Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey / フィリスのアトリエ ~不思議な旅の錬金術士~
“Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey DX”
Updated
Japanese language option added!
About the GameThis content will be discontinued on 21 April 2021.
You will still be able to enjoy the content you have purchased.
The second entry in the ‘Mysterious’ saga follows the adventures of the enthusiastic Firis Mistlud and her loving older sister Liane Mistlud.
The sisters have lived their entire lives in the isolated town of Ertona, where Firis uses her unique ability to see where crystals of materials are buried. By way of a fateful encounter, Firis learns of the Alchemy Exam and decides to take her first step into the outside world, setting off on a grand journey to become a certified alchemist and discover the mysteries that life has to offer!
Experience a vast world with towns, environments and other locations!
Steam User 319
Note: I have spent 100+ hours on the game on PS4 (Chinese version released back in January), bought this in steam to support the developers, hence the low hour count.
tl;dr : Scroll down to blue text for a quick summary.
For those who are new to the Atelier Series of games,you should check out my review on the previous installment of the series here, many aspects are similar and carry over to this game.
I'll get straight to the point here, the main aspects which Atelier Firis differ from Sophie:
Instead of choosing a location on the world map and "fast-travelling" there, the whole world map is now connected by paths which you'll walk through. (Some sort of fast-travelling is still available, and other methods of transport can be unlocked later in game.)
Each area of the world map is now much larger than the previous game, and is one single large area, instead of a few small sections separated by loading screens.
(Sophie's world system: Choose destination on world map, then "dungeon crawl" with multiple sections.)
(Firis' world system : Open world exploration, though not seamless as there are (short) loading screens between areas.)
There is no "home town" which you need to return to after each expedition, you now carry your home/atelier/crafting room) with you as you travel!
The grid-jigsaw alchemy system is retained, but there are some changes in mechanics.
The battle system is also changed, which I would not delve into the details.
Weapons and gear can now grant the wielder new skills, depending on the gear & your alchemy process.
The main story is divided into 2 segments, the first segment has a clear goal with a time limit, but don't fret as it is quite lenient.
The 2nd half has no time limit, and grants the player complete freedom in exploration and quests.
What I think is better compared to Atelier Sophie:
The whole world feels much more connected, as it basically transformed into a true open world exploration system.
The exploration feels more open and free as you carry your atelier/home with you, eliminating the need to backtrack and return to a main town/settlement, which breaks the "flow" of exploration.
The 1st half of the story basically tells you to travel from one corner of the world map to the other, guiding the player to explore the world.
Combining the above 3 points, the exploration is miles ahead of Atelier Sophie, and truly fits the "Mysterious Journey" subtitle.
This is subjective, but I find the alchemy system more fun in this one than in Sophie.
Also subjective, IMO the soundtrack of this one is better than in Sophie.
What I think is worse compared to Atelier Sophie:
Character interaction. In the 1st half of the story, interaction with some side-characters are pretty shallow (or even awkward). It gets better in the 2nd half though, as character specific quest lines are unlocked.
Battle system. The system felt less in depth this time around.
The alchemy proficiency/skill level for each item. You need to craft the same item multiple times before you can use your full alchemy abilities when crafting them. This is unneccessary "grinding" IMO, a minor annoyance.
Firis' outfits' abilities. Different outfits for Firis grants her different (useful) bonuses, the need to change clothing every time you want a different ability is a bit irritating. (In New Game+ all abilities are active at all times, eliminating this issue, but you need to finish the game once first, due to this fact I semi-rushed through my first playthrough.)
The requirements for unlocking alchemy recipes are not clearly presented to players, players going in completely blind may have trouble discovering them. Although the game has a system which allows player to bypass these requirements (limited use) which alleviates the issues somewhat.
A general summary of why I recommend this game (May contain points above):
Happy atmosphere & relaxing gameplay - the defining aspects of the Atelier Series IMO.
In-depth alchemy/crafting system which is very rewarding when mastered.
Fantastic world exploration and sense of journey.
Great soundtrack, some of which are live recordings.
If you liked Atelier Sophie, you most likely would like this too. The quality of games in the Atelier Series are pretty consistent.
This game's weaknesses, and other issues that you should be wary of:
No strong story or epic & heroic chapters, pretty light in general.
Less character interaction/development than other full-fledged story-rich RPGs.
Battles system quite simple/shallow, not quite strategic.
Although this is the 2nd installment, new players don't need to play the 1st, not much is lost apart from background lore of the world & some side characters.
Potential UI element quality, performance & control mapping issues due to being a PS4 port, I will reference other reviewer's results, and also do some simple testing myself, and update this review accordingly. (Update : Quick test results below, mostly good news.)
tl;dr : If you like Atelier Sophie, you will like this too. If you haven't played the Atelier Series before, there is no problem playing this without playing previous titles, and I still recommend this joyful & relaxing J-RPG with a great in-depth crafting system.
Quick test results regarding issues in Atelier Sophie, whether they are still here in Atelier Firis & other miscellaneous findings:
The CPU usage is completely normal, this is fixed in Sophie so I think it is also fixed here. (CPU : i7 2600)
The launcher window now provides a section to custom map your keyboard controls, rejoice keyboard users! (The implementation is crude though, but it works.)
Funnily there is no menu option to exit the game, press "Esc" on your keyboard to quit. (Took me quite some time to find out, as I normally use an XBOX controller. I had to use ALT+F4 before I found this out heh.)
Framerates are at stable 60FPS during roaming and in menus, except for occasional drops to 50~ in cutscenes only.
(CPU: i7 2600 , GPU: Geforce 980Ti, running at 2560x1440)
The are no stutters or lags when opening the encyclopedia or the alchemy menu, so this problem is also fixed here.
Currently there is only English UI, with the option for Japaneses vocals or English dub. (Update : Developers confirmed that Japanese UI & sutitiles will be added soon, click here for source.)
Interestingly there is a "LanguageType" option in the launcher menu, but currently it is fixed as "English". Perhaps future updates would bring Japanese or even Chinese UI which can be selected here?
Regarding quality of 2D assets (Sophie used lower quality PS3 2D assets in the Steam release, instead of better quality PS4 assets). (Update 2: I have checked and compareed the PC & PS4 (Non-Pro), sad to say the 2D UI elements indeed seem to be of the lower quality variant from PS Vita.) (Update: People in the forum seems to notice that the 2D assets are still in lower quality, I will recheck and verify it with my PS4 (non-Pro) once I get back home a few hours later). It seems to me that full quality assets are used this time.
It seems many of issues & problems which plagued the Sophie release are fixed & corrected nicely, I thank the developers for their work, as well as the community who discovered and reported the issues to them. Everyone contributed to a better gaming experience, and I am grateful.
Steam User 74
How Atelier Firis could turn to be the last Atelier game I play.
In my long history with Atelier games I never was disappointed by any of them until Firis, and they never were so ambitious as Firis is, but not this, or lack of polish, or not the best port are reasons for my disappointment.
So what's good about Firis:
1.it's the open world in nature, for the first time in the Atelier game
2. Complexity of alchemy is a notch down from Sophie, but in general alchemy feels better in Firis.
3. Character endings are back
4. The world is nice and monster design is great.
5. It's a huge game
6. learning alchemy and taking an actual exam of it is an interesting idea.
7. Many interesting characters with their stories.
8. Chain quests
what's not so good:
1. Localization is poor
2. Quest descriptions for many quests are wrong past the first step
3. A game is way too demanding on hardware and runs poorly
4. There are some glitches.
the ugly:
1. No real fast travel for 30-40 hours, depends on how fast you get there.
2. Even when you get fast travel, it is limited, as there are parts of the world that allow no fast travel, and these aren't small locations, also filled with dangerous monsters (that can wipe out even strong party) without ability to save your game, of course.
3. Sophie had an interesting system of unlocking alchemy recipes, which Firis ditched in favour of guessing what you should do and how many times to unlock what, yes guessing.
4. Alchemy results in Firis are strongly dependent on quality, yet you can't register a single item in this game (just let it sink in). What means creating the same items ad nauseam over and over again, what takes extra hours upon hours of playtime for no reason.
5. ridiculously small initial storage space available to you (you easily get it filled in first three-four locations) and you have no ability to sell anything for a long time after that. It never becomes sufficient too.
6. Many character events are pure guesswork too, and not something that is obvious, or even logical or easy to guess because of lack of options, nothing of the sort.
7. the game that can't be fully finished without of use of a guide (and that's not a few things but a whole lot of them), is not a well designed game in my book.
so those seven reasons are that make me think that Firis can be my last atelier game. I can't tolerate even one of those, all of them? overkill.
This is an end of era. I still have a hope that Gust will get some feedback and won't repeat all numerous mistakes they made with Firis.
I only recommend this game because it has redeeming qualities, but if you wanna a real good Atelier game, you should play Atelier Sophie instead.
Steam User 60
Barrel!
I will review this as a triple A 60€ game.
A new entry in Atelier series. I fell in love with the series from Atelier Rorona on PS3 and since I don’t play on consoles anymore I’m very happy these games came to PC. Though the publisher is not the best, they like from another world. Their ports aren’t very good, the pricing is bad, it’s like they don’t want to sell many copies. But what can I do? I like these games anyway.
You play as Firis, a young girl who lived in a small village inside of a mountain and never seen the light of day. She want to go outside and travel the world so when Sophie comes into her village Firis decides that she wants to be an alchemist. And so the journey begins.
Atelier Firis is very different from Atelier Sophie. This time there’s a big partially open world with huge locations. I must say I liked the old design more. The maps are huge but they’re empty and it’s boring to run through them. It only gets better later in the game when you unlock flying broom and airship. There are few cities, but only Reisenberg feels like a true city, all the others are just few buildings with some npc’s. And there’s one thing I miss. Where’s the bar? It was fun chatting with a barman and doing his requests. I miss the bar. At least there’s still a bath scene.
And the time limit feature is back. Whyyyyy? I hate that. You have only limited amount of time to get three recommendation letters and pass your alchemist exam. I hate that, even if there’s plenty of time I can’t stand it. Besides there are five letters(you only need three for the exam) and I want to collect them all. Some of them are in higher level zones and requires time. The time limit is annoying. The good thing is that after the exam you have unlimited time to do what you want and that’s when the true game begins. After the exam it’s back to old good Atelier gameplay. Doing friend quests and hunting powerful monsters.
There’s still night/day cycle which is good, but it’s changing too fast. It should be much slower, maybe three times or so slower.
Other than that the game is same old Atelier game. You gather resources, fight monsters, talk to people, increase friendship levels, do requests and of course craft various items.
Crafting is similar to the previous game, it’s deep enough and you can craft anything, clothes, weapons, bombs and other items. You can add traits, decide what quality items you need and so on, you can spend a lot of time in the crafting menu. Combat is a traditional turned based jRPG combat. You choose to attack, skill, item or run commands when your turn comes up. No need to reinvent the wheel here. Works perfectly.
Decorating your atelier is a new feature. You can craft your bed, trunks or shelves. Usually they do something useful, like bigger trunk increases your storage capacity and bed shortens the time you need to recover your health.
Graphics are pretty but technically very poor. Character models are fine, but environments are very poorly done. It feels cheap. On top of that there are only few npc models, you see the same people in all locations. They should really start improving the graphics.
This game does not have many voiced dialogues, I think it’s less than previous games. It’s not acceptable for a 60€ game. And it’s not like there’s a ton of dialogues, this isn’t divinity original sin, dialogues are simple and short, only few sentences.
As I said I review this as a 60€ game. Sophie was half the price so I intentionally closed my eyes over some negative aspects, but it’s not the case with this game. It’s a niche series, developers have no big budget. But this time they charge twice the price and quality of the game is the same. Why they don’t want to sell it to more people? It’s niche but nowhere near 19 000 copies sold niche. There’s a bigger demand for jRPG’s. I know it’s probably pointless to ask, but if someone from developers/publishers are reading this – LOWER THE PRICE of your games or improve or at least put them sale more often. Final fantasy XV cost less than this. Now there’s only a small number of fans who will buy this regardless of price but all the potential fans are kept away from this game. Look at Neptunia game, the pricing is right, they’ve sold much more copies, they’re often on sale and quality of their games is the same or even higher because most of the dialogues in Neptunia games are voiced but the development costs should be very similar.
I recommend this game to jRPG lovers, to those who want a slice of life story and enjoy crafting. But wait for a sale, show developer that this pricing is not acceptable.
Pros:
Good crafting system
Nice story
Plenty things to do
Big world to explore
Cons:
Outdated graphics
Lack of voiced dialogues
Price is too high
Time limit before the exam
My curator page
Steam User 36
This game is actually pretty wholesome. There is minimal outrageous anime trope/meta/fanservice/other bullcrap here. There's a generous amount of scenes between characters, and it gives them a lot of depth. It's a pretty solid installment in the series, a pretty decent Atelier game basically.
Steam User 173
UPDATE:
Excelent port, I finally discovered what happened. This game was using my Intel HD to render the game -.- .... not my NVidia .... plx add a select your video card on options
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This is my first atelier series game and i liked it o/, great game, great world, many items to craft and the time limitation is a good pressure. BUT!!!! the port... the cursed port.... it is sooooo good that I want to cry of despair and burn my notebook, but playable on "SHADOW_TYPE_LOW" in 1280x720 -.-" on i7-4710 2.5GHz, 24 GB RAM, NVidia GTX 860M 2 GB.. Recommended because of the game not the port (trash port), if you have patience and endurance to lag, buy this game.
Steam User 24
Now that I have over 75 hours logged in my main save, it might be time to write a review.
For a long time before finding the Atelier series, I had been looking for a game like this. Atelier Firis is essentially a turn-based JRPG with a character-focused, mostly slice-of-life plot, but the real draw is the huge focus on gathering materials and using them to create your own items and equipment. While some JRPGs have you just buy items and gear from stores (with a lot of items not being worth it) and use different level up or skill systems to make things interesting, the Atelier games let you feel like you're making the tools you need to succeed. This entry (the 18th main game in the series, from what I hear) really does a great job of making crafting items easy to learn but still have depth for those who choose to master the system. Two instances of the same item will rarely be the same, so you have to make sure you make the right choices when crafting if you want to do well.
The story of the game won't be too exciting if you want a strong plot-driven narrative, but if you can grow attached to the characters it can still be engaging. The first part of the game involves the lead, Firis Mistlud, learning to use alchemy and being given a year to pass the Alchemy Exam, which takes place in a city far from her home. Should she succeed, she then continues to adventure to try to find her calling in life. This is where the story (and game) really open up, as each companion has their own story arc and ending and many named NPCs have their own sideplots. While some characters take longer to develop than others, they all have at least a few interesting things about them to make the sideplots worth exploring.
From a gameplay standpoint, Atelier Firis is an open-world game that encourages exploring each part of the large maps. While there is a chokepoint about halfway through the world map that requires a questline to open and not every area is available until after the Alchemy Exam, you'll still have more than enough ground to cover and explore. There's also a fast travel feature within maps, and after the exam you can complete a quest chain in order to get a way to warp to almost any area in the game from rest spots. There is a time limit for the first part of the game, but you are given plenty of time to do everything that must be done pre-exam with some time to spare. Even if you fail, you can load the bad ending save to get the same benefits as a New Game+ clear, which includes a few features that makes surviving the time limit and doing pre-exam questlines even easier.
Aside from gathering items from the environment and making items from them, the game features combat with monsters as a big part of finding the best materials and completing some quest chains. The battles are played with a turn-based system that changes turn order based on stats, actions, and buffs/debuffs. While normal attacks and skills are available for each character (and can become powerful in the late game), the early and mid game will put a huge emphasis on item use. While only Firis and the alchemist party members can use a lot of items, everyone has access to some types of items and they are powerful for a huge part of the game (even into the endgame, if you craft them right). Making sure you have a good set of attack and healing items is essential before getting into any fights, because Firis is not a front-line fighter and there's only so much the rest of the team can do without item support. There's also an interesting system where a meter depicts how well your team is working together (which increases when you do damage to enemies) that can be expended to protect Firis from attacks or filled to unlock limit break-esque attacks. The game also has anti-grinding measures to force you to move into harder areas if you want to level up quickly, so you have to make sure to be improving your items and gear whenever you can to prepare for the next region. Items are also useful outside of battles, as they can be used to gather materials (such as bombing a rock) or alter the environment.
A few minor negative points do come up, though not enough to make me dislike the game. One problem I had early on is that fast travel between areas is not available until after the exam, which means a lot of walking when backtracking for materials (since in-map shortcut points are almost never near exits to areas). Another issue is the poor requirements for some recipes in the recipe idea unlock system (which gives you recipes based on what you do). Some items have absurd requirements, giving an otherwise cool system idea a bad reputation. It also doesn't help that some recipes get glitched if you complete certain quests too early, preventing 100% completion without doing a New Game+. The last, and probably least, of the issues is that I keep being annoyed by how "Atelier" is pronounced in the English voice track. The original French word sounds sort of like "a-tel-ee-ay", the Spanish cognate should sound something like "a-tel-ee-er". The English voice track for this game uses the made-up (as far as I can tell) pronunciation "at-lee-ur", which ignores the first "e" in the word. A small issue in the grand scheme of things, but with the Japanese word being closer to proper French ("a-to-ree-ay"), it gets a bit strange when the English actors are made to mispronounce a word.
Overall, Atelier Firis is a great game and, in my opinion, a good way to be introduced to the series. It has inspired me to seek out previous games in the series (particularly the game it's a sequel to, Atelier Sophie) to have further crafting adventures. If you're interested in a JRPG that gives items and crafting a big focus and tells a character-driven coming of age story, Atelier Firis might be a good fit for you.
Steam User 42
Fun game if you like crafting/collecting. It is a pain to control with just a keyboard. A controller makes the game much easier to play.