Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers Of The New World Review (PS4)

It's time to enter the world of Atelier once again.  That means taking the role of a cute, little girl in a cute, little world to fight cute, little monsters and...build cute, little cities?  This is Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers Of The New World.

Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists is a different kind of Atelier game.  You have all the things that define an Atelier game.  A cute protagonist, a cute soundtrack, and cute monsters, are all present and accounted for.  As mentioned above, however, this one adds a city-building element.  In fact, the city-building is the main part of the game.

This stylish girl is Nelke, our cute, little protagonist.

In true Atelier form, there's plenty of time management.  In other words, you have to get your butt in gear if you want to win.  Your father sets Tasks you MUST do within a set length of time or it's game over.  It doesn't matter how happy your people are, if you screw up at ANY point it's the end of the game, no questions asked.  The game isn't particularly hard for Atelier veterans, but if you are new to the series, this game will tear you a new butthole.  And the game over screen is pretty dark.

Make sure to keep an eye on those objectives or you'll be up Turd Creek.

What did they do?  Kill the poor girl?

The game is played in turns that span a whole week.  Each week is composed of two days, Weekdays and Holidays.  On Weekdays, you work on the city itself by plopping down buildings and roads.  You also clear district and open up space to build in those districts.  Finally, you give orders to your workers, telling gatherers where to search for resources, fieldworkers what to grow, alchemists what to make, and store clerks what to sell.  Then, you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor in each district.

On a Weekday, you can see the status of your city and see what needs to be done.

Nelke enjoys the smell of construction in the morning.

Holidays are completely different.  Here, you can Visit other characters, go on Investigations, and Research new techs.  Visiting characters will strength friendships so they will perform better, get you requests to help increase your approval rating, or even allow you to build new buildings.  Investigations allow Nelke and a group of characters to go out and procure resources and get kill cute, little monsters.  Research allows you to get new technology, assuming you have the correct characters and items.  You also get a picture of Nelke doing cute, little stuff, such a playing the flute or sleeping in a chair.

Holidays let watch Nelke being cute, among other things.

The title of the game, Nelke & The Legendary Alchemist, should tip you off to what else this game features.  It's a crossover game, featuring characters from past Atelier games.  Fans of the series will enjoy seeing their favorites.  The execution could have been better as they just "poof" into existence.  Past protagonist DO get some backstory on how they wound up in Nelke's city, but others will just randomly materialize in whenever they feel like it.

The characters you know and probably love are all here.

These characters don't just appear, walk into a corner, and be confused.  They actually aid Nelke in her quest to build her city.  They will help the city by working whenever you put them in the workforce.  You can make them farmers to grow resource, merchants to generate income, and alchemists to make items.  You'll have to make sure they're all working in harmony or your city will fail and you will lose.  If you want results, you MUST use these characters, not the generic Hired Help girls.

The proper use of characters is the key to success.

Some can also aid Nelke in investigations, where she leaves the to gather resources herself.  Sadly, it's not the full-blown exploration featured in previous entries.  Heck, you don't even control your characters outside of combat.  They simply walk around talking, occasionally gathering resources and getting into fights.  They do this until you reach the end of the path or until they get tired and decide to go home.  It's lame.  I understand that logically Nelke can't spend days at a time away from the city like previous protagonists because she needs to oversee its development, but it's still lame.  Nelke may also randomly decide she wants to chase bugs or start digging.  If you have the appropriate equipment, you can choose to let her do it or keep walking.

Reaching the end nets you treasure or boss battles...

...while not reaching the end means you have to do it all over again.

Investigations are lame, but Nelke "digs" them.

As for combat, you still get to beat on cute little monsters.  Fights happen randomly during Investigations or when building your city.  Battles are snappy and quick.  Characters are divided into attack (who you directly control) and support characters (who you have minimal control over).  There is a level of strategy to the battles when it comes to item usage as you can only use each item once per Investigation.  Not once per battle.  Once for all the battles across the entire Investigation.  This means things can get pretty tight if the enemies are particularly strong on the map you're investigating.  It can mean the difference between finishing the Investigation or running away to get out of taking an ass-whuppin'.

Now, for the little stuff.  The game has that trademark Atelier look.  Everything is cute.  From the buildings to the most intimidating monsters to Nelke herself, the game oozes cuteness from every pore.

The sound is cute, too.  Cute music and cute sound effects litter the game.  Sadly, the voices are only in Japanese.  English voices would have been nice, but that's the way things shook out.

There are other things to do besides simply playing the game.  Going to the Extras menu enables you to do thing, like listen to the music or ogle your favorite character.

Nelke has more to offer the just gameplay.

In the end, I had a lot of fun with this game.  As a fan of the Atelier series and city-builders, I'm happy to see a game like this exist.  As long as you're not expecting a SimCity-caliber city builder, you should have fun.  There are a lot of things I couldn't touch on to keep the review short, but the experience was enjoyable. A cute, little game.  Play it.

Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun Review (PS4)

Feudal Japan, stealth kills, and a handful of trained killers.  No, it's not the next Tenchu.  It's Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun.

I can comfortably say that Feudal Japan is one of my favorite periods in time.  From Samurai Warriors to Nobunaga's Ambition to the aforementioned Tenchu, setting your game in the time of ninja and samurai is a good way to get me to play it.  This game takes a more "tactical" approach to the era.

Shadow Tactics is like Tenchu, but with an emphasis on tactics and teamwork.  Like Tenchu, you hop from shadow to shadow, killing anyone who gets close before the know you're there.  You'll need to decide who kill, when to kill them, where to hide bodies, and have a good sense of timing and understanding enemies patrol routes.  Instead of playing as one super ninja, however, you play as a team of five somewhat less-super warriors.  Each brings their own strengths to the table, making themselves an essential part of the team.  This is where to the tactics come into play.  Surveying the killing field and determining when, where, and how to utilize each character and their unique abilities.

Looking ahead and learning patrol route and sight patterns is the way to win.

Understanding each character's niche is key to success.

Another thing that's similar to Tenchu is the enemies.  No, not the types of enemies, but the fact that they are extremely blind and moderately stupid.  For example, if an enemy can see thirty feet, they will see you if you move within thirty.  But you you're thirty-one feet away, it's like they are staring at thin air.  The same thing happens if move into the edge of their sight and you're ducking and not behind any obstacles.  They'll see you if you stand, but won't see you if you duck out in the open.  To quote a funny YouTube video, "Vision!  Doesn't!  Work That Way!"

Ducking in the shaded sight area is good enough to hide in plain sight.

When things get tricky, you can use Shadow Mode to set up simultaneous ass-whuppings in advance.  For example, you may come across two or more enemies that you must kill before you can continue on.  You have to kill them at the same time or you'll get caught and they'll call for back-up.  This is when to use the Shadow Mode.  In Shadow Mode, you control a "shadow" and can move around freely without being seen by enemies.  You simply move the shadow of the character near the enemy you want to kill and the game will que it up.  Then, when you get everything set up to your liking, simply press the "execute plan" button and watch your babies make you proud.  You DO have to control each character's shadow individually, but it works well enough.

The game says it all.

The controls are tight and responsive.  You'll move exactly when you want to move and kill exactly when you want to kill.  The directional pad does a number of things, including seeing where (and when) an enemy is looking, something you'll want during your first playthrough.  You can also check mission objectives, center the camera (useful for finding your own characters), and activate Shadow Mode.  Everything works well.

Well, now it time to get to the little stuff.  The graphics are fine...unless you actually want to see the characters.  Everyone is so small.  They have different colored highlights to help find them when they're hidden, but that doesn't even help sometimes.  For example, I was constantly losing track of Yuki on her first mission because she blends in with the rocks.  Fortunately, the enemies always stand out.  Also, I came across a really bad graphics glitch where the ground turned blue and stayed that way for the whole day no matter how often I reloaded.  It seems like was just a one time thing, so no biggie.

Hmm...now where did I leave Yuki?

This glitch haunted me for an entire day on the worst possible level, at the worst possible time.

The music is good.  It gets you in the mood to turn Japanese and stealth-kill everyone you can.  If assassins had Ipods in Feudal Japan, this is probably the music they'd listen to.  While it's not pure fire, it is good and atmospheric.  There's also voice acting which is okay, save for the terrible accent Hayato's voice actor is trying to speak with.

You can also try different difficulty settings, obtaining trophies, or beating levels in different ways.  The game is kind of short, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.  It would have been nice to replay levels with different characters, but it is what it is.  To my knowledge, there's no DLC, so what you see is what you get.  Once again, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun is a neat little game.  There's some strategy involved in beating the levels, especially on your first attempt.  There's a charm and, dare I say, a cuteness to it.  The game could have been longer, but at the same time, it doesn't overstay its welcome.  Check it out.