Atelier Rorona.

[BizioEE]

Official Homepage for Atelier Rorona - under construction.  http://atelier-ps3.jp/

Release date: 6/25/2009

2D Artist: Kishida Mel; Official Homepage: http://maigo.jp/picture.html


Current Info (3/17/2009)
Full Voice
Event scenes appear to be similar, in some cases, to Tears to Tiara; 3D models on the field w/ 2D character artwork popping up for the actual enactment/facial expressions.



What is the Atelier Series?
The Atelier series is a relatively long running series by the Japanese developer, GUST.  Since their debut title, Atelier Marie, in 1997, there have been 12 titles in this series spanning the original PSX, PS2, GB, DS, and Dreamcast.

The first in the series, Atelier Marie, was considered a sleeper success with sales reaching ~200k via word of mouth and is considered to be the origin of in-game alchemy/crafting in a lot of subsequent games in Japan.  Atelier Elie, the second in the series, reached about 160k sales.  Subsequent titles ranged between 30~90k in sales numbers.  Not a mainstream title, but not super niche either.  The drop in sales is attributed to a loss of focus on crafting and more of a focus on the RPG aspect.

Within the Atelier series, there are a number of sub-series
Salburg series which spans Atelier Marie, Atelier Elie, and Atelier Lilie (A1~A3)
Gramnart series which spans Atelier Eudie and Atelier Violet (A4~A5)
Iris series which spans Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, Eternal Mana 2, and Gran Phantasm which you guys may be familiar with (A6~A8)
Mana Khemia series which spans Mana Khemia 1 and 2 (A9~A10)
Misc series which include Atelier Reese and Atelier Annie (releasing today in Japan for DS, DSA1~DSA2)

Each subseries generally takes place within the same world and features a good amount of cameos and jokes from prior games in the subseries.

Gameplay of the Original Atelier Series
Originally conceived as a crafting game with some RPG aspects, the general gameflow was:
1. Find and hire a body guard
2. Go search for crafting materials (RPG part)
3. Craft items, talk to town/school officials, friends, etc and help them out
4. Repeat 1~3
Based on the number of times you hire a specific body guard, quests you complete, tasks you inadvertently do, the storyline and ending generally branched out, usually necessitating quite a number of play throughs to get all the endings and what not.

As an example, in Atelier Marie, your goal as a close-to-flunkout alchemy student is to graduate from Alchemy school.  However, if you decide to kill one of the optional monsters, instead of graduating as an alchemist, you graduate more as an adventurer/hero.  While not a bad ending in and of itself, Marie is clearly upset, as is her teacher and pretty indicative of achieving a non-cannonical ending.

Evolution of Atelier
Over time, GUST made improvements to the game system and made a gradual shift to more of a heavy RPG type game.  Fans of the original series are thought to have dwindled because of this.  By the time Mana Khemia is rolling around, while crafting is intuitive and still an important/integral part of the game, it\'s a RPG-centric game, and while fans still do exist, and in this poster\'s opinion, still a great series, what you\'ve seen in Mana Khemia might not be what you should expect in the newest installment of Atelier.

Atelier Marie and Atelier Rorona
The catch-sentence for Atelier Marie was along the lines of "Leave defeating primordial evils to heroes and saving the world to other heroes.  This is about a student about to flunk out of alchemy school". If the scan is an indication of anything, with the phrases "I\'m tired of saving the world" and "Welcome home", expect this title to herald back to the roots of the series and be very crafting centric.

Looking nice.

these is really the typical "weird" asian type game that could be succesful here. These games never get ported over here, what a shame.

That game looks real good. I can see the gameplay becoming addictive if the "mission" or crafting doesn\'t feel too repetitive.

[BizioEE]

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/03/27/gust-can-do-3d-atelier-rorona-looks-gorgeous/

[size=+1]Atelier Rorona Teaser (JP)[/size]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp4czd7lBFo&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siliconera.com%2F2009%2F03%2F27%2Fgust-can-do-3d-atelier-rorona-looks-gorgeous%2F&feature=player_embedded