prokopetz:

While the Atelier series is by no means immune to criticism – ranging from unclear mechanics to bland narratives to the recent installments’ regrettable digressions into gross lolicon pandering  – I’ve gotta give it credit for coming up with a premise that makes literally every conventional CRPG trope make sense.

For those who haven’t played them, the premise of the Atelier series is that you own and operate an alchemy shop. There’s a calendar, and a time limit (typically 3-5 in-game years) to complete the main quest, and every action – from traveling to fighting to crafting – has a cost in time, and within those broad constraints you’re turned loose to do basically whatever you want. No plot railroad – the “story” is whatever you decide to do with your time, and cutscenes happen in whatever order you happen to trigger them.

(Which isn’t to say nothing exciting happens, if you’re into that sort of thing. Depending on how you play your cards in some of the games, you can end up dueling the Midgaard Serpent, preventing a volcanic eruption by blowing up he volcano’s god, or beating up the literal Devil! It’s all optional, though; in fact, many games in the series can be completed without fighting a single boss.)

On a mechanical level, the series is characterised by playing the mechanical conceits of your typical CRPG straight, not in mockery, but as a totally serious effort to come up with a milieu and a narrative framework in which they’re all perfectly sensible.

Why do you wander around the countryside picking up everything that isn’t nailed down? Because it’s your job – you’re an alchemist, and those ingredients have to come from somewhere.

Why do you have a bunch of heavily armed weirdos hanging around with you? Because it’s their job – you’re paying them to protect you from bandits and monsters as you wander the aforementioned countryside. (Well, that, or they’re your slacker friends who have nothing better to do with their time than tag along and bother you. One or the other.)

Why can you sell heaps of random junk you’ve collected to merchants? Because they’re your wholesale suppliers.

Why are you doing fetch-quests? Because the “quest givers” are your customers – you’re filling orders.

Why is there a complicated crafting system? Well, duh – you’re an alchemist!

Why did you just spend six months of in-game time grinding trash mobs for drops? Well, how else are you supposed to get those rare reagents? Again, alchemist – that is literally the sort of thing that people in your line of work do.

I’m actually kind of surprised that no Western CRPGs have picked up the basic premise, because it’s such a no-brainer; it has basically nothing in the way of awkward gameplay-versus-story disconnects – you’re playing a person for whom it’s completely reasonable to act like a stereotypical CRPG hero.