What is Atelier?

[WaifuMaxxer]

What is Atelier? Is it a brand, a company or something. I don't get it. Have seen lots of games and anime named Atelier. And why this game mixed review people saying its not Atelier?

[arcaneArtisan]

It is a French loan word to English that refers to an artisan's workshop. In anime-adjacent media it is often the preferred term for an alchemist's workshop in particular. Most anime-style games named in the format "Atelier (Person's Name): Alchemist of (thing)" are part of a meta-franchise by Gust of usually-RPG-like games with an emphasis on item creation featuring cute girl protagonists and generally with a somewhat cozy feel. The franchise experiments with different sub-genres like life or time management sims, open world exploration, or adventure-rpgs, with "subseries" of games (usually trilogies but expanding out on occasion) sharing similar mechanics but making bigger variations between subseries.

But because the term is generic, not everything with the word Atelier in the title is part of the franchise. And even within the series, games from different subseries might be very different in setting, tone, or precise mechanics.

People saying it's "not Atelier" are just dissatisfied with the tone and mechanics the creators went with for this particular subseries. You should always take reviews for anime-style games with a grain of salt though, especially early after release, as they are frequently targeted by culture war addicts and people trying to start political fights.

Atelier games tend to be pretty hit and miss, with different entries being hits for some people and misses for others, so review scores and aggregates aren't very useful anyway--read the actual text of the reviews and decide if you find the arguments made by the reviewer compelling on a case by case basis.

[Coal Lobster]

The combat, crafting, and exploration are pretty different from what the game series has traditionally had.

The combat has typically been JRPG style, this is a kind of action combat. As a consequence of the change it seems they've balanced things to be less difficult and have less need to focus on crafting.

The crafting, while varied from game to game, usually has a deeper minigame. There's basically no minigame here and the entire process is less complex(the reduced complexity for doing some things isn't necessarily a bad thing). This is probably where they dropped the ball the hardest. An engaging crafting experience is core to the series and they did pretty poorly here.

This is the first time it's had a Breath of the Wild style exploration gameplay. I don't think this part really presents an issue, though the balancing of drops/rewards from chests isn't as well done due to the game being less linear than they've traditionally worked with. If they work on this type of gameplay more it could be fine, as it stands currently it's not very competitive with other games having this gameplay.

[Tasty]

Originally posted by WaifuMaxxer:

What is Atelier? Is it a brand, a company or something. I don't get it. Have seen lots of games and anime named Atelier. And why this game mixed review people saying its not Atelier?

Atelier is a franchise of games, latest atelier game yumia deviates from what its traditionally known from the franchise by watering down simplifying or outright removing features the older games had, the creators themselves saod in interviews that they didnt see the game as an atelier entry and that its marketed at a global audience thats the reason for the backlash