Atelier Lulua - First impressions

After backtracking from Ryza to Mysterious to Arland, Atelier Lulua caught my attention as a missing link.

How did Atelier devolve into Ryza's signposted slice of life antics?

Past an awkward grayscale moment from CG hell, the setting and characters are revealed. The colors are bright and engaging. Lulu and Eva look cooked, overcooked (respectively) (but that's okay... I think?).

Lulu is running like a guy, which is a little crass considering the pair (along with Eva) come off as dolled up bitches. Oops.

Two horses straight off uncanny zone. A phong shaded puni is beaming joyfully at us.

The menu looks clean and springy with a touch of sophistication. Fonts hard to read. Genki summarizes Lulu.

The annoying dude is not super-annoying/downright off putting. One point.

Visually (also, map design) Atelier Lulua is in a bright spot overall. Every frame looks a beautiful anime style render, retaining (to a point) the graceful palettes and visual touches of its (technically lesser) predecessors. Rain and fog shame AS2 (weather mechanics front and center - whatever happened?) 

After 4.5 hours, I did surprisingly quite a few things, amounting to not much at all. Mysterious ruins got flaunted very early on. Then nonsense about making a nonsuch item for some (probably royalty) nobody.

The writing, voice acting, sit-com aspects. Good fun.

Flow/narrative integration

The first four chapters have been leading. While there are no time limits in sight, Lulu has a schedule, with an Important and a Request tab. I have completed over 20 items in my important tab. Sure enough this game is micro-managing me. Thus far.

Still, I gained relative freedom in accessing (very few, medium sized) maps

The AlchemyRyddle and Alchemy

The book that left a bump on Lulu's head... so far is at once the most interesting and potentially the most annoying evolution found in the game. 

Most Atelier games have a codex / guide to learning alchemy. Part skill tree, part... riddles... The codex is always hinting recipes, and doubles as an alchemy progress summary.

The codex often looks like a skill tree. But for the most part learning recipes is non linear, and the primarily limitation is which areas you can access, and which items you have on hand. This obviously creates a dependency graph, but the codex does not represent this... not quite - Most recipes can get learned just by exercising the core loop. As a result the codex works as a fail-safe: if you need to know how to learn something, you can look it up; and the codex is a great tool for completionists.

So far, Lulua's codex feels engaging, painstakingly crafted. 

Yet awfully linear. But I've only played 4 hours so, maybe it won't be.

The alchemy system... this is really taking us back to the Arland and dusk series: no fun in sight.

Overall impression

Atelier Lulua, so far, feels like otaku gold. Shaping up to be a heavily sign-posted strawberry parfait, its maps are just the right size, and its cast belongs to a maid cafe. It is not exciting enough to get addictive (good thing) but I'm unsure whether it creates free time.

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