Buy Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World

Organization is not something we usually think of when asked, "What do you like to do in your spare time?" For me, organization would be close to the bottom of the list. However, there's a certain level of gratification to organizing successfully, at least for ourselves. Developer Gust and publisher Koei Tecmo have bottled up this feeling with Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World, mixing the likes of town-building simulators and turn-based RPGs with pops of relationship-building, allowing the player to juggle video game responsibilities to their heart's content. Overall, the game hits its notes. Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists offers a lot in the way of gameplay and strong tone, but it suffers from stretching the gameplay with too many elements and occasionally overly ebullient visuals and music.

The concept is that you're Nelke, an ex-alchemist and now administrator, fresh out of the academy, and this is the first town you're designing/building/organizing/protecting, while also looking for the secrets of the ethereal and elusive Granzweit Tree, all the while following the orders of your father, a regional leader who will give you specific objectives to fill in a certain amount of turns. The plot is so inconsequential that you can fast-forward through the cut scenes so you can get to the game. I will also fast-forward through describing the plot, so I can explain the game.

The gist of the gameplay is that for each turn, you can perform specific actions, such as:

• Invite, which levels up your relationships with people in your town by visiting them or taking on side objectives
• Research, which allows you to make upgrades to your town and grants items
• Investigate, which allows you to access the turn-based RPG section of the game and gather more raw materials
• Request that townspeople perform tasks (managing stores, growing materials, dispatching them on specific paths, create materials to sell)
• Build new fields and stores in your town, and
• Tell your alchemists what to synthesize (synth request), craft, research, and more.

Adding to the experience is an energy gauge, which is expended on visiting people or investigating, thus adding another level of organization to the process.

During each turn, you collect and burn through materials depending on how you're organized. You collect cole, the in-game currency, or fulfill tasks to further the story or level up your friendships with the townspeople. As you continue, you gain access to new materials that help you gain more money, do more research, etc. That all goes toward building up the city of Westwald and discovering the secret of the Granzweit tree.

Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists is awash in gameplay features, all of which are formidable but perhaps not necessary. The relationship-building and research aspects are all about a balance of resources and time, which can be navigated with relative ease. Research feels fulfilling in that it helps the titular character further her research and sates the player's curiosity about the world, but the relationship-building becomes hollow when all you do is try to cultivate emotions and investment in anime girls who you can't tell apart.

The RPG component is more engaging but isn't the meat and potatoes of the game, and it shows. You progress through different paths, each resulting in monsters to fight and materials to collect. You auto-walk through these areas, pausing to pick up materials or to fight some monsters. Material collection is automatic, but the RPG section works like most others in the genre: party-oriented, turn-based fighting, which is passable but simplistic. There's no strategy to the fights, everything gets bowled over rather easily, weaknesses aren't preyed upon, etc. The holiday section feels as if it were created to pad the gameplay, to please the player by having them complete idle tasks.

On the other hand, the weekday schedule will require the player to expend actual mental effort. This is where the title starts to feel like balancing a multi-faceted scale, since players must factor characters, materials, money, time, traits, etc., in hopes of finding the right combination to remain profitable. This part feels genuinely challenging — and sometimes overwhelming. For example, if you build a new store, you have to choose which type it will be (general, grocery, weapon, etc.) based on who could run it. Then you'd have to figure out how much they could sell from it, given that you've told your alchemists to create items that can even be sold in that store. You also must ensure that you have enough materials to make the item, sell it, and keep it in stock. Layer on the fact that one of the townspeople asked you to do this, and you need to level up your relationship to them, so they can help you on the next bit of research so you can gain access to a new item.

This juggling of information and menus can come across as frustrating, but when you nail it, it feels pretty rewarding. Knowing you used all the information in the right way, allocated resources correctly, created the correct items to progress, etc., in this game makes you feel a real sense of accomplishment. It's appropriately challenging to interact with the world, manipulate the numbers, and challenge yourself to arrange everything in the best way. There are some faults here, though. For example, the best way to track your materials is nested in the pause menu — under storage, for those interested — which isn't clearly stated.

Similarly, the translation during these parts is also spotty, with the Orchard skill linking to how well characters produce materials from the Grove farm type, etc. On the macro level, the menus aren't organized in a way that's best for organizing materials, how to use them, what you need to do, etc. There are many ways to access different parts of the menu, but it feels like you're clicking around a lot to make one simple change. While this may be intentional, it makes this part a lot more tedious than it needs to be. With that being said, this portion of the game checks off a lot of boxes and offers a more simplistic yet satisfying strategy component to the game. It rounds out the experience and makes it all worthwhile.

The music and aesthetics of Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists are well defined, but they're not distinct or note-worthy. The way that cut scenes play out is relatively similar to other more Japanese/anime games, such as Persona 5 or visual novels, with 3D models playing out the actions in the background while dialogue and reactions are depicted in the foreground with 2D models. Given the overall lackadaisical tone of the game, the aesthetics are bright and bubbly, with popping yellows, greens and blues used appropriately and indiscriminately. The characters are designed with a Victorian style in mind, and with it, women are frequently seen sporting bustiers and wearing skimpy skirts, with the main character being the most egregious of them all. It is frustrating to see women depicted in a way that accentuates their, ahem, assets. It's sexist and stupid.

Continuing on, the interface and town-building sections are cartoony and welcoming, evoking child-like wonder in a way that mirrors the likes of Animal Crossing or some of the Kirby games. Even the enemy designs for the RPG sections of the game are cutesy and look something like the Dream-Eaters from Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance. Visually, the game is incredibly charming, especially when it's not trying to make you choose a new waifu.

The music follows suit, being incredibly cheery and somehow both non-descript and glaring at the same time. There's a plethora of tracks, all of which are fully orchestrated, that elicit curiosity, drive and grandeur. Staccato piano riffs play over bold violins while a singular flute weaves a meticulously coherent melody, portraying happiness through blindingly sanguine pieces, reminiscent of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 with none of the nuance. The music is incredibly suitable given the game aesthetics. The music is playful and overly sentimental on its own, and it distracts periodically while it plays in the background, adding much to the cutesy spirit of the game.

The name of the game is simplicity. Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World offers an experience that takes aspects of many genres and boils them down to the basics, for better and for worse. This mix of mindlessness and analysis creates an entrancing paradox that's fun to experiment with. While the game has little in terms of innovation or challenge, it offers itself as an escape into a weird world that you can invest in as much as you want, allowing a haven of your own design that grants success with some effort, patience and time. It'll suck you right in if you can stomach the syrupy sweetness and hollow banter.

Score: 7.5/10