NIS America Koei Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland - Playstation 3

Good

Update: Important information here. Several other reviews state that you have 'plenty of time'. This is not true. Without including too many spoilers: save often and onto various save states. I was able to achieve my permanent license within the time limit, however, I had failed to complete one task of importance so I got a bad ending. The issue I have is that I didn't have earlier save states to pop back to, so I was stuck starting over. They do give you a sort of new game +, but really you just start over with your equipment and money, not any of the items, levels, or anything else from the earlier run through. The only reason I found it annoying is because I didn't have the option to just suck it up and keep playing with no possibility of gaining another ending. Also, there was never really any notice that I would suck it up and get a 'bad ending'. Actually the opposite is true. I kept on working towards my permanent license because I figured then I would have time to do all of these other things. I would have been content just sything and hunting until I leveled enough to beat some really tough baddies.But just be forewarned. Keep a couple of extra save files on hand so that if this happens you can go back a bit if you wish and try something different. Otherwise be prepared to get VERY frustrated by losing a lot of hard work and effort.----------------I will update the review as I progress farther, but even in the first few hours, this game is simply a blast.Thanks to some other reviews, I opted for the Japanese audio track, and I am happy with the voice acting. Some of the female characters are a little "kawaiiiiiiiiiiii" (cute), but it works well with the theme.Things start off slowly, but with a lot of hilarious and fun scenes involving the principle characters. This is a great introduction to the personalities of the game's characters. They are all interesting and quite a blast to interact with.The game itself is amazing. Exploration and gathering is fun. Time passes as you battle, gather, and travel. Spend too much time out and you become exhausted and cannot fight well. Also, many of your quests have time limits, so be aware. Also, many ingredients deteriorate over time. So get those fresh, high quality ingredients back to your workshop ASAP!Battles are actually fun. They remind me a bit of the Grandia series. Nice character animation, pretty average to bland backdrops. But this is okay, because the action is fast paced, and the lack of super detailed backgrounds during battle helps you stay focused on the action. It's a time based/ turn based system like Final Fantasy 10 and the Grandia games. But the battles are so fast that they never seem to drag. There is a pretty good challenge as well.Totori is pretty awful at battling, but this is actually a fun little addition to the tactics. She is the only party member that can use items, and she can do some amazing things with her synthesized goods. She can use items to heal, attack, or assist. Other characters can perform special attacks and use magic, and are generally better at battle. Totori is so helpless that often when she is attacked, you will need to tap L1 or R1 to have a nearby party member guard against an attack in her place. It's a system that works, and it fits her character very well since she keeps saying how helpless and clumsy she is.The music is nice, but doesn't seem to really be anything grand. It's a nice and pleasant background.The character interaction scenes are nice. They have a manga style feel to them. I think it was the right choice. When interacting, the main screen blurs a bit and the hand drawn characters are placed on screen and change depending on the characters reactions. It's a lot of fun.Synthesizing is fun and can be challenging at times. Especially when trying to craft higher quality items. But the game does hold your hand a bit since you need a recipe to craft. Though with hundreds of items, just tossing random ingredients into the pot to try and craft things would be insane. But you have to find or buy recipes, so you don't just have access to every recipe right off the bat.If you are expecting something like Demons' Souls or Elder Scrolls, then you might want to pause before buying this game. It's fun, but it's definitely a true JRPG and really geared towards players who have had experience with these types of games. Where some people would feel the game is limited, I think it's the limitations that put a fun spin on things.If you've enjoyed games like Rune Factory, Grandia, Dragon Quest, or any of the Atelier games, then you should pick up a copy. I'm just sad I didn't get the collector's edition!

I love this series and this game did not disappoint. If you love JRPG's you owe it to yourself to get this one!

I just found a new favorite Fantasy RPG = Atelier Totori! This is an awesome game!Combat is turn-based. The player does not have to worry about positioning on the battlefield since any character can hit any monster, and vice versa. You get three characters in your party, including Totori who uses items and acts like a spellcaster, although there are not spells in the game. When a character gets to act, just choose an attack type, normal or special, and a target, and the character will attack away! This combat system is a throw-back to those found in games 25 years ago. I, for one, love it!As you fight battles you will gain Combat levels, making the characters much better at, well, combat. This is important since major Monster bosses are tough.Item synthesis is a very large part of the game and tons of fun. You have to have ingredients and then can combine them into useful items, like explosives and healing items. There is a skill level involved, so if you try and make something way over your current Alchemist level, it might be ruined. Still, doing so successfully will gain lots of Alchemy training points for Totori.Note on upgrading Weapons and ArmorsUnlike other items, you are not told the recipes for weapon and armor upgrades directly. Instead, you buy a book of synthesis items from the blacksmith which will add various Cloth (armor) and Iron Ingot (weapons) items to your alchemy book. The order they appear on the list is the level of the upgrade.For example:IngotTincGoldsteinAs can be seen, Tinc is a level 2 and Goldsteing (in this example) is a level 3. You only need one of these items, which you make with Alchemy, to get and upgraded weapon. Make the best item you can, with the best bonuses! Take the item wo the blacksmith and, for a feww, he will make the upgraded weapon.A little trial and error is useful. So, SAVE and try out a few weapon/armor items and see what you get. This is because weapons/items are mostly user-specific. After trying out a few, RELOAD and go from there. Easy.Time ManagementMy first playthrough ended up with the Bad Ending because I ran out of time. I believe I GATHERED too often as well as took on too many SYNTHESIS QUESTS. These can eat up enormous amounts of time. You do have a limited amount of time to play the game. Quests are time-limited but this is not a large issue since if you fail a quest it just gets cancelled. You are also allowed to cancel your quests. Oh, when you get a new book of recipes, which you have to buy with coin, look and see what all the items do. Some are very useful for travelling the map!The only negative, and it is minor, is searching your Container (long term storage) for items. The interface works well, but it is a little clunky. No big deal. (By the way, if the items is not in your Basket, then, when you go adventuring, you will not have the item for combat.)There are a lot of mini-sequences where characters interact. Few of these affect Friendship. They are interesting if you are into social interactions. For Friendship, which affects end-game stories and perhaps trophies, adventuring with the character will automatically gain some Friendship. Then, on occasion, friends will ask you for an item when you are in your workshop. You do not have to give then item, which will not lower friendship. Giving the item will increase the friendship level. These cut scene sequences may lead to trophies.MusicYou may want to download some rather cheap DLC for better Workshop and Battle music. I did, and playing is much improved since the default music in Battles/Workshop is, in my opinion, rather horrible, heh.Atelior Totori is a wonderful game. I love the combat routine as well as gathering (or buying) ingredients and then alchemy. This game has quickly become my favorite style of FRPG. It is a great and fun game!edit: I was very tired when typing this so sorry for the typos. Anyway, I hope this review was helpful.

At the time of writing, I have played Mana Khemia, sampled some Atelier Iris games and Mana Khemia 2, and played Atelier Ayesha and Meruru.Of the Atelier series, I have played them out of order, starting with Meruru (third of Arland trilogy), Ayesha (first of Dusk series), and now Totori (2nd of Arland).That said, I can say that game mechanics-wise, the series generally improves, so having knowledge of future games means that I like where the series is going (in general), but it also makes some of the crude / less polished game mechanics that much more noticeable in these earlier games.Per Totori as a standalone game, I would not recommend this as a first Atelier game because the time system which I've seen tends to be pretty strict. Typically the player is given 3 years to complete a given task, and in some games, if the player is doing well, they will get an extension <<spoiler Meruru and Totori give +2 yr if reach checkpoint satisfactorily>>. Once the deadline is hit, game ends wherever you are, and player must either return to an old save file (save often!) or restart the game in New Game +, which I think allows player to keep money and current equipment, but nothing else. I'll say it here and in the Ayesha review I write later, this time system needs to be done away with / revised. While having a main goal to complete within a time frame is acceptable, forcing a reset on the player makes the work of collecting items, completing quests, and leveling up unsatisfying. The game is already grind heavy (noted later), resetting only amplifies this problem.That said, on to more review, particularly I like to look at things from a game mechanics point of view.Story/Characters 7.9/10The story / long term goal is to search for your long lost mother who was a famous adventurer. This is touched on from time to time, but the majority of the game's focus is on questing. The character interactions are pretty good, some quite funny and memorable. The English voice acting is overall pretty good (minus when characters shout excessively). The audio quality is a little bit lower than later games in the series, but the voices can be heard clearly enough. I like the character / personality of the main heroine, Totori, which is innocent yet also outspoken/blunt, and I liked seeing her relationship with her sister and father. The character development and portrayal, and number of unique personalities is pretty well done for the number of characters that are in it. The music fits well with the game, with some event and the battle music being particularly note worthy. Per audio the battle quotes are a bit uninspired and repetitive, as some characters will say nearly the same thing as another, and too often (i.e. if low hp, always say some phrase, which gets tired as turns come up fairly quick [it is a turn based battle system]).Graphics 8.2/10The graphics of the Atelier series in general are gorgeous. The graphics in Totori were not as good as later games, but it is still has a very vibrant and colorful aesthetic to it. This is the second game in the Arland Trilogy, and Totori is a tween age. I will say I prefer the design and look of some of the characters here as they are presented in the next game Meruru as they are older / more mature, but the characters were still enjoyable overall, and the dialogue and interactions here were better overall than in Meruru.Gameplay 5.9/10And here's where the game falls short and becomes less inviting for new players. This series has a big emphasis on collecting items to make new items (a process called alchemy). Whenever a player runs into a battle or gathers materials, time is taken up. Whenever a player traverses on the map, time is taken up. A large reason that this game is strict on its timeline is the way they portioned out how much time each action should take. Compared to other games, gathering takes up 4/10 of the day, but here it takes 5/10. This may not seem like much, but whenever you exit a map the remainder of the day is taken up/ you advance to a new day. That said, if you only go to a map to gather, you should gather an odd number of times to maximize the time spent on the map, where if it only took 4/10 you can be more strategic and gather more while using less days. Not a big deal and it's more understandable in actual practice, but this is an example of gameplay that could have been improved for more strategic use, but it is improved in later games of the series.Another point, compared to other games, is the vast amount of time taken to travel on the map. In later games each position on the map takes 1 to say 6 days to get to. Here, you are often traveling 3-8+ days to move from point to point, and there are many more areas/points on the map that one could go to (though some of these are small gathering areas). This makes it harder to stay within the time limit as well, without some planning and experimenting/understanding of the time system. The world map in general is more open than the other games in the series I've tried, and you are able to explore more freely. But the high cost to move makes traveling to new places a more planned than spontaneous effort (if you go, you better be sure you are prepared for any new monsters, else backtracking will kill your time).I note that there are items that you can craft later in the game that will help you travel on the map and reduce gathering time to 3/10 a day (which is AMAZING), unfortunately these are not really pointed out or emphasized in-game. Since I have played later games in the series I knew to look for <<spoiler traveler's shoes, hunter's gloves?, flying carpet, fate talisman, warp gate. In this game these are not equippable items, you need to craft them and hold them in your basket for them to have effect>> but new players could easily miss these near game altering items. So a recommendation for the designers is to emphasize/highlight important items (and event dates, like the deadline for the game and the festival event near the end).Per the crafting / alchemy system itself, Atelier Totori has a pretty elaborate system in place to craft various items with different effects. The tutorials are pretty basic (improved in later games), the gist is to substitute 1-3 items to create 1 other item. Each item can have a certain level of quality (which decreases at varying rates as you travel) as well as different traits, which can be added to the crafted item / equipment. The details of the system tend not to be covered in the tutorial, so the player has to experiment a lot with it to understand how it works. Recipes (to create new items) are mainly obtained through stores in this game, which require a large portion of money. Along with time, money is something that the player will have some trouble managing till later in the game. The majority of advancement in battle will come from creating better equipment for your characters. This game does a better job in terms of pacing for equipment upgrades - the player will pretty much always want to upgrade their equipment to the next level the moment they have the materials and traits they'd like to add to it on hand.Heard there were ?'s on how to upgrade equipment, as the specific items needed to craft weapons/armor aren't specifically detailed in game. I played later games first so I recognized the names and figured it out, for those interested:<<spoiler start:ingots are required for weapons (Ingot < Tinc < Dry Metal < Ster Metal < Silvatite < Goldstein < Platine < Halmolium) and cloths for armor (Cloth < Muffcot < Silkis < Polywool < Nylonfeather < Tanbash < Scale Cloth < Velvetis). You only need one per item, but each equipment item requires a certain kind.If I'm not mistaken, 1 item of Ingot or Tinc is needed for the level 1 weapon, Ster Metal or Silvatite for Lv2 weapon, Goldstein or Platine for Lv3 item, and similarly for cloths with armor.-End spoiler>>Money is mainly obtained through completing quests that the character will get assigned to them. Quests usually involve delivering a specific item, or defeating a certain number of a monster to the central Quest location. These will come with deadlines, usually a month or 2 away, but even still the player will find themselves struggling to meet many of these within the deadline (without excessive backtracking, which is not good in terms of how long it takes to move around the map). My solution became to take quests and do them if I was able, if not, I just missed it and did not fret over it. It's possible that this may have affected what quests I could get, I do not know. I do note that there was a fairly heavy grinding aspect related to these quests as it is the primary way to earn money. The problem with that is that many of the quests are the same, I recall doing the same few quests probably 10-15+ times (defeat blue punis, defeat audras, defeat ear punis, deliver nuse, deliver bomb ice, etc). But you have to earn money to buy more recipes to craft more items, so it's unfortunate as the required tasks are not varied much and get repetitive.Another grinding aspect is battling. Early in the game you recruit the help of a strong and experienced adventurer, which is fine, except that they make that character stat-wise strong as well and balanced the game to that strong character. What that looked like is a fair chunk of the beginning of the game involved Totori and other character KO'd while said strong character cleared the battle and earned the experience for everyone. The way it played out emphasizes said character as a 'strong' character, but in terms of gameplay and game balancing it made the other two characters pretty worthless for hours into the game. This is unfortunate, as said strong character is already said to be 'holding back', so they very much could have balanced the game around the weaker characters and gradually ramped the difficulty. As is, the most efficient path is not to bother trying to heal the weaker characters until they're high enough leveled to stand on their own two feet, so there definitely could have been some improvements there.All that said, I still very much like this series. Aside from mechanics, there is some content that is a minus of some 'fan service' or female characters that are too scantily clothed, or dialogue or situations that can be sketchy/risque/inappropriate, but the majority of the characters and the worlds they create are fun, typically clean and stylishly dressed, and I know they are improving on the gameplay and quality of their games, so as a series I hope they continue to create fun games and improve on them.Per Totori as a standalone game, 7.3/10, around the same rating as Meruru, though I liked it slightly better due to the story and characters here. Mechanically and graphically, Meruru has many improvements over Totori to make it easier for newcomers, but the story is kind of bland and the experience feels a bit disconnected (feel free to check out my review on that).From playing Meruru (3rd), Ayesha (4th), and Totori(2nd), I'd say the ranking from best to worse is as follows:characters/story: Ayesha, Totori, Merurugraphics: Ayesha, Meruru, Totorigameplay: Ayesha, Meruru, TotoriOf all of the games Gust has created, I think Mana Khemia (PS2) is the best, the art style on character portraits is a bit dated, but the characters are so likable, and the English voice acting and the character development is so good. I plan to play it again sometime so I can have a more recent comparison between that and Gust's latest Atelier series, but if memory serves me right, that is a fair cut above the rest as an overall experience.