So what makes this series different?

[Sir Slush]

Not trying to start a flame thread here; just genuinely curious. There have been a lot of this Atelier series showing up on Steam recently, but after seeing some of the trailers/pictures/reviews it doesn't strike me as being too different from the rest of the JRPG genre. It's a genre I enjoy, but I can only enjoy so much of it at a time. So why so many Atelier games on Steam? Is it just that the series is very high-quality? Maybe the publisher figured they'd just port all the games and see if they could recoup the costs from the Steam crowd? Or is there something different about the Atelier series that makes it stand out from other JRPGs that I didn't notice?

[Tiasmoon]

Do you enjoy crafting things? Because Atelier games have A LOT of crafting.
Weapons, equipment, items. You dont buy those from NPC vendors or from difficult bosses. You craft them yourself. The basics are similar to high end crafting in an MMO like FFXIV if you are familiar with that, but the system itself is far, far more in depth.

They are also very slice-of-lifeish (the dusk games and Ryza less so) focusing more on character's every day life then the main plot.

Those are the 2 main differences that make Atelier games stand apart from regular JPRGs.

They also tend to have cute female protagonists which is pretty rare in JRPGs.

Rather then high quality its a pretty niche series. However people love them for their aforementioned differences that they do pretty well. The crafting or ''Alchemy'' is the best around. While they do it a bit different with each sub series, I'd rate them all even above FFXIV 1.0's crafting. (FFXIV 2.x and further is but a pale shadow of 1.0's crafting)

[Sir Slush]

Cool, that makes it a little more interesting IMO. Thanks.

[Sharkitect]

Another big difference is that unlike most JRPGs, the game really encourages the player to make and use attack items like bombs, as the player character is generally not as powerful as the rest of the party, making the player character more of a utility support character than a frontliner.

[Tiasmoon]

Yup in most games item usage is a crutch, but here it is a feature. While using them is pretty straight forward (just use the item) you can make lots of different onces with custom effects.