First Impressions: Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings (PS4/Switch, also on PC)

I’d always been interested in the Atelier series for its pretty art style, but there seems to be more to Atelier Lydie and Suelle than its pretty paintings. Atelier Lydie and Suelle’s delightful looking world contains plenty to collect and find to synthesise and make items with, with the charming and well-designed characters backed by interesting alchemy systems. While the Japanese PS4 demo was a mostly visual experience for me, the world and alchemy systems of Lydie and Suelle have kept me curious about this new addition to the Atelier series.

A Look at the Parallels Between Blue Reflection and Persona 5 (Is it Magical Girl Persona?)

If you’re anything like me, anything described as a magical girl JRPG mixed with Persona is almost guaranteed to be something I’ll be interested in. This was how I heard people describing Blue Reflection before I bought it and pretty much sealed the deal for me getting it, but I didn’t realise just how many similarities there would be. When I began to really see these similarities in Blue Reflection, I became a little skeptic at first. While the idea of magical girl Persona was why I bought it, I’m usually not interested in something that blatantly rips off story ideas. Luckily Blue Reflection for the most part makes the ideas it seems to have borrowed original, but I found the similarities interesting nonetheless, so I wanted to talk about the parallels between Blue Reflection and Persona 5 and how the two good games are similar, yet different.

Five JRPGs I Like With Different Visually Appealing Styles

Since playing games on PS4, I’ve really come to appreciate how far graphics have come and just how beautiful some games can look. Even the simplest games are expected to look polished and pretty, and I really enjoy games that go the extra mile to make their menus, text dialogues and cutscenes all look like cohesive, good-looking experiences. Most JRPGs incorporate nice art is some way, with the expectation of nice anime visuals and character art often being a minimum for these kinds of games. The games I’m talking about today take this to the next level, whether it be with their art style, cohesiveness or beauty that make them just as fun to look at as they are to play.

What's in the Box?! Ciel no Surge Agent Pack Unboxing

Last October, a little old game called Ciel nosurge Offline was released for PS Vita, having previously been a PS3 game. While it hasn't been localised in either form, Ciel nosurge is a highly successful JRPG in Japan and if fans of the more recently released and localised Ar nosurge want to find out what happened in the beginning, Ciel nosurge is the game for you as it is the prequel.

I actually have memories of Ciel nosurge from lurking sites like Siliconera and Gematsu. The main character Ionasal always catches my eyes because of her beautiful character art. Her gorgeous artwork is part of the reason I ended up reviewing Ar nosurge and thank goodness I did because I had a lot of fun playing that game.

Anyway, as I type, I am currently on my long awaited trip to Japan (why aren't I outside doing tourist things, I know, I know). I mentioned in my Gaming New Years Resolution post that I wanted to play a native, unlocalised JRPG from start to finish this year, with Ciel nosurge being my pick. When I went to Akihabara, I had no intention of finding the special edition of the game. In fact, while in Sofmap, I found the regular Vita edition and picked it up thinking my mission was complete. This was until Ionasal caught my eye again in the beautiful artwork of the limited edition Agent pack, just chilling a few shelves away. To my delight, it was barely over 3000-4000 yen (which is roughly around $30-$40AUD) and while it was pre-owned, that price was a steal. It was a no-brainer and just like that, my yen was spent and the game was mine.

Is the Agent Pack worth it? I'll get to that. In the meantime, here's what's inside the box!

Contents

• Limited Edition Collector's Box
• The Ciel nosurge PS Vita game and regular packaging
• A Vita Game holder (holds 6 Vita games)
• A small pouch
• A calender

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The box

The box from the Agent Pack is my favourite part of this special edition, mostly for it's beauty and it's size. The artwork features Ionasal on the cover with gorgeous light, snowball things surrounding her (I am not proud of that description) while snuggling cutely on a cushion. The back cover details the game, features my favourite Ciel nosurge artwork and lists the special edition contents as far as I can tell (my Japanese is terrible, so if I'm missing any important details, please comment below!). As far as size goes, it's a little bigger than a PS4 game (see photo below) and probably more comparable in length to the size of a DVD.

Side note: because mine is pre-owned, there's a slight bump on the bottom of the game's spine, but I don't mind. If you buy it brand new, chances are very high that yours will be in pristine condition.

Calender

Fun fact - did not know what this is until I read the Play-Asia listing for the Agent Pack. This is the calender, which you can see in the top photo (which is blurry and I'm sorry) comes in a small stand. I'm assuming the idea is that this can be a desk calender, although I won't pretend to understand the significance of the kanji on the calender. Probably a hit and miss for most people. I'm hoping maybe I'll understand it's kanji and significance more after playing the game.

Game Case

The Ciel nosurge game case is my second favourite item in the Agent Pack, especially since I just filled my other Vita game case! This game case is black and provides room for 6 PS Vita games to be stored. Because the games click into the case (as opposed to sliding in like my other one), I would consider it to be a very secure case. The design on the case reminds me of the some of the design themes in Ar nosurge's geometrics sequence and again, I'm sure will hold more significance further into Ciel nosurge.

Pouch

The pouch is a nice black leather pouch with accents from the game. The game pouch shuts with the attached belt shown in the middle of the photo. It fits my first edition Vita, albeit tightly so I can assume it is designed to hold the newer slim model of Vita. I won't be using this as I have a padded, zip-able case which I think is more secure, however it's a good addition for those who may not own a Vita case or who own the newer Vita model.

Is it worth it?

Looking at the listing price on Play-Asia and other sites, I think this is really one for huge fans of Ciel nosurge or the Surge Concerto series. For fans trying the game for the first time, it's a lot of money for these items and I would only recommend spending that kind of money on a series you really love, unless you truly think the art is beautiful. Of course it's down to personal preference, but I probably wouldn't have paid more than what I paid to get it pre-owned. I feel lucky to own it and really am happy with the items I received at the price I paid. I use the case and the box looks lovely with my growing Japanese game collection.

If you want your own, the Ciel nosurge Offline Agent Pack can be purchased from Play-Asia.

Please note: the game is in all Japanese, so come prepared!

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Will you be picking up this limited edition? How much would you want to pay for it?

I love hearing your thoughts, so please comment below or send a tweet to @JRPGJungle. Thanks for stopping by!

A World Away - Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star (PS3, Review)

So you haven't played Ciel nosurge or any of the Ar Tonelico games, but have an interest in Ar nosurge - this is where I began my journey with Gust's Ar nosurge: Ode to An Unborn Star. Its stunning trailer instantly piked my interest with its striking visuals and moving music, prompting me to walk into its world with no prior knowledge, just with high expectations of these things being woven into a complex story. To put it simply and honestly, I was ready for Ar nosurge to be my next favourite game. Realistically, Ar nosurge has a tendency to spoil itself with a lack of overall polish in various areas such as translation and field design, but definitely filled the brief on the story and the stunning anime cutscenes I was hoping for. In my 50+ hours of gameplay, it managed to surprise me with just how deep its social elements had me feeling strongly attached to the main cast of characters and always left me ready to advance the story and bring myself further into its world. Even though its not the best game of this year, Ar nosurge's emotional story and strongly willed characters have certainly earned a special place in my heart.

Ar nosurge begins in the world of Soreil, a spaceship that citizens are living on thanks to the destruction of their previous planet. Soreil's world is plagued by a fear-filled divide between species and the citizens experience even more trouble thanks to power hungry individuals who don't care who they have to destroy to get what they want. The main cast fight for the greater good in this story and the overall story is coloured strongly with shades of trust, the coming together of races, the acceptance of differences and deepness of relationships, all with a pinch of risque humour.

The story follows two pairs - Delta and Casty, and Ion and Earthes - who provide a look into different, intertwining parts of the story. You play as the male members of these duos, helping guide your female partner to success. Maybe this says something about the JRPGs I've been playing of late or the actual level of quality in the game's character design, but I was particularly impressed by the hot-headed tsundere Casty and the strong-willed and kindhearted Ion as the game's main female characters. Without giving too much away, it was wonderful to play a game with strong female characters who had their eyes set on some pretty ambitious goals with strong morals and a drive to make things better for everyone around them. All the other characters compliment both pairs well with their own beliefs and personality quirks, which make for amusing dialogue, even in unvoiced scenes.

Working alongside the strong story are Ar nosurge's mostly optional social sim elements, mostly in the Genometrics system. The Genometrics system links your duo's female character's heart to their male partner's heart and allows you to get to know both the NPC and your own heroine at a deeper level while working towards earning highly useful song magic for battle. These Genometrics scenarios play out like a dream sequence and have a visual novel feel, due to the choices you can make having an effect on the outcome of each scene. Since these Genometric 'Dives' are designed to help you get to know each character's heart more intimately, these sessions are raw and emotional, consequently helping you get to know the deeper, more hidden sides of each character. The two heroines have a lot of different sides to their personalities to unlock and the Genometrics are well paced enough to keep things surprising and interesting until you've completed them all.
There's also the Purification system to help get to know the two heroines further all while in lesser clothing. It's a lot more tame than it sounds, which I personally was thankful for as it is used to also equip status boosts to your duo. Don't be totally fooled though - Ar nosurge does throw in the occasional fan service moment, often when you least expect it.

After earning Song Magic and boosts from the social system, they're put to use in Ar nosurge's battle system. At the beginning each battle, you will pick the Song Magic you want to charge during battle. The battle system takes elements of active battle systems by having the player choose between different attacks that all have a limit of use per turn and can be used consecutively to create combos and 'break' your opponents next attack. Each turn you don't use your Song Magic (the overdrive attack of the game), it charges and becomes stronger. The stronger it gets, the closer you are to using it to wipe away all waves of enemies in one hit, earning some pretty sweet EXP bonuses and other perks in the process. Although the battle system can be guilty for being repetitive after 20+ hours of game time, it does hold a good balance between being outwardly simple but more complex if you pay more attention to things such as breaking your enemies attack. I spent most of my battles striving to annihilate my enemies with Song Magic in order to level up my characters and because each chapter of the story matched my level well, the system continued to remain challenging throughout my entire campaign with it. The only downside is there isn't much of a variety in enemies, but the game makes up for this by giving you more waves of enemies to defeat as you progress.

Ar nosurge also boasts a secretly complex equipment upgrade system and item synthesis. If you were wondering why I said 'secretly', it's because there is barely a tutorial on how to use it (if at all). I didn't work out just how useful equipment was and where all my newly synthesized items had been going until very late in the game, meaning I probably could have been a lot stronger and have been completing battles faster if it was explained to me. Ar nosurge has a tendency to forget to explain itself sometimes or be too fast in its explanations - it does provide small tutorials, but only the very basic fundamentals of the game.

I managed to work out most of the games mechanics, complete most genometrics, complete the main story and a few side activities in 50 hours. The back of Ar nosurge's cover says there is over 100+ hours of content and I tend to believe that - I still had a lot I could have done by the time I finished. It has roughly five endings, including two possible true endings. To add to that, there are also various levels of genometrics and purification conversations to complete and shop synthesis conversations that can actually take hours of time. I often found myself leaving shops with recipes left over to synthesize and new conversations left just because there were so many. I did enjoy the optional nature of these things because I was enjoying the main story a lot, but it's nice to know there is more content to complete if I do want to come back to it.

Ar nosurge is at its core a good game, however there are some glitches and parts of the game lacking detail that I unfortunately couldn't ignore. One of the first things I noticed immediately in Ar nosurge was that its visuals were not very detailed and character models were sometimes jumpy in cutscenes. It does make up for this during its high quality animated cutscenes and generally good character models, but it often means that the landscapes being traveled really don't have a lot to offer. To add insult to this, these landscapes are often filled with groups of multiple NPC characters that are visually exactly the same. I also found translation inconsistencies (things such as the spelling of names were frequent offenders) and a glitch I encountered twice that didn't want me to use a large amount of attacks in a specific area and instead took me to a permanent loading screen, which was annoying after not saving for an hour. Other great elements such as music, animated cutscenes, an enjoyable story and mechanics allow me to overlook these things for the most part, but I feel like these things could put off more casual or newers fans of JRPGs considering there are plenty of games and other JRPGs without these problems.

(Review edit: A new patch was released two days ago (read more here) for Ar nosurge and may possibly deal with the in-game terminology inconsistencies I mentioned. I began writing my review before the patches release and therefore have not seen the changes, so please keep that in mind while reading!)

Despite its lack of polish, at the end of my time with Ar nosurge I've found myself wanting to go back and plainly wishing I had more time to complete all of its endings. The characters and story of Ar nosurge was full of strong ideas and there is definitely a good game to be found behind it's imperfections. While Ar nosurge may not be the most remarkable or groundbreaking JRPG of the year, it's fun combat, genometrics system and moving story with memorable characters is worth the time of anyone who is already interested in playing the game.

Score: 7.6/10
I can't wait to play the Plus version on Vita!

Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star can be purchased in English and Japanese at Play-Asia!

All photos for this review are from the game and are not my own. They were sourced from Ar nosurge's official website.

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Will you be picking up Ar nosurge? Team Casty or Team Ion?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, so comment below or send a tweet to @JRPGJungle. Thanks for reading!

Edit note (Jan 2018): I did some clean-up to this review as I'm linking it in a much newer article. The score remains the same, I mostly just fixed up some horrid grammar and overuse of certain words, but most of it is at its core the same (I could've done much more :3). Also, this was a good game that I want to play again sometime and I still haven't picked up the Vita version. Oops.

Ar no Surge To Be Localised For Europe and Now The US Too! (UPDATED)

(this is an updated version of our original post about the localisation of Ar no Surge. It now also includes more information about the U.S. localisation)

Tecmo Koei have announced the European release of Ar no Surge on PS3. Ar no Surge marks the second game in the 'Surge Concerto' series by the game developer company Gust and was originally released in March 2014 in Japan on PS Vita. The Surge Concerto series games are set in the same world as the Ar tonelico series, which can be seen in the way both games use the 'song magic' system.

The first game of the series, Ciel no Surge, has had no announcement for any kind of release outside of Japan as of yet.

Updated: Originally Tecmo Koei mentioned on their Twitter that a U.S. release was 'not yet decided'. Since that tweet and many news articles about the lack of U.S. localisation, Tecmo Koei have recently responded on Twitter again, stating:

The detail will come later but the game will come to America, too. RT @AlejandroHerasM: @TecmoKoeiUS I know ... http://t.co/JHxnr9f5LI
— Koei Tecmo America (@KoeiTecmoUS) June 25, 2014

This means that both European and U.S. audiences can now look forward to Ar no Surge. The European release has been scheduled for 26th of September, while the U.S. date is yet to be announced.

No official pre-order available at the moment.
Importers: Ar no Surge is available now in Japanese on Play-Asia.com

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