Atelier Lydie & Suelle: latest details (more characters, battle system, mysterious painting worlds)
Earlier this week, Koei-Tecmo shared some more details about Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Paintings, revealing new characters, more gameplay systems, some of the painting worlds, and more.
Let’s start with more new/returning characters:
- Firis Mistlud (voiced by Kaede Hondo, designed by Yuugen): a 19 year old young woman (159cm tall), who is both an alchemist and a traveler (known for her unrivaled love for traveling). She’s now much taller and mature-looking, but her personality remains unchanged, and she’s still a pretty friendly person. As far as alchemy is concerned, her abilities have progressed a fair bit, to the point where the atelier she opened in Melveille was an immediate success. Liane, her older sister, is the one who taught her how to use a bow, and she’s currently training as a hunter. Ilmeria (more details below) is an old friend of hers, and they once opened an atelier together. They finally meet again in Melveile.
- Ilmeria Von Leinweber (voiced by Sayaka Kaneko, designed by Yuugen): a 19 year old alchemist (147cm tall), who set up an atelier in Melveille on the invitation of the government. While she didn’t become Lydie & Suelle’s teacher of her own accord, she still gives her all to help them as a reliable teacher, and she’s actually pretty enthusiastic about them. Alchemy-wise, her abilities are said to be more or less the same as Firis’. She can be pretty meddlesome, but never upfront.
- Roger Marlen (voiced by Takehito Koyasu, designed by NOCO): a 35 year old alchemist and painter (179cm tall), and Lydie and Suelle’s father. As far as alchemy goes, he’s pretty useless: he likes to concoct new recipes like a mad scientist, and it almost always end in failure… and explosion (in one of the screenshots below, he can be seen blaming his daughter after an explosion, before running away). But his talent when it comes to painting are without pair. He’s said to be a pretty frank person, but also pretty lazy and with wasteful habits… there’s a reason his own daughters call him a good for nothing father!
As mentioned several times before, Lydie and Suelle’s goal in Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Paintings is to run the best atelier in the country. And that’s where the “Atelier Rank System” (that determines the performance of your atelier), recently implemented by the government, kicks in. For their atelier to become the best one in the country, the twins have no other choice than to reach the highest rank!
The game features an “Ambitions Notebook”, that you need to consult often, if you want to increase your atelier’s reputation. In order to increase your Atelier Rank, you need to take an official test, but that test can only be taken if your reputation is at a certain level.
And inside that notebook, you can find various “secret plans” written down by Suelle, that will help you increase the rank of your atelier. It’s basically a quest book, and completing the quests is what increases the reputation of your atelier. By the way, the higher your rank, the more mysterious paintings you have access to, so it’s highly recommended to complete as many “quests” as possible.
Said “quests” have you travel to the “real world” and the mysterious paintings, in order to collect materials, battle monsters, synthesize items with rare materials, and more.
Next, we have details about the battle system, which is called “Combination Battle”. You have a two-person team, with one character at the front and one at the rear, and you can have up to three such teams in battle. Battles are turn-based, and you can choose the action for each character. Depending on what you choose to do, the turn order for the next turn will change.
Follow Skill is something that can be triggered by the character at the rear, providing the right conditions are met after the action from the character in the front. There’s various Follow Skills to be found in the game, and as you can expect, they all have different requirements.
Using Battle Mix, you can use synthesis during battle, further expanding your strategic options. This can be done when either Lydie or Suelle are in the rear. You also need Battle Recipes, special recipes that allows you to synthesize various items but only during battle.
Support Guard is something all characters besides Lydie and Suelle can use. Why can’t the twins use it? Well, it’s because it’s something that’s triggered when they get attacked, with the ally taking the damage for them instead.
Finally, Combination Arts are special moves that can be used with the right combination of characters (who need to have good coordination).
Koei-Tecmo and Gust also have details about two new mysterious painting worlds:
- Noisy Forest: a forest of warped trees, with the moon in the sky. Anyone who enters it feels like they’re being watched, which is probably due to the endless noises that can be heard there. Some pretty rare materials can be found there.
- Enfer Great Falls: an active volcano and a waterfall of lave can be found there, along with some sort of stone monument. Rumour has it a vicious dragon lives there.
During your adventures in those mysterious paintings, you will sometime be accompanied by Firis and Sophie from previous Atelier games.
Finally, Koei-Tecmo and Gust have revealed the bonus costumes available as first-print bonus for Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Paintings:
- Lydie: costume based on Marie from Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg;
- Suelle: costume based on Elie from Atelier Elie: The Alchemist of Salburg 2.
Here’s the latest batch of pictures for Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Paintings
Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Paintings (Switch) comes out on December 21st in Japan, and Early 2018 in Europe and North America.
