{"id":16827,"date":"2018-04-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/atelier_lydie_and_suelle_the_alchemists_and_the_mysterious_paintings"},"modified":"2018-04-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T12:00:00","slug":"review-atelier-lydie-suelle-the-alchemists-and-the-mysterious-paintings-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/04\/06\/review-atelier-lydie-suelle-the-alchemists-and-the-mysterious-paintings-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Atelier Lydie &amp; Suelle: The Alchemists And The Mysterious Paintings (Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 1 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88922\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88922\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch Atelier Lydie Suelle the Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings 01\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p><a class=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/atelier_lydie_and_suelle_the_alchemists_and_the_mysterious_paintings\"><strong>Atelier Lydie &amp; Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings<\/strong><\/a> is the final entry of the Atelier \u2018Mysterious\u2019 trilogy, and actually happens to be the first main-series Atelier game to appear on a Nintendo console. We\u2019ve seen various side games hit Nintendo\u2019s handheld consoles, dating way back to the Game Boy Color, but it comes as a pleasant surprise to see this main entry on Nintendo\u2019s new hybrid.<\/p>\n<p>Playing the first two entries of the trilogy isn\u2019t an essential warm-up for playing this title, but for those who have already experienced <strong>Atelier Sophie<\/strong> and <strong>Atelier Firis<\/strong>, you may be interested to know that things have been changed up once again here. The open-world approach that was introduced in the second entry has vanished once more, seemingly only being allowed to have one shot in the limelight. Instead, this game returns to the classic formula of travelling between separate maps.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 2 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88926\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88926\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch Atelier Lydie Suelle the Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings 06\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Before we get <em>too<\/em> far ahead of ourselves, though, let\u2019s dive in to explore what the game is all about. Lydie and Suelle are twin sisters who co-run an amateur alchemist service. Their business is facing some pretty hard times, however \u2013 partly thanks to their father wasting all of their earnings \u2013 so the plot revolves around the sisters making cash to build their reputation in their craft. When their kingdom announces a new ranking system for aspiring ateliers, promising financial backing for the most successful applicants, the twins set out to achieve the highest available rank.<\/p>\n<p>To do this, you must guide Lydie and Suelle through their alchemy practice, levelling up your skills to create the highest quality items you can. By examining your notebook \u2013 a feature that you\u2019ll be using an awful lot during your playtime \u2013 you can find quests that will task you with finding particular residents, creating a specific set of items for customers, and even fighting monsters to protect people of the town. Completing these tasks will grant you extra cash and experience points, so taking on as many quests as possible is definitely the way to go.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re unfamiliar with the series, the crafting side of the game may take some getting used to; you are presented with several menus full of items, all containing various stats, and the game doesn\u2019t provide the best explanation for how of these things can affect your creations. Naturally, you\u2019ll start to get to grips with what works and what doesn\u2019t with time, and you\u2019ll come to realise that there\u2019s a pretty impressive alchemy system in place, but you might find yourself feeling a little lost in the beginning.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 3 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88924\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88924\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch Atelier Lydie Suelle the Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings 04\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>To gather all of the resources you\u2019ll need, you\u2019ll once again need to consult your trusty notebook. From there, you can warp to new locations that you unlock over time, fast-travelling between your store\u2019s town and a whole host of different areas full of items to collect. New to this game are the \u2018mysterious paintings\u2019 which allow you to travel to all sorts of whacky places that wouldn\u2019t necessarily fit within the main game. To give some examples, these paintings will whisk you off to places such as a Halloween-themed land and even underwater, seemingly acting as a trade-off for this title\u2019s lack of open-world.<\/p>\n<p>The combat we briefly mentioned earlier is a rather relaxed affair, and as with most areas of the game, the early stages are a little underwhelming. Battles are turn-based, with the twins acting as independent characters for your side. You\u2019ll be using a variety of skills along the way, and can also use your crafted items to slay monsters, too. As the game progresses, you\u2019ll start to gather several more party members alongside the twins, allowing you to fight in a two-line formation. This setup allows fighters on the back row to recover for a moment while the front team attack.<\/p>\n<p>There are six playable characters in total and, as it\u2019s likely that you\u2019ll find a winning strategy to stick to for the most part, the combat does start to feel a little repetitive after a while. That said, it is only part of the game as a whole, which essentially feels like a collection of different RPG-traits rolled into one; the combat and quests make up a fair portion of your activities, but the focus on alchemy and crafting does help to set the series apart from similar titles.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 4 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88923\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/88923\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch Atelier Lydie Suelle the Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings 05\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Presentation and performance-wise, Atelier Lydie &amp; Suelle is pretty average. The games graphics are a bit of a mixed bag, with attractive anime-style cut-scenes pulling you in, only to reveal a relatively disappointing overall art style for the main game buried underneath. There is no English dub present here, either, meaning that you\u2019ll be listening to the original Japanese vocal recordings with subtitles being present throughout, although the girls do have an interesting relationship and are often full of humour.<\/p>\n<p>Although this is very much an Atelier game, with the core features that fans of the series will have come to expect, it rounds off a trilogy that seems to have been making things up as it goes along. The game features some interesting new elements, such as the titular paintings, but it\u2019s a shame that the open-world elements from the previous title were never developed further as this could be viewed as a slightly backward, or cautiously sideways, step.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Atelier Lydie &amp; Suelle is a rather standard entry to the Atelier series. Content with relying on a pretty standard setup, the game doesn\u2019t innovate or move forwards, although fans of the series will no doubt be interested in the new story alone. It\u2019s a pretty interesting take on the ridiculously wide genre of RPGs, with a much heavier focus being given to its deep crafting system, but that might not be enough to convince new players on its own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Atelier Lydie &amp; Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is the final entry of the Atelier \u2018Mysterious\u2019 trilogy, and actually happens to be the first main-series Atelier game to appear on a Nintendo console. We\u2019ve seen various side games hit Nintendo\u2019s handheld consoles, dating way back to the Game Boy Color, but it comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}