Atelier (franchise)/YMMV: Difference between revisions

* [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|Americans Love Mana Khemia]]: In Japan, the two Mana Khemia games received a fairly lukewarm reception from the established fanbase, and ''Mana Khemia 2'' received a lot of flak from reviewers. In the West, on the other hand... well, just take a gander at which of the dedicated game pages is longest and which one received so much attention as to warrant its own character page (and reportedly sold ''better'' in the West than it did in Japan). ''MK 2'' also got a ''much'' warmer reception from the Western press than it did in Japan, scoring slightly ''higher'' on average than ''MK 1'' did. (This may have something to do with those [[Game Breaking Bug|Game Breaking Bugs]] getting fixed for us, though.)

* [[Broken Base]]: In some ways, the Arland games are causing this. Certain fandom sections, like those found at [[Sankaku Complex]], basically describe the Arland games (and thus the wider franchise) as "[[H-game|eroge without the actual ero bits]]" and are mostly in it for [[Fan Service|the girls]] and, uh, [[A Date with Rosie Palms|what they can do]] [[Squick|with them]]. This makes many older Atelier fans '''bristle with rage''', as the games have ''never'' been intended to be erotic; [[Ms. Fanservice|Marie's odd chest... thing]] aside, the hottest any pre-Iris game got was having Lilie in a nightgown for one scene. <ref>And really, the hottest any ''post''-Iris game got was a chest-and-up [[Barbie Doll Anatomy]] scene of Lita in a tank in ''Iris 1''.</ref> The actual Arland games don't help ''at all'', either; on the one hand, there's the occasional scene with, uh, [[media:atelier_tentacle_ohdear_5207.jpg|what can only be called "overtones"]] (possibly nsfw), but on the other hand many scenes seem dedicated to making ''fun'' of this kind of nonsense in the same way [[Ar tonelico]] does. At this point many people aren't quite sure what to think, but the debate [[Flame War|rages on]].

* [[Ensemble Darkhorse]]: In a franchise as big as this one, you'd expect this to happen a few times, and it certainly has.

** The one most Americans will be familiar with is Veola from ''Atelier Iris 1''; there are [[Epileptic Trees|suspicions]] that said game might have started life as "Atelier Veola" and then gotten development shifted partway through into what it is now. The result, though, is that this one shopkeeper, who doesn't seem all that important initially, has as much story content tied to her as the ''main plot'', and many find it ''more'' engaging than the actual plot of AI 1. A lot of people don't play the game for Klein or Lita, they play it for Veola, and she's far and away the most popular character both in Japan and overseas.

* [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny]] (AKA, Alchemy Is Unoriginal): Quite a few prospective fans and consumers have pooh-poohed the games that have crossed over for being unoriginal in story and for crafting and alchemy being "nothing really special". While the story criticisms for the ''Iris'' games are probably not unwarranted, the early games were the games which introduced robust crafting systems into JRPGs in the first place and were also the first ones to use alchemy as a world-framing concept in Japanese pop culture. Thanks to [[No Export for You|the sluggishness of the series]] in crossing the Pacific, however, everything influenced by the series got here first and made ''Atelier'' look like the unoriginal one.

* [[Sequelitis]]: Even the most die-hard Gust fanboy has to admit that, with no less than one release every year, the franchise is starting to hurt for all of its sequels; even attempts to legitimately mix up the franchise such as ''Mana Khemia'' or ''Atelier Annie'' (which added a little [[Simulation Game]] to the mix, with its focus on helping to develop an island) come off as a bit stale, and quality assurance have taken a dip recently, as evidenced by ''Atelier Liese'' and ''Mana Khemia 2'' and their '''evisceration''' in the Japanese gaming press (to say nothing of [https://shop.salburg.com/lise_switch/index.htm Liese's terrifyingly massive published bug list and gamecard-swap program].)

** The first was between the first two games, ''Marie'' and ''Elie''. ''Marie'' was a very simple game produced on a tiny budget, and it showed in how relatively simple and light the content was. ''Elie'' was produced [[Cash Cow Franchise|after the money from Marie rolled in]], and not only features a ton of engine improvements but features approximately ''three to four times'' the story content of the previous game, making it probably the fan favorite of the series in Japan.

* [[Surprise Difficulty]]: If you look at the art of Atelier Annie, it's a little bit cute compared to the Iris games. There's more than a few bishounen characters in the cast. And the cover has an E10+ rating. But this is also a game where if the player rushes into battle without bringing healing items or changing the heroine's equipment, then a single Puni can kill her.

** Most of the early Ateliers were like this; if you were too lax in recruiting some party members, didn't upgrade equipment or went too far from town too quickly, you could quickly find yourself overwhelmed. This is part of what made ''Atelier Lilie'' [[Nintendo Hard]], since your starting party options consist of your twentysomething alchemist heroine and her ''two ten-year-old hangers-on''. They can easily go out into the woods and get mauled to death by wolves at the start of the game.

 

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