"Since when is laziness such a bad thing?"

I first started playing the "Atelier" games when Atelier Iris came out, as I'm sure many of you did. Of course, the Iris games focus more on being a light-hearted RPG, with alchemy there to provide you with useful items for your party and to enhance your abilities (and maybe make a few dollars on the side). Atelier Annie goes back to the series roots (so I've read) by focusing much more on alchemy and running a alchemy shop, and much less on the RPG side, so keep that in mind if you're curious about this game.


The story itself stars the titular Annie, the granddaughter of an accomplished alchemist, who spends all day in bed, dreaming of marrying a rich man and being provided for the rest of her life. Ok, even I admit that's pretty darn lazy. Well, to combat her laziness, her grandpa sends her to Sera Island, to be an alchemy contestant in an effort to turn the island into a giant resort. So against her will she is taken to Sera Island and entered into the contest, where she finds out that the winner can choose to marry the prince or princess, so this of course makes her want to do her best, so she can live her dream of "marrying up".

To get you started, you will be given your own workshop by the king where you live and can live and perform alchemy. You also have a shop attached to the workshop where people will initially come in and tell you how crappy your selection is. The crazy thing is that throughout the game you will need money for various items, but you don't make a darn cent from your "shop". You can visit the adventurers guild to take on jobs for delivering various items, though, which they will pay you for (one of your primary sources of money). You can use your money on buying alchemy books from the local library and equipment from the weapon shop. You'll need that equipment too, because you will have to go out and explore various locations around the island to gather alchemy items. While you're out gathering items, you will randomly get into fights with the local wildlife, which is where the light RPG portion of the game comes in. But don't worry, you won't be alone, since you'll make easily half a dozen friends who you can ask to go out and gather items with you, and they can fight alongside you and level up with you.

So, in essence so far you gather items, make items through alchemy, use them to make money, use the money to buy new alchemy books, than repeat the process. While you're doing this you'll level up by fighting monsters while gathering items, and level up your alchemy skill and tools by making items. Pretty simple, right? Well along the way, you are given assignments by the resort committee which you have to complete and turn in. Doing a good job on them gives you a medal (bronze, silver, or gold) and a TON of money. Unfortunately you can only use this to invest in businesses around the island. For example you get, let's say, 10 million dollars for getting a gold metal on your first test. You can than buy a park for 6 million and visit it. All in all there are about twelve different attractions you can buy, but you can only really pick six out of twelve as the other attractions disappear when you pick certain ones (giving the game some amount of re-playability).

When you visit your attractions you will meet the manager of the facility and you can work with them to make items that they need. Doing so increases how famous that attraction is, and once you pass a certain fame thresh-hold you can than "renew" that attraction which increases it's level. Doing this for your various attractions and also doing adventurer's guild quests will also increase your shops fame. Your reward for this is that once a month you will be presented with a sales record and given some money. Money for your resorts, not for you (THAT was disappointing to find out). You'll than sink that money into renewing your attractions further.

Time passes fairly regularly, as it takes days to visit your resorts, days to gather items at a gathering points, and days to perform alchemy (for certain items or quantities). The game does last for a long time, though, as you stay on Sera Island for about three years and do about six assignments or so before the game ends. Alchemy works pretty much like it does in the Atelier Iris games: as long as you have the recipe and the items, you can do it. I will admit Atelier Annie is more focused on alchemy, as you have several different tools that you can use to make your recipes with, and each tool can level up as you use it. You can also make supplements to add to your items, giving them such titles as "Big" or "Small", since certain requests that come in to you will add in the fact that they want their item to be "Big".

The fighting is much more simplistic, as it's basically you and two allies against enemies in a grid-like fighting structure. The grids are just there for formation purposes though, with whether or not you're closer to the enemies. You'll take turns smacking each other until one of you dies. Of course you can flee and use items, and each character also has a special ability they can use once per battle, but as you can see, the focus of the game isn't really on the fighting as it is so simplistic. There ARE some challenges with certain bosses here and there though.

Graphics are fairly simplistic but do their job well. The animations throughout the game are very simplistic as well (what little of them there are). The game is really focused on the social interactions between Annie and her friends, which is where they cram in most of the game's "humor". Yes, humor is in quotes. Most of the humor involves either how lazy Annie is or clashes between her friends, and rarely made me laugh. Plus the "story" is almost non-existent. Annie is pretty much the same from year one as she is in year three. The alchemy game play is ok, but the fighting is about as basic as you can get. Also, another unique thing about the game is that all of the audio is in Japanese. Fun!

The game does have excellent re-playability, and unless you kick butt during your first play-through you'll need more than one play-through to see the game's better endings (you will get to keep left-over items from one play-through to the next). The game does feature multiple endings and with so many alchemy items to obtain and make, as well as so many unique events and even some special monsters to fight, you can spend many hours with Annie.

Overall: 7/10

Overall, the game serves a very unique market, and is definitely not for everyone. There is no dating, story arcs, or true combat experiences (in case you were wondering). All that's really here is cutesy anime humor, alchemy, and completing alchemy jobs on time. Have fun and keep playing.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/10, Updated 04/11/11

Game Release: Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island (US, 10/27/09)