Buy Atelier Escha & Logy Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky

Atelier Escha & Logy Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky is the middle game in the  franchise's Dusk trilogy. Players are given the choice between two characters. Escha is an alchemist from the frontier town of Colseit, which is known for orchids and unexplored ruins. Her partner is Logix Fiscario (Logy to his friends), who is from the big city and transfers to Colseit in the wake of a mysterious accident. The two must team up to discover the source of the mysterious blight plaguing Colseit. Along the way, they'll meet colorful characters and dangerous enemies and even discover the town's greatest mysteries.

Atelier Escha & Logy is a remarkably relaxing and cheerful game. Despite the concept, there's very little in the way of drama or disaster. The characters are bright and cheerful, and problems are met with determination and derring-do instead of angst and frustration. The plot is sugary sweet in a nice way, and I found myself smiling. It's also a tame game in terms of content, and there's little in the way of violence or sexual content. It's one of the few RPGs on the Vita that should be fun regardless of the player's age.

Unlike its sequel, Atelier Shallie, Escha and Logy retains the franchise's time system, although it's probably one of the most forgiving timed games out there. Managing your time is critical to success, but barring some severe screw-ups, you'll have plenty of time. Most actions range from one day to multiple days. Crafting an item may take only one day, but going to a nearby dungeon to pick up items can take multiple days. Fighting enemies, gathering items and other actions can all use time, but you can upgrade your characters; these upgrades range from reduced gathering time to a teleporting staff that allows instant travel back to town.

The combat system is straightforward but a lot of fun. Your party is divided into six characters: three frontliners and three support characters in the back row. The three in the front do the fighting while those in the back recover their HP and MP. You can – and will – frequently swap front and back row characters. You can do this manually, but there's also a support system, so as long as you have points in your support bar (earned by attacking enemies), you can perform a support attack or support defense. As the game progresses, you'll unlock additions to the support attacks to dramatically increase their power.

Most of the characters have access to regular attacks and special skills that use MP. The exceptions are Escha and Logy who can craft items and bring them into the field with them. A major difference from Atelier Ayesha is that your items are no longer used up permanently when you use them in battle. Since you're working for the Colseit government, they'll replenish your stocks every time you return to town. This means you can use items far more regularly, and your only concern is making sure to not use up all your supplies. If you do, you have to waste the time trekking back to town to get them restocked.

Escha and Logy Plus is a far more combat-oriented game than Atelier Ayesha. There are an absurd amount of optional bosses to fight. Many are palette swaps (or even recycled from Ayesha) but reward your mastery of the combat system.  Early game bosses can be quickly defeated, but if you want to beat the hardest enemies, you'll need to focus and plan. Fortunately for players who just want to relax, most of that is optional. The main game is never too punishing, though you're likely to be at risk if you fall behind on upgrading your weapons and gear.

Fortunately, upgrading your weapons and gear is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. For the core alchemy system, you find a recipe, and you can craft it. Some recipes call for specific items while others require an item that belongs to a certain class, like "food" or "liquid." When you begin to craft, you can slot different items into those slots to manipulate the outcome. Each item belongs to one or more of the four elements: earth, fire, water and wind. If you increase one of those four elements high enough, items unlock new attributes or abilities. Even early-game items can become more powerful if you max out their elemental bars. Certain items even allow you to combine abilities to form new ones that you can't obtain in any other way.

The big change from Ayesha is in the other alchemic feature of elements. Every time you add an item from a specific element into the mix, you'll gain one point of elemental energy. As you level up your alchemy skills, you'll unlock new abilities that you can spend this elemental energy on while crafting. Two wind energy, for example, unlocks the division skill, which lets you copy all the attributes of an item into the recipe twice. You'll unlock many powerful abilities, and managing the use of skills and ingredients can allow you to craft extremely potent items.

If there's one "flaw" in Escha and Logy, it is that it is perhaps a bit too easy to craft strong items. Late-game enemies drop powerful crafting materials that can be used to max out all four elements at once. If you want to craft the strongest weapons, you still have to do some thinking and planning, but the craft system loses a little something when you can put a golden apple or a magical flower into the cauldron and max everything out without trying. It's not enough to ruin the system, especially if you're going up against late-game bosses.

Unfortunately, Atelier Escha and Logy Plus is probably the least meaningful "plus" release to date. The new additions are extremely few in number. All of the DLC from Atelier Escha and Logy for the PS3 is included, which includes a number of new characters and some bonus dungeons. However, the Plus-exclusive features are few and far between. The most noteworthy of these is Nio, the herbalist from Atelier Ayesha who was previously just a shopkeeper in Escha and Logy. She joins as a playable character, which is a nice twist but doesn't change much of the game. There are some additional story scenes, which are mostly focused on Escha and Logy's relationship. Interactions between the two are clearly marked with either a smiling face (for friendship) or a heart (for romantic) to allow players to decide how the story goes. Beyond that, the only real changes are some minor balance tweaks and a few additional superbosses. They're fun additions but not worth rebuying the game.

By and large, Escha and Logy Plus is the best Vita port to date. While it still suffers from some problems, such as frequent frame rate drops, they are nowhere near as significant as they were in the previous games. Loading times and frame rates are even smoother than they were in Atelier Ayesha Plus. It's still no match for the PS3 version, but it's more than playable. The only complaint I have is that the localization probably could've been cleaned up more. Some translation mistakes from the original PS3 version were retained in the port, and it seems like this would've been a great time to clean them up.

Otherwise, Atelier Escha and Logy looks a lot like the other Atelier games. The graphics are nice enough, and there are some excellent animations, but visually, very little has changed for the series. Some of the character animations are stiff, but the battle animations have some flair.  The environments are nicely styled but do get repetitive, especially if you've played the other games in the series. The soundtrack is top-notch and contains some excellent battle and environmental music. The dub is mostly quite good and does its job well enough. There's a Japanese voice pack available, though it's DLC, so players with small memory sticks should be warned.

Atelier Escha and Logy Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky is a solid port of a good game. It retains all the strengths of the original, and bundling the DLC assures a fair bit of extra content for those who only played the base game. The core game has aged extremely well, and in some ways, it is even still superior to its sequel Atelier Shallie. The significantly reduced slowdown and lag make it one of the better Atelier ports to the Vita, but it's also a pretty basic Plus port since there's little in the way of new features for those who've already played the original. It's still one of the most accessible and enjoyable JRPGs on the Vita, and players of all ages will find a lot to like here. 

Score: 8.0/10