Got around to making a start on Atelier Shallie this evening, and so far I'm very impressed. Obviously I'll talk a lot more about it in the coming weeks as I cover it in the Atelier MegaFeature on MoeGamer, but first impressions are very positive indeed.
The thing that has struck me more than anything else is how much it feels like a new Atelier Iris game in terms of structure and mechanics. A whole ton of Atelier Iris' best bits have been brought back for Shallie, including the Burst meter, the ability to stun (or "break", as it's known here) enemies and a structure built around earning enough points to progress to the next main narrative beat.
The latter aspect looks to be one of the more interesting parts of the game, as it's dynamic and responsive… kind of. Ostensibly it presents you with objectives to accomplish according to how you've been behaving in the game — have lots of fights, you'll get more combat-related objectives, that sort of thing — but realistically it's a matter of "do this thing a certain number of times and then a specific objective will come up". It's still cool, though, and means that the game feels less like working through a checklist and more like being rewarded for doing the stuff that you're doing anyway.
The main reason people outside the Atelier fandom take an interest in Shallie is the fact that it lacks a time limit. In fact, it appears to completely lack a date and time system altogether — which is fine, because without a time limit, it would feel a bit redundant. Instead, you can take all the time you want to explore, gather materials, fight monsters and interact with your friends — which is great. Personally I have no problem with the time-limited Atelier games, but it's nice to have a change in format, particularly after how most of Atelier Escha & Logy was fairly rigidly structured.
Atelier Shallie also marks a shift to what I assume is the "modern modern Atelier style" of presentation, where rather than exploring dungeons from fixed camera angles, you instead have an over-the-shoulder view, coupled with larger fields whose maps you can't see in their entirety initially. This is very similar to what Atelier Lulua would go on to do in 2019, so I wouldn't be surprised if all the games in between Shallie and Lulua follow a similar means of doing things. I'll have to wait and see, I guess!
In fact, a fair amount of Atelier Shallie feels quite a bit like Atelier Lulua. I'm pretty sure one of the main characters did what I have known up until this point as Lulua's iconic "salute" animation; I suspect it's only a matter of time before at least one person does the nervous "finger circles" animation, which is adorable.
It's great to see how many previous Dusk characters return in Shallie. So far I've only run into Linca, but if the intro video is anything to go by I'm expecting to see Ayesha, Escha and Logy at the very least, and I suspect there will be others too; it just wouldn't be a Dusk game without Wilbell, after all.
Anyway, after an hour or two of play earlier I'm having a good time and I'm looking forward to writing about it. There'll be an article on Escha & Logy's music this week, then the first Shallie article will follow the week after.
We're getting there!
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