Disclaimer: this review is going to be rather unfair to Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir. That’s because I’m not supposed to be playing the game but I insisted on doing it anyway. Google Play told me the app wasn’t compatible with any of my devices, most likely because of a region lock, but possibly also because my smartphone specs are very basic. I had to resort to QooApp to download and install the latest version.

Since I entered the game unauthorized through the back door, I don’t have a lot of standing to complain about it. Not because pirates have no ability to judge quality but because some of my biggest problems, such as slow loading times, lags and abrupt closures might be because the game is optimized for Japanese hardware and ISP speeds and not my cheap phone and piddling broadband.

In short, in this review, I’m going to be like those kids on YouTube who insist on eating chili peppers or drinking hot sauce despite warnings, only to start screaming and bawling shortly afterwards. And of course, Mummy and Daddy always conveniently have the camera out right before Little Timmy demands to eat that pepper and this video totally isn’t staged at all… Mm hmm.

So anyway, just putting it out there that I’m not the target audience for this game so not all my complaints will be valid. Atelier Online isn’t a great game, but it’s probably not as bad as I will be making it out to be.

Back on topic, why did I even want to play this game in the first place? I’d heard of Atelier Online before, but I was playing other gacha games already and didn’t have the time to spare. Ever since Ring Dream shut down, I’ve had an opening in my schedule, so I finally got round to checking it out. I was lured by the thought of being able to do lots of alchemy whenever I wanted to without waiting for the next Atelier game to be released. I only have three mainline games to go before I catch up with Koei-Tecmo’s releases (Lydie & Suelle, Lulua and Ryza) so it’s not too soon to start looking for replacements.

Here’s what gamers were promised, according to QooApp.

■ The game does not have the stamina system so that you can play as long as you like.

This is actually true and a great draw. At least on paper. Being to play a lot is only meaningful if that “a lot” is worth playing.

■ The alchemy system allows you to create and customize your equipment.

Eh. Sort of. I guess. I haven’t spent too much time on customization because the gacha rolls the game generously gave me coughed up a lot of 4-star and 5-star equipment that only need leveling to take you a long way into the game. I’m also relying on Auto-Equip to select the best weapon and armor for me, so I haven’t explored the equipment system too deeply yet.

But ignoring the equipment aspect, you do get to make a lot of new alchemy items, which I like a lot and rate very highly. The items aren’t copied and pasted from older games either. Instead there are many new items that I, at least, have never seen before, and the food all looks scrumptious. The list of things to I can actually make is quite small at present, but I’m only a few chapters into an online game so it’s early days yet. It’s fun reaching new areas and unlocking new recipes as well. If I were rating Atelier Online on the alchemy aspect, I would give it a solid 8/10 for the novelty factor alone.

■ A solid RPG experience as you would need to make choices when you proceed in the story.

This is a lie, the game is garbage, the choices are completely meaningless and if it didn’t have “Atelier” slapped on the cover and some alchemy gameplay, I wouldn’t have played as long as I have. This is the bulk of my complaint, so I’ll come back to it after dealing with the last promise.

■ Appearence of famous characters that come from the same series.

If you’re the sort of person who cares about game character cameos, then you’ll enjoy getting characters like Logix, Rorona and Ryza in your party. Buuuut. I’ve only played for 2 weeks so I shouldn’t issue a blanket statement, buuuut. Most of the cameos come from the Arland series and later. If you’re a fan of the earlier games like the Iris series or side games like Mana Khemia, welp.

Furthermore, since the cameos are all gacha characters, you will see them featured in seasonal and side events, but the main story will be carried along by a new set of characters with plant-themed names like Sorrel, Wisteria and Peppermint. Your mileage may vary on how much you care about them.

Why it’s not for me

• Game-breaking bugs

Right after I started the game, I encountered a bug where a level 150 Anise Hyssop would appear and the game would hang after every battle.

You could send and receive messages, but that was it. The game would be stuck on the victory screen until you restarted. Imagine an RPG where you had to reload the game after every battle, does that sound like fun? The bug wasn’t fixed for several days – in fact I don’t know if it ever was fixed. In the end I googled the solution and moved on, but my first impression of the game had already marred the experience beyond repair.

Since then I haven’t hit any bugs that terrible, but I have suffered several abrupt closures of the app. Usually signalled by a strange slowdown. And usually occurring when you least want it to, like in the middle of a tough battle or after you’ve painstakingly selected a large batch of materials to transfer to your container. And no matter where you are in the field or dungeon, the game will always warp you back to the Academy after a restart, which is extremely frustrating when it isn’t your fault.

• Frequent loading screens make game progress annoying

As I mentioned already, my internet speed isn’t that high, so this probably isn’t Atelier Online‘s fault. It’s still annoying and a thief of joy so I’ll mention it: the game connects to the server and downloads/uploads data after every action, which adds many pointless seconds to gaming time.

Every time you start a battle, end a battle, open the quest screen, close the quest screen, move to the next map, move the next floor, forage an ingredient, before and after you make an item, etc. etc. No matter what you do, you’re gonna see that “Connecting” or “Downloading” sign in the left corner all that time. And that’s when you’re lucky, otherwise you’ll get a full loading screen like the one with Professor Bergamot above.

• Battles are boring and the story is pointless

Auto-battles are not my idea of fun, but they don’t necessarily have to be bad. The few auto-attack games I’ve played either give you a lot of control over skills, items, positioning, etc (e.g. Xenoblade Chronicles), or they make the battles so speedy and out-of-sight that they don’t get tedious (only Ore ni Hatarake comes to mind right now). Or they’re complete garbage like that useless guild game with the Saga cover art.

Atelier Online‘s battle system is close to the Xenoblade variety, in that your characters will automatically attack until you tell them to use skills or items, etc. You will need to adjust the AI a bit to get them to act without wasting moves or items – or better yet disable all those options and do things yourself. The lack of control is a bit frustrating if you’re coming from traditional Atelier games, but it’s not so bad. What bothers me more is how few items you can use and how largely useless they are. Attack items are weak and only good for building your special gauge. Buff items are equally useless except for one or two. Healing items are good, though. Invest in those rather than healer characters like Sorrel. In fact, pro-tip: don’t waste time on the free story characters at all. Gacha characters are where it’s at.

As for the story, nothing much has happened yet. The main character is an alchemist who was picked up by a mysterious stranger as a baby and sent to the Royal Academy, where s/he grew up. His/her goal is to find that stranger again someday. But since this is an endless game, either the stranger will never be found or there will be more developments after that and the story will ultimately never go anywhere until service is ready to end.

Right now it’s all super-trivial incidents with easily-forgiven “villains.” In fact I will freely confess that I skip all the quest dialogue after the first few lines, once I get the gist of what’s going on. It’s because of the quest format the game has adopted, which breaks down each quest into tedious little subquests just to stretch the game out.

For example, let’s say there’s a quest where you meet Wisteria at Ruhuna Village so you can eat fish and chips together. A sensible game would give a quest like “Give Wisteria fish and chips at Ruhuna Village.” Right? Not Atelier Online.

Quest 1 – Talk to Wisteria at the Academy -> cleared. Receive Quest 2.
Quest 2 – Meet Wisteria again at Ruhuna Villlage -> cleared. Receive Quest 3.
Quest 3 – Make fish and chips and give it to Wisteria. (Go farm the ingredients if you don’t have them already).

Only then can you move on to the next quest, which will be equally trivial and drawn out. And don’t forget that the process of opening, accepting and clearing these quests will come with copious loading and downloading screens for extra tediousness. Oh, and a lot of chatting and inconsequential banter just to fill in the time. And that’s why I skip most of the dialogue now.

• And now I have to grind??!!!

For all its flaws and slowness, at least the main quest in Atelier Online was progressing smoothly… until I hit a patch where I was supposed to run a dungeon several times for a rare drop from a boss. Not just one rare drop, but three. From a boss with a 10-20% chance of dropping said item, according to a source I consulted. It was even worse when that post was made, because early players had to get nine (9!!) of the item to progress.

And the boss isn’t easy to reach either. He’s on level 30 of a randomly-generated dungeon, and the closest you can get through warping is level 26. So you warp in, find your way down to level 30, beat the boss who will absolutely not drop the item, warp out and start again. Repeat as many times as it takes for you to go utterly bonkers.

It seems like a ploy by the developers to force people into multiplayer co-op battles (and actually multiplayer is a poorly-designed mess and a waste of time, but this review is long enough already so I won’t say any more). Either that or force you to spend “cole,” the in-game currency, to flat out buy your way to the next chapter. This is what I caved in and ended up doing in the end.

“Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent” and even a mediocre game can be thought good if it plays smoothly without stress. On the other hand, if a junk game actively interferes with your attempts to enjoy it, do I really want to stick around?

Update: I thought that was bad earlier, but at least I could buy my way out of that pinch. Now I’ve hit a stretch where Atelier Online wants me to grind up 9000 Academy Points. I was at 4770 when I hit that road block. Most missions give you 5-15 Academy Points. Do the math and that is well over 250 missions at best before I can move on to the next level. And it’s not like they’re fun and easy missions either. I want out!

• I don’t like gaming on my smartphone

The ultimate unfair comment from me. It’s not Atelier Online‘s fault it’s a smartphone-only game. Nevertheless it’s a fact that I like keeping my smartphone free of distractions besides email, YouTube and the usual messaging apps. It’s a bother when I’m playing this game and a phone call interrupts. If the call drags on, the game session expires and I have to start all over again from the academy. Play Atelier Online or ignore messages and phone calls from friends and family? Oh, the agony.

Proper games on proper gaming consoles have save points or sleep modes. The browser-based gacha games I usually play don’t stop you from doing other things with your PC while they’re running. If I decide to go ahead with Atelier Online, I’ll probably look into emulation options like Bluestacks for greater convenience.

It’s not all bad though…

The character designs is not bad. That “piss and watercolor” design style had grown on me by the time I finished the Arland series, so I kind of like it now. Though most of the time you will be staring at very meh pared-down versions in the field and academy.

I also really like the background art, when you get to see it. It reminds me of the art in a dungeon crawler like Stranger of Sword City. Or maybe the detailed backgrounds in Koei’s Ruby Party games. Either way I’m a sucker for nice art.

The music is pretty nice as well, though nothing has stuck in my head yet. The majority of scenes are voiced and the voice acting is well done as well.

And as I’ve said, I’m also a sucker for alchemy gameplay, so even though I said the game is not for me, that doesn’t mean I’m quitting right away. I don’t see a long-term future for me and Atelier Online, but I think I’ll be playing for a while yet. The lure of an “Atelier” game is just that strong. Until the supply of recipes runs out or the enemies get too strong to handle. If/when a) I drop the game entirely or b) it gets shut down, I’ll be back with my final thoughts. Until then~!