Atelier Annie: Alchemist of Sera Island - Nintendo DS

Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island for the Nintendo DS is the first in the Atelier series from developer Gust to make it to North America. If you are familiar with other Gust games, such as the Mana Khemia series, you will be acquainted with the process of traveling to various areas of Sera Island and collecting items for synthesis. After gathering the natural materials, the player returns to home base and combines the items into something new. That is the basis of alchemy. Most of Atelier Annie's charm can be derived from its wacky characters and storyline. Our heroine is lazy, selfish young girl named (whatelse) Annie. She loves nothing more than staying in bed all day and dreaming of 'marrying up' so she'll even have to work a day in her life. Fed up with her attitude, her grandfather sends her to Sera Island where she will learn alchemy, take part in a contest to make the island into a fun resort, and just maybe make her social climbing dreams come ture. From the slave driving fairy Pepe, who doesn't know he's short, to the machine and pretty girl obessed Kyle, the citizens of Sera Island are sure to give you a laugh. The only voice acting is in the orginal Japanese, which may put off some gamers, but I found it charming. Battles in this game are turn based, with monsters having the first crack and then the player, with up to three members, can let go with basic attacks. Nothing to fancy. Mostly, you'll be managing resorts you build by fulfulling requests for certain items. You'll need to be on the look out for new recipes (found mostly at the library for sale) and new items. With muliple endings, addicting gameplay, and charming characters, you'll sure to have fun with Annie and her friends. That is if she doesn't fall asleep midgame.I give Alelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island Four out of Five Pepe Dives.  Atelier Annie: Alchemist of Sera Island

I have played every Atelier game that has been released stateside. Loved Atelier Iris. "Meh" on Atelier Iris 2. Liked Atelier Iris 3. You can imagine me being excited to see Atelier Annie get released, even if I wasn't too pleased at it being released on DS. I've come to accept that the DS is really the last refuge for those from another era...those who liked games back before graphics became the driving force. PSP has done a little, but they seem to have fallen off as of late. Then we have the Mana Khemia series which attempted to pick up where Atelier left off, great series though flawed. PSP version of Mana Khemia was an atrocity that I will not speak of.Atelier Annie is essentially a fetch quest game. You're Annie, a lazy girl who dreams of finding some rich prince to pay her bills and take care of her so she doesn't have to work. Her grandfather conspires to have her banished to a remote island, where she is obligated to master alchemy in order to turn the island into a resort in a finite period of time. On its face the game sounds rock solid, and in some ways it is...but in a lot of ways it isn't. See, the spirit of Atelier Iris was really the action, with the alchemy being a secondary sidequest-type deal that was important, but not central, to beating the game. I much preferred that style of game, and expected it here. Sadly it is not to be.Rather than go into a diatribe I'll do my usual pros and cons from my perspective. Then you can judge for yourself and make your own decision.** What Atelier Annie Does RIGHT **- Graphically the game looks quite good for the DS. Things don't have that spotty glaze that some other games like Kingdom Hearts 385/2 Days and Chain of Memories had which is usually indicative of oversharpening. There are also some minor cutscenes thanks to the mobi codec.- The dialogue (see below under WRONG though) is light hearted and comical, what you'd expect from a basic anime.- Doesn't slouch in the challenge category. Even if you leveled up to the max (50), some bosses will still give you a run for your money. They don't cheat, but they do hit hard and you do have to pay attention to what you're doing.- Some of the scenes have voices in Japanese. The plus is for the fact voices are there at all.** What Atelier Annie Does WRONG **- No option for English voices. I know some purists are hell bent on having Japanese dialogue, and that's fine, but it should be an option and not the ONLY choice. I prefer to understand what they're saying without having to read, even if their voice is horrible.- Time limits on tasks. Yes, I know they had this in previous Ateliers and Mana Khemia, but I would have hoped they would be a little more flexible this far down the gaming cycle. IF a guy needs shoes why am I limited to 10 days to make them? He's still going to need shoes 15, 20, 25, etc days from now!- Dialogue-based interactions are TOO LONG and TOO MANY. This seems to have to do with the relationship that is built in between characters, where some characters just stop by for random things. Every time you go to an area in town you're confronted with yet another dialogue based interaction. Funny though they are, they're too long and too many of them.- Poor sense of direction. Meaning that it's difficult at times to know what you should do next. I know the goal of the game is to build up the resort, but once you've gotten all of the stuff to the different attractions, you're then left twiddling your thumbs. In fact, if the guy tells you that he'll check back in October and you finish your stuff in June, you're wasting time for those months until he's good and ready.- Big fetch quest. That's all you're doing. No real dungeon crawling, no real world exploring, no "life" to anything.- Poor menu structure. One thing about Mana Khemia in particular is that when you went back to your room, and go up to the pot, it listed for you the various items you have, and then gave you a sub section when you came across an item that either (A) hadn't been synthesized yet or (B) had been requested by someone and you haven't made and/or delivered it yet. That way you didn't have to go back out into the menu to find out what you needed to synthesize and for who. In Annie, you don't get this. When you go to the pot it does list the items, yes...but there's no way to verify what you need to synthesize at that moment. So you're basically running back and forth accepting one quest, remembering what the item was and its trait, and then back to the pot to make it. OH but wait...turns out you don't have the right materials! So you have to go and get them. Doesn't tell you where certain items can be found, so you have to pick one of the farming spots at random and hope for the best. Also, there are so many items and tools that you have to do endless scrolling to get to what you think you need, this includes weapons and armor, unfortunately.- Unintuitive map. You can only jump from certain spots to others; you can't walk at your own whim. For example, the theater is on the opposite side of the island from the bakery; you can't just walk from the theater to the bakery even if it takes 5-6/whatever days. You have to walk back to a spot in town (getting intercepted by a dialogue event that you can't skip), then set out to the bakery from there - or use a return item which takes you back to town (getting intercepted by a dialogue event that you can't skip) and then walk to the bakery. Waste of time.- NO way to just waste time by sleeping or something. Sometimes you just need to wait around for an event and don't feel like going out. In other Atelier games and Mana Khemia games you could blow time by going to sleep or advancing the time with an item; not here.So...do I recommend it? It depends. If you love fetch quests...or even if you're infatuated with the Harvest Moon series...you might just love this game. However, if you were/are an Atelier Iris and/or Mana Khemia fan...you will be disappointed with the lack of depth. It's not a bad game. But it's a game you would have expected on the Game Boy Advance. So many other games have come out that have pushed the DS to its limits, this one just feels subpar.