RPG Jamboree: Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book (PS4)

It’s easy to think, looking at the title, that Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book refers to an alchemist who acquires some ancient tome full of magical secrets. That isn’t an inaccurate assumption, but despite Sophie taking on the starring role, the book itself may be the most compelling character in the cast. Not only does it provide many helpful recipes for the up-and-coming alchemist, but this flying and talking book’s lost memories provide a clear goal while the book’s personality finds an entertaining mix between being the serious mentor and a surprisingly sassy companion to Sophie. In fact, the mysterious book even adds in an appreciated dash of conflict to a game that is otherwise relaxed and cozy, not pushing it too far away from that feeling but helping it avoid stagnation.

 

In the crafting role-playing game Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book, Sophie runs an atelier where people of the town can requests magical creations such as medicine, specialized ingredients, and enchanted accessories, but Sophie herself is still an amateur, only just inheriting the atelier from her grandmother. Among the possessions she acquires though is a book with seemingly little inside it, but this is Plachta, a talking tome who has a wealth of alchemical knowledge but has lost all of its memories and thus can’t share it. By writing new recipes in Plachta’s pages though, her memories can gradually return to her, and with Plachta remembering something called the Cauldron of Knowledge that can allow even a novice to do expert alchemy, Sophie is immediately on board for helping the book remember its past. Sophie is effervescent, naive, and eager to help anyone she can, meaning she generally gets along with the rest of the people of Kirchen Bell, and this is one reason why Plachta’s willingness to get a little flustered with her pupil feels a little necessary. The generally cheery mood of Kirchen Bell isn’t punctured by Plachta and Sophie’s occasional disagreements, especially since they’re almost always playful and silly, but when so many other people in the plot are fairly straightforward and just as cooperative as Sophie, Plachta’s protests add a pinch of spice to the story that keeps it from being too saccharine.

 

The characters around town all serve important roles though, a good deal of Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book about socializing with and assisting them while receiving help from them in turn. Your crafting options begin fairly small and to acquire new recipes requires surges of inspiration, these taking on many forms. Observing the right object in the world, performing certain actions in battle, crafting an item in a certain way, and more can all inspire Sophie to come up with a new recipe to make in her cauldron, and to be able to head out and gather items and beat monsters effectively, you’ll need to befriend townsfolk and utilize their services. Many of them will actually join you as party members fighting alongside you so you need to become close enough to them to inspire such loyalty, but growing that friendship usually just requires spending some time around town talking to them to trigger conversations and cutscenes. They’ll eventually start requesting you to make certain items as well, but they also can provide useful services such as a Leon the clothier who lets you craft armor and Cory who duplicates items for you. Getting chummy with shopkeeps will expand their offerings, but many characters do just have small stories that are interesting enough to follow. Not every one is a big winner, the grocer’s son Oskar feels like he’s almost defined solely by the fact he believes he can hear the voices of plants, but watching the reluctant clockmaker Harol start to find some inspiration despite his detached demeanor feels more like a proper character arc. Mostly it does feel like pleasant interactions are part of the point, much of your time spent doing wholesome work around town or having simple concerns for your friends that don’t bring down the mood much, and over time it is easy to become attached to everyone because you become so accustomed to checking in on them and seeing how they’re doing.

Almost all of your work in Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book will revolve around the item crafting you’ll do at your atelier’s cauldron. Once you have been properly inspired to make an item and you have the right materials, you can begin the crafting process which has many small systems that can determine the quality of what you create and any additional traits it might have. Most recipes require a broad ingredient type like Plant or Mineral and the one you choose can grant different traits like making the item retain heat or provide additional boosts to health or power. You can only transfer so many traits to a newly made item but some can heavily benefit from the right ones, an explosive able to be far more powerful or a medicine able to provide benefits beyond just life recovery. When it is time to put it all in the pot, there are more considerations to be made, as placing ingredients in the right spot of the cauldron’s grid interface can strengthen certain aspects of the item. A flute for summoning monsters to attack can change which monsters it summons, a healing item can gain the ability to keep healing every turn or even activate on its own, and since sometimes inspiration comes from making something in a certain manner, you might need to learn the right way to place items to trigger these special effects. The process certainly has its complexities but you can figure out the systems at play with experimentation and a gradual rollout of features, although initially the game does seem a little too slow. Your recipe book does give you hints on where inspiration can be found but doesn’t always give the best clues, and with inspiration sometimes requiring abnormal activities like losing a battle or failing item requests at the bar, you can get stuck without much of an idea what to do. Eventually there will be so many things to do at once you can often find a worthwhile task, but early on the player can be stymied when certain events aren’t triggering or you can’t find the right ingredients or inspiration to get things moving again.

 

While I have been mentioning battles as an important element of Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book, they are not as integral as one might expect. You can go quite a while without needing to fight monsters and still be quite productive and make a good amount of progress. This is because there are not many mandatory battles to be had, the game hardly having any bosses to face and most of them are optional. When you head out of Kirchen Bell you’ll actually probably focus most on gathering materials in the places you locate, and while the limited options early on are another way that progress can feel slow initially, eventually you’ll start finding there’s always somewhere to be and something to look for. Items can be found in all sorts of locations like gem-filled caverns, foggy forests, old ruins, and by the riverside, and while there are monsters lurking around these locations, you only need to fight them if you touch them. Otherwise, you can run around and pick up items from sparkling spots, and the more you do it during a visit, the better items you’ll find. You can only gather so many ingredients at a time though, but things like the weather can impact what can be found and it actually becomes a bit exciting to unlock new locations and potentially find new goodies you know will be useful back at the atelier.

If you do find yourself in a fight, this will often test all the work you’ve been putting into crafting useful items and equipment. You can have up to three friends from town fight alongside Sophie in a battle and they have unique skills and attack styles, but all that time, money, and work you invested in cultivating relationships and creating new recipes will determine how effective they are. They can level up through battle to become naturally stronger, but good weapons and armor requires getting far enough along in your work back in town to acquire, and all those traits and special conditions you can add to items can really change how useful a character is in a fight. In a nice touch, all those medicines and attack items you made can be used quite liberally, Cory refilling them when you return to town for an almost negligible fee, and since she can also outright duplicate powerful items provided you have time and some decent cash, you can even equip your whole party with high quality goods without it being an absurd investment of time or resources. Perhaps the funny thing about all of the depths you can go in customizing the gear and item sets your characters utilize is the fact that most fights won’t demand it. They’ll likely require you to be strong enough to survive and dish out some decent damage, but outside some optional content and the final boss, you won’t need well customized characters to achieve victory.

 

You definitely do need to keep up in strength if you want the unique materials enemies can hold though, and because you can make items of high quality with the right choices and materials, you can sometimes craft items more frugally than they’re supposed to be if you’re smart about it. Still, many battles won’t demand much in the way of tactics or advanced alchemy, but the strength of the slimes, eagles, demons, and gargolyes will be important to consider when you enter new areas, especially since dying to them will send you back to town with much of what you gathered while out lost. The battle system isn’t empty of any planning either, especially thanks to a chain system where characters will be able to land additional attacks or unleash special moves if you line up their moves right. The turn-based battles have characters able to assume defensive or offensive stances and on a turn those in the same stances can perform special actions through these links, but oftentimes it will likely be wiser to just have everyone attack normally and benefit from the fact you score extra hits thanks to this helpful link system.

 

At the tavern there are requests you can take that involve combat and crafting, this being the best way to earn the cash you’ll then funnel back into supporting those systems. The requests will give you some incentive to make certain items or face certain foes beyond trying to fill out that recipe book and can help direct you beyond just heading to new places to seeing what’s lying around. These are not mandatory to complete and requests will be recycled periodically, but they are useful as a way to nudge the player into something at least slightly productive if they’re stuck and they can even prove to be the proper reward for crafting something that you had no use for otherwise.

THE VERDICT: Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book focuses on its cozy village life and intricate crafting system to good effect. While there are times you’ll need to battle monsters, the fights are more a test of how much work you’ve put into other systems rather than being strategic battles. The complex alchemy you engage with makes even gathering sometimes exciting so action isn’t all that necessary, and progressing the pleasant plots of your friends by helping them makes time spent in Kirchen Bell usually fun and productive. There are times it can be a bit too slow before your options for work have truly opened up, but once enough of the barriers are down, discovering, creating, and utilizing new items becomes an addictive gameplay loop framed well through the relationships your alchemy supports.

 

And so, I give Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book for PlayStation 4…

A GOOD rating. Before Plachta really starts to show off her personality and before you are given so much to do you’ll always be planning what needs doing next, Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book does risk feeling a bit too mundane. That pleasant atmosphere that makes simple activities like going to the church with Monika or dropping by the bar on the weekends to speak with the hostess Tess fulfilling needs time to take root and the early interactions are a bit plain, but once social calls become another part of your broader schedule, they become a nice little injection of light storytelling before you head off to find new ingredients, face a few monsters, and then head home to make all sorts of magical creations. While more boss monsters that actually require some strength and powerful crafted items could have enhanced the feeling of accomplishment for all your work, it’s also fortunate that you can spend most of your time engaging with a layered alchemy system. You aren’t merely smashing together objects you’ve found, you’re making informed choices so you can pass on the right traits, especially since some later recipes will require crafting chains so you can move a trait to an item that couldn’t acquire it otherwise. Nice music helps the game keep its cozy atmosphere much of the time and the characters are endearing even if their expressions can feel a bit blank when they’re talking, but it’s still easy to settle into this magical world and enjoy your check-ins as you head to town with new items to trade or turn in. The battles are often where the most practical uses of items arise so perhaps expanding the usefulness of your creations to do things like maybe enhance gathering or alter conditions like the weather could have strengthened the reward for your atelier work without shifting the game into being overly focused on the violence, but the requests also give you some gentle direction and add value to recipes that might otherwise have just been made to fill out Plachta a bit more.

 

Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book is the seventeenth game in the Atelier series so a lot of time and experimentation has lead to crafting this specific new tale in the franchise, so it’s not too surprising that the issues here are mostly just the occasional chokepoint in progress that rarely lasts long and eventually becomes a non-issue. The game could have gone for a more involved plot with more conflict or focused on tactical battles, but the world presented here and the focus on fulfilling work and friendships does feel a better fit for the fairly relaxed life you’ll lead as Sophie.