Atelier Elie was sooooo much fun. It’s exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to synthesize different items for 20 hours straight, and that’s exactly what I got to do.

That’s why Marie, Elie and M, E & Anis (the Salburg games) are the best Atelier games in the series, period. All the other games since then have had some kind of overriding goal, something you’re supposed to or strongly encouraged to do. E.g. In Viorate you had to run a shop, Lise had the debt to pay off, Annie had some stupid contest thing. But the earlier games just threw you into the game with a little money and a cauldron and left you to your own devices. You want to be an alchemist? Go for it! Do whatever you want, or do nothing, it’s entirely up to you. I just love that completely open-ended nature of the game.

Best of all, with 10 normal endings and 2 bad ones, unless you deliberately plan to suck it’s hard to end up unhappy. You don’t even have to become an alchemist if you don’t want to. You can become a warrior, or a millionaire, or just graduate normally from the academy. Some of the endings need FAQ’ing and planning, but it’s still not like, say, Lise or Nora to Toki no Koubou where I can all but guarantee you a bad ending if you play normally.

The story: There isn’t one, but Elie does have a back story as a girl Marie saved from a deadly illness in Atelier Marie. Out of gratitude and admiration, Elie decides to become an alchemist and enrolls in the same academy Marie was in. You can meet Marie and even hire her as an adventurer if you go to the right place, but the game does not revolve around that little subplot, and Marie is only involved in 2 of the 12 endings. Elie’s days are instead consumed by alchemy, alchemy and more alchemy. When she runs out of stuff to synthesize, she heads out of town to scavenge for more. She also takes jobs at the local pub to pay for reference books and materials.

When she gets a little more skilled, she can hire fairies to do much of the grunt work for her. I realized long ago that the Atelier games with employable fairies were far superior to those without, and Atelier Elie just confirmed that theory. When I pick up a game about item crafting, I want to craft items, DUH. Traveling, looking for items, fighting enemies and filling quests are all fun activities, but they can’t help but waste precious time that could be spent synthesizing instead.

That’s where the wonderful little fairies come in handy, taking all the pain out of both synthesis and foraging. Not only can they work even while you’re away but also they never fail a job, so you can set them to make time consuming items like Comets and Megaflams and take off on a trip around the world without a second thought. I love those little creatures!

Other good stuff about Atelier Elie…

1. Almost fully voiced. Even NPC dialogues are voiced, which is quite an achievement for a 1998 PS1 RPG.

2. Lovely character designs. I don’t know who the designer is, but I liked her Atelier art and character designs best. The current piss-and-watercolor style employed by Rorona and co. isn’t even worth discussing.

3. Very decent drop rates. Even “rare” items are drop more often than not, so you can make just about every item on the list.

4. Cheap battles. Normally this is a bad thing, but this time I gladly abused the Tablets of Time to make fights go by faster.

However I must be objective. Atelier Elie is not a perfect game, because…

1. Since it’s set in the same town as Marie, a lot of the characters, events and locations are the same, so it lacks a bit of freshness. As a character Elie is also simpler and duller than flashy, feisty Marie. I’m glad I let a few years pass between playing the two games.

2. The music can get annoying, especially in your atelier. I already forgot the ending theme and I just finished it a few hours ago.

3. <minor peeve> Traveling to some places takes forever before you get a flying broomstick.

4. Most endings can be gotten normally, but there’s no way you’d even know about some of the others (especially the “Elfir” ending) without a guidebook or FAQ.

5. It’s a teensy-bit too easy. Money’s easy to come by, especially if you don’t care about your reputation. With money comes fairies, with fairies come tons of items, freeing you to craft to your heart’s content. More crafting = more items + higher rank = even more items + even higher ranks, and it just spirals from there. And with the stupidly useful Tablets of Time, even if you do venture outside, no one can stand in your way.

6. Even after fusing and collecting two hundred different items, I still wanted more!

Endings: I got two endings out of one playthrough. First I declined to become a meister at the end of the four years and opened a small studio in Salburg. Then I reloaded and became a meister, which gave me an extra year to fool around and use a FAQ to create those few items the game wouldn’t tell me about. The advent of the internet must have put a real damper on the strategy guide industry.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. I finally finished the game, and since I made almost every item there’s no room for a second playthrough in my mind. When I started Phantasy Star Portable just now, I named my character “Atelier Elie” without even thinking. *sigh* They don’t make games like they used to.

Related posts:

Lina no Atelier is awesome! Atelier Lilie Plus – Unceremonious ending GET! Atelier Lilie Plus – Not satisfying at all. Atelier Marie, Elie & Anis: Message on the Gentle Breeze – Quick review + screenshots