & Suelle are colourful and pleasant to look at, with every Mysterious Painting popping with its own personality. From the Spooky Woods' having pumpkin lanterns to light the way to wandering around under the sea, every inch of the game visually shines, making it a joy to explore. The PS4 version, unfortunately, had some cases of oddly placed invisible walls, and there is some stiffness in some character cutscenes, though these issues do not fully detract from the experience. The soundtrack is a lovely mixture of lo-fi sounds that match the aesthetic of the area that the twins are exploring, with the last few areas having the most memorable tracks. All of the game's voice acting is in Japanese, and the actors do a great job of bringing their characters to life. The concept of traveling through paintings is such a unique concept, and the game highlights this through its audiovisuals, just how original everything in Lydie & Suelle 's world is.
Despite all of the above problems, I can't fault Lydie & Suelle for "The Great Atelier Burnout of 2018." While I absolutely needed space from the series, I truly believe playing the game years later has given me a fond appreciation for it, as it's definitely up there with Sophie 2 as being one of the better games in the Mysterious subseries. While the perfect product wasn't synthesized, Lydie & Suelle was a step in the right direction for the series, blemishes and all.
The post Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings Review appeared first on RPGamer .
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