Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg (PS5)

Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg released all the way back on the original PlayStation in 1997 but it didn’t end up seeing release outside of Japan at the time. Understandably so, for it was likely a hard sell to the international game audiences at the time. It’s a role-playing game where the battles aren’t that important, it’s a video game starring a female lead at a time when gaming magazines often balked at the idea, and translation and physical releases were a bit costly and thus a risk if you didn’t think you had a receptive audience. Thankfully, digital distribution has made games not only more accessible but lead to gamers embracing a wider range of genres and ideas, so developer Gust decided to revisit the first game in their long running Atelier series that had managed to eventually catch on with its concept of crafting items over all else. Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg gives the wider world a chance to see how this unique series started, although people familiar with the Atelier games might be surprised how much simpler it was all those years ago.

 

Marlone, known as Marie for short, is the heroine of this initial Atelier game, but despite her future involving magically crafting items in a giant cauldron, this alchemist begins the game as the actual worst student in the history of the nearby magical academy. Feeling they have to do something about this failure of a pupil, the Academy elects to set up Marie with a less conventional trial. Marie has 5 years to become a gifted alchemist, her professor Ingrid occasionally checking in on her work but otherwise Marie is provided with an atelier and a few resources before being left to her own devices for that period. Despite being an abysmal student, Marie is lively and friendly, quick to get along with the residents of Salburg as she not only uses her atelier for studies but begins to help the townsfolk both with the items she crafts and in more personal matters.

 

The 5 year time limit in Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg ends up being the most important consideration of all, the game not having some other overarching narrative so you can focus on increasing your abilities as an alchemist. Whether this involves heading out with bodyguards to gather resources in the wild, undertaking jobs in town to earn money and reputation, or seeking out sources of knowledge like saving up for the references available for purchase at the library is up to you, but the time limit can seem a bit daunting at first. The game offers a Normal and Unlimited mode, Unlimited removing that hard deadline and at first it may seem like the obvious pick. Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg can be surprisingly costly when it comes to the time it takes to perform actions. Crafting items in your cauldron can take days at a time based on their complexity even though the action itself just involves dumping the right ingredients in. Traveling to the small handful of nearby locations takes time based on the distance and it’s a round trip so it takes double the time it indicates on the map to visit a nearby cave, mountain, or forest. If you gather a resource, even if it’s just a few Gouache Twigs or a bottle of Cave Water, it will take a day. If you face an enemy in battle, that will also take up a day. A trip to gather up the little resources needed for some item crafting can end up using up around a month of your time, and while the game does use a calendar close to ours so each year is comprised of around 360 days, the cost of actions can seem quite daunting.

However, as long as you’re not careless or flippant in how you perform your work, it’s actually fairly likely you’ll have done most everything of note before you’ve even finished your third year. In fact, by the fourth year, I had already crafted every possible item, leveled up the game’s weakest character Schea to the max level through repeated battles, and maxed out my money to chase one of the game’s PlayStation trophies. Unlimited may still have its uses since it lets you better plumb the even more demanding depths like 100% completion in all fields, but Normal is more than achievable and has unique events tied to it to make it at least at first the preferred option.

 

While the game can be said to have run out of unique work a bit early, before then, there are a great deal of things to work towards in Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg. Your alchemist work is the simplest, often involving you needing to locate the right resources when out gathering and the only real risk of failure when synthesizing an item is a fatigue system that can be managed by having Marie rest for a few days. Often the price of alchemy is the barrier rather than the difficulty, the player not only having to learn how to make something from an external source but needing the goods and be willing to spend a few days making it, this sometimes coming in conflict with special yearly events like local festivals or open markets you can benefit from attending. Working your way up through more demanding alchemical creations is satisfying despite being more about cost analysis than any difficult action, and at the local tavern you can take on jobs where some of those items can be sold so that you may have reason to synthesize items more than once. Of course, some items you can make in turn are used in other recipes, but before the task can become too daunting, you’re likely to encounter the rather helpful fairies.

 

Fairies can be recruited to help in the workshop or head out into the world, gathering resources or crafting items as best they can. Their efficiency is often proportional to their wages, but being able to have a fairy head off to a far place if you’re running low on a simple material or even gradually produce some of the repeatedly used items like the colored neutralizers gives you more time to focus on tasks of greater importance. There is some early curiosity and enjoyment to be found to setting out into the world and seeing what a new place may hold, and there are a few special materials you still need to head out and grab in person so you won’t become a hermit in your atelier. Still, the fairies definitely streamline things in a beneficial way since items like Hebel Water that are used often won’t end up leading to unexciting trips where all you do is scoop up a bunch of it before heading home.

While Ingrid’s occasional assignments give you benchmarks for your growth as an alchemist, a different system gives you a lot of other short term goals to shoot for. Events are special scenes that can trigger once you meet their conditions, the game providing a helpful checklist that won’t tell you everything you need to know about them but at least gives you enough details that you can work towards triggering them. Events can include special occasions like the local festivals but also more involved scenes with the people Marie knows personally. The bodyguards you recruit to help defend her when out gathering in the wild don’t have the deepest personalities, but while many have at least one event that shows off some serious element of their life, you also have many comedic encounters that can trigger if you have done the right actions before specific dates hit. Many but not all events can be seen in a Normal run and do help fill the downtime a bit, but these mostly simple side stories give you just enough to know the supporting cast rather than really tugging your hearstrings or gripping you with something that would make these characters feel more robust.

 

Those bodyguards will come in handy out in the world though, even though Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg’s battle system isn’t too difficult to manage either. A turn-based system where you face whatever wild monsters you run into while exploring an area, many battles will boil down to using your basic attacks for quick wins or utilizing a character’s special abilities without much concern since you can easily recover the energy needed to use them when you head back to town. Enemies are pretty stingy with special drops and few have unique items worth pursuing, although gradually training up a bodyguard or two is prudent since there are a handful of boss battles albeit ones that again aren’t going to be too demanding. You can have two bodyguards with you at a time and can swap them back at town provided the person you’re recruiting is feeling up to it, but battling really does feel like a small concern in the grand scheme of things and it makes one layer of the alchemy feel almost like a non-factor. Many items you make at your atelier might have special effects if used in battle, but there’s little reason to use them beyond perhaps the basic healing tools. You can often punch above your group’s level and if a battle looks too tough you can run and try again another day if its one of the important ones.

 

Ultimately, the battling being basic and often unobtrusive to your work isn’t a bad thing. Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is a fairly relaxed game, a lot of bright and lively music becoming nice and familiar as you figure out what you want to do next and get to work on realizing it. The game uses an adorable style for interactions out in the world, the characters small and squat as if they were vinyl figures but during conversations we’ll see them proportioned more realistically that shows how they’re meant to look. The cute designs do make the game a bit more charming than its light story elements could otherwise manage, although the game can be a bit too cute when it tries to turn certain tasks into minigames. Sometimes when you craft a certain item or find a resource in the wild, you’ll be thrown into a fairly basic minigame where getting the items you desire requires clearing a quick challenge. Jumping over Puni slimes in a windstorm to reach apples or smashing those same Punis with hammers as they fall down from above are basic, but they’re more unique than the game’s usual reliance on small mazes. These minigames aren’t too common, there are six in total, but beyond Treasure Room being a more involved puzzle involving block pushing and dodging the gaze of spinning gargoyles, most are insubstantial and likely won’t be too hard to do but a bit unexciting because of their lack of challenge. Like many things in Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg, they aren’t as obstructive as you might first assume, but that also means they aren’t really impactful and don’t add much to the game as a result.

THE VERDICT: When it comes down to it, Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is mostly a game about managing your workload. While the 5 year time limit is barely a factor, there are events you’ll want to attend, meaning you need to be wise about when you do alchemy, gather materials, or devote time to fulfilling requests at the tavern. It’s not very difficult work, especially when the fairies get involved, and even the battles are mostly unimportant and not too hard to overcome when you do want to clear them. Yet still there is some satisfaction in working towards your goals so you can increase your alchemical abilities or get to know the small but pleasant cast.

 

And so, I give Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg for PlayStation 5…

An OKAY rating. While things can get more demanding and involved on the higher unlockable difficulties, at its heart, Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg isn’t a very complex game despite time management technically being so important. The tasks set out before you are often more about preparation than the substance of what you’re doing. Alchemy is primarily about having the right items and being fine with the day cost, battling the few bosses in the game usually just requires you to build up your bodyguards a bit on the simple foes rather than ever needing to figure out any deeper interactions or item uses, and triggering events isn’t too hard to work for because of the helpful checklist telling you how to prepare for them. At the same time, nothing individually being too demanding means it can all fit within a structure focused more on managing your schedule. You’ll want to craft something new or maybe prepare for an event, so you set out to do the requisite tasks, sometimes needing to balance things like earning money and reputation or not letting Marie get fatigued, although a save system that lets you easily save any time you’re at the atelier means you can even undo crafting failures without too much fuss. It’s a game with little friction, the barrier to progress less about difficulty and more about doing the right actions to make others available. The cute art style and pleasant world makes it welcoming and there’s some amusement in seeing certain interactions, so generally you’re able to find nice little moments between the work that keep things lighthearted rather than a grind. The 5 year deadline not playing a big role was probably a wise decision ultimately, the shifting days giving you things to look forward to and a resource to keep in mind, but beyond some mutually exclusive events, Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg works best as the kind of game where you want to see how much you can do and working your way to the various goals gives it more life than it would have if all you had to focus on was the substance of the tasks you’re performing.

 

Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is a well done remake but its source material is surprisingly simple. It is a little funny to have the game kick off by saying it’s not about heroes saving the world when you can go out and beat a few tough monsters, but the presence of combat doesn’t diminish the fact the game being remade here was trying to introduce a new format for an RPG to the world. The work is somewhat satisfying if very slight here, not having the mechanical depth to really make the payoffs to all your time and resource management feel incredibly rewarding but still presented in a breezy enough way where you can keep finding work that at least makes you feel productive. There’s not too much about this specific entry that feels like it would earn your attention over the rest of the rather large Atelier series, but a chance to see where the series began at least provides us a look at the early seed that would grow into more unique and robust alchemy systems in other titles.