“This nation has a job called “adventurers.” It all happened before Arland became a republic. People wanted to explore, adventure, or develop the frontier. The knights of Arland were weak, so the citizens joined them and helped out. It happened gradually, but that system was later institutionalized. Adventuring is now a real job. My mother was one of those adventurers. I hear she’s actually famous, too, but we haven’t heard from her in years. My father and sister both think she’s already … but I don’t think so.”
Read our review to find out if the adventure is worth your time.
Atelier Totori is the second alchemy RPG of Arland. Chasing after her mother’s shadow, Totooria Helmold finds her self on a quest to become a powerful adventurer.
Atelier Totori opens up with Totooria Helmold(Main character) mixing ingredients together from a recipe she aquired from her teacher a while back, as shes stirring in the last ingredient, BOOM!….can you guess what happened there?….you know….boom….well anyway, after the explosion, Cecilia Helmold (Totori’s sister) is introduced and pissed off. Due to the fact that every time Totori does alchemy Cecilia is the one to clean it up. Totori ends up running off to town feeling bad for making another explosion, she meets up with Gino Knab, Totori’s childhood friend, and first character to join your party. Together you two fulfill your dreams and become adventurers. On your way you encounter obstacles and variety of different characters to help you on your journey.
Exploring
When your exploring, your using the world map. Using the world map consumes LP and a number of days will pass depending on the distance. When your LP hits 25% or Lower, your characters will not fight at full strength. Pressing the select button at the world map brings up the system screen where you can save, or changes settings in the option menu. Changing the Voice Volume, BGM, SFX, Movie, and Voice language is optional there. You can go to gathering areas around town to obtain materials and ingredients for alchemy syntheses. Raising your Adventurer Rank or exploring further will grant you access to more locations on your map. But in order for you to start exploring more areas, it requires you to have an Adventurer License which you acquire after get the amount of cole to do so.
Synthesis
At the workshop, accessing your caldron allows you to use the ingredients and materials that you gained from exploring or doing certain quests to craft different items. You can obtain reference books to learn recipes from shops, through events, or by raising your adventurer rank. Days are required to synthesize items, the chosen items will fully combine and it will show up as either a success or failure. If your alchemy level is low, it is more likely for synthesis process to result in a failure.
Also in your Workshop, you can use Totori’s journal to save or load, and the sofa to sleep and replenish your HP and MP. But resting will use up days , so be sure not to over sleep.
Questing
Gain money or Cole and the trust of the townspeople by completing their requests.
There are two different types of major quests. Front Quests and Friend quests.
Front Quests are jobs requested by the townspeople that you can acquire from either the tavern or guild. By completing these, you will receive monetary rewards. If you do it well, you qill gain more Cole and other extra rewards.
There are 3 different types of Front quests.
- Gather: Gathering certain items, better the quality , better the reward
- Synth: Synthesizing items to the request of the person you acquired the quest from. Again better the quality, better the reward.
- Hunt: a quest where you must defeat certain monster. Receiving a better reward is based on the number of turns used to defeat the monster and the difference in level with the enemy.
While doing the Gather quests, or just gathering items to craft a potion, you will come across regular or rare items. Rare items are identified by a gold colored icon that appears above the characters head, regular items are blue icons. Overtime, if you are caring items on you, they will eventually go bad. Unless you store them in Totori’s workshop container. You can hold up to 999 items in the container.
Friend Quests are sudden requests from your party members. Since it is an emergency , they will visit you at your workshop and ask you for specific items. You are not obligated to accept the request, but you may be rewarded in unexpected ways if you do so. Fulfilling a Friend Quest raises the Friendship Level with your party members. This can trigger specific events and also make Assists in battle more likely to occur.
Battling System
Battling is turn based, depending on who hits who first. Meaning, when your exploring a place and they run into you they have first strike, or if you hit the Square button, you will have the upper advantage.
Battle commands: Attack, Item, Skill, Guard, Flee.
Status Ailments: Damage from special attacks or items will sometimes cause status ailments like Poison or Sleep.
Item: This powerful command can only be used by Totori and Rorona who are alchemists. You will be able to use an item in your basket to attack or heal. However, you may use an item only a limited number of times. This command is also unavailable if you have no items in your basket.
Assist System: Totori can have other party members assist her in battle. When the L1 or R1 buttons appear, press them to conduct an Assist Action.
The Assist System can be used in the following situations:
When Totori:
- Attacks with an item.
- Is being attacked.
- Does a specific action.
If your party is knocked out at a gathering area. You will be transported back to the workshop or town. It wont be a game over but it will take up a number of days.
Overall, Atelier Totori is a fun adventurous game that I enjoy and I know many people will, due to the fact the it’s a lot like Final Fantasy, but more for the younger generation. I enjoy this game cause its easy to play, its fun to use alchemy and learning new recipes to synthesis better items. I love the battle sequences, the humor and the graphics are done very well for the RPG genre. I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys turn based combat and level building games.
A great buy for a great game.
