We have a bit of sad news to report today as NIS America have announced that Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland has been delayed, but only by a week. Originally set to release on May 22nd for the PlayStation 3, this RPG will now be releasing the following week on the 29th.

The delay according to NIS America is due to a delay in the manufacturing process. This small delay is for the U.S. market only, as the game will still be releasing on its original May 22nd date in Europe.

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland follows the adventures of Princess Meruru as she becomes an apprentice to Totori Helmold, and sets out to use her new-found Alchemy skill to help expand the small town of Arls where she lives. The game features a ton of character cameo’s from previous Atelier games and a load of improvements, such as a development system.

Even though a delay sucks, thankfully it is a very short one. Keep checking back for our review of the game in the coming weeks and let us know in the comments if you plan to pick it up.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

Fans should take note that as nice as Gust’s development history might be for RPGs, this is no RPG. Rather, Ciel no Surge is much more accurately classified as more of a “life simulator” of sorts with a dash of dating sim and a pinch of visual novel. There are no enemies, no hit points, and no characters who’ve lost their memories who shall be called upon to save the world; it’s not what one might be expecting from a studio responsible for mostly JRPGs.

In this video, players are treated to an intro with rather sweeping music, then introduced to Ion (pronounced like the English word “eon”), the little girl who lives inside your Vita.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Surge Concerto is not currently expected to be released outside of Japan. We’ll let you know if that changes.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

The announcement of Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2, a sequel to the extremely underwhelming original, brought about a lot of mixed emotions in RPG lovers everywhere. On one hand many, including myself, were less than enthusiastic about the sequel after being disappointed with the first. However, on the other hand, there is nowhere to go but up. Right? Thankfully I can say with confidence that MK2 takes some huge strides forward and improves on a lot of what people gripped about on the original.

Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 takes place in the land of Gamesindustri, a world-sized parody on the Japanese gaming industry and the console wars. Players take control of Nepgear, Neptune’s little sister, as she and many of her friends from the original game try to free the world from the grasp of ASIC, who are attempting to take over Gamesindustri. The game starts off with Neptune and the other CPUs from the original game being captured and now three years later, Nepgear and friends must try to fix everything.

The great thing about the game is the huge collaboration between big RPG developers and characters in the game are representative of the companies. IF and Compa, who start out with your party, represent developers Idea Factory and Compile Heart. Add in the character Gust, based off the company of the same name and Nisa, who represents NIS America, the publishers of the game. The towns that you visit in the game are also based on things from the game industry, like Lastation (PlayStation) and Leanbox (Xbox). These lands and their CPU counterparts are made up to fit the console and company they represent.

The biggest issue people had with the original was the gameplay, which took a simple thing like healing and made it ridiculously frustrating and, to put it nicely, stupid. Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 does away with the horrible percentages and really streamline gameplay. The game does a great job of giving players the same customization options from the first but makes the combat a lot easier to dive into an enjoy.

The combat system is turn-based and is a strong point to the game. Each turn, players will be able to move a character a set distance based on their MOV stat. Once you get close enough to an enemy, a number of attack options come available on the face buttons. Each button has a different attack mapped to it, and through different varying combinations of buttons, you can pull off more powerful combo attacks. The different attacks come in the form of quick dash attacks, powerful attacks, and your basic strike. Each attack cost a set number of AP or Attack Points, so players will want to pay attention to this as they pick and choose which attack to perform. As you continue to damage an enemy in battle, his guard points will diminish and when at zero, attacks will do more damage.

In the battle you will also be responsible for SP or Special Points. This gauge of points will increase during battle when dealing or taking damage and at the end of your characters turn. These points are used to cast skills such as healing your teammates, curing status effects, and some powerful attack techniques. The abilities in here that do damage can take a lot of SP to use but are extremely helpful in boss battles.The great part here is that each characters’ special skills are different from the rest, giving each character a very unique feel and use on the battlefield.

Your party starts out as three members but quickly grows past that to get up to eight. Once you get to a point where you have more than four characters in your party, you can partner two people together, setting one in a support role. This person in the support role is not able to fight in battle, but they do provide passive abilities to their partnered character. These abilities are unique per character and range from increased damage to + magic defense. This big party and the ability to set up support characters is very nice, especially considering that the game has 13 playable characters.

The combat works very well and is very easy to pick up, but it is also just plain easy. Nothing here will take you that many attempts to clear, instead pushing you quickly to the story which can be good and bad. The positives here are that the overly lengthy dungeons are gone, replaced by quick hitting dungeons that briskly move you through the game. This allows players to pick up the game and complete a few quests in a short amount of time, allowing for quick gaming sessions. Enemies appear on-screen and give players the option to run past them or try to get in a preemptive strike and take to the offense first. If an enemy is too weak though, the preemptive strike will destroy them off the bat, taking out a lot of unneeded combat. The dungeons you will find yourself in do a better job than the first of providing some variety but there are still a few repetitions of palettes.

The big problem to be found is that the combat is built to push players towards the story with extreme force, but the story just isn’t good at all. A lot of the humor that made the first game shine has been forgotten, leaving players with a story that does not do much to get you interested and characters that somehow didn’t improve from the previous game. In fact, the best thing about the story is the fact that you can press a single button to quickly progress through loads of completely useless dialogue and get back to the combat and everything else that this game has to offer. For players like myself, who have played the original, the story somehow takes a step back.

Thankfully, there are other things to do outside of the story and combat which add some nice depth to the game. Players have a ton of cool customization options on players, especially when it comes to outfits and weapons, although a few too many of the weapons are recycled from the previous game. Players will be able to gather ingredients and plans throughout the dungeons to synthesize new items and weapons, as well as take quests from the town to complete at your own leisure. Also, by completing quests, players can change the shares of the world, increasing support for one faction while decreasing it for another. The results of changing the shares has a direct result on the ending you will have in the game, along with how many CPUs will come to fight alongside you. Each quest is also repeatable, so if you so wish, you can replay the quest as many times as you want to increase or decrease certain shares. Also added is a mock of Twitter called Chirper. Each town has its own network and here you can go to interact with different citizens of each town, along with your party members. You can also view events here, which can have a direct result in your relationship with your fellow party members. Affecting this for the positive can open up new combo possibilities and support abilities with a given party member.

As has become the norm with almost every Japanese RPG that makes it way over, the presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. The visuals are a slight step up over the previous game, but still fail to really capture what the PlayStation 3 is really capable of. It is disappointing to see the very meager step forward this game has taken in this aspect, especially compared to some of the other games released in the past year, such as Ar Tonelico and the Atelier series. Enemy models are extremely well done and unique, with a ton of really cool looking baddies to fight. The dungeons also look good but not overly great, with some fairly rugged textures to be found.

On the audio side of things, well it could be better. The voice work receives a passing grade, but only barely, as too many characters are just downright annoying, no matter the language. This becomes a really big issue during battles, as the same annoying voice says the same annoying battle cry 3 or 4 times per battle. Not all the characters are bad and there are a few real standouts, but they seem to be overshadowed by the bad. The main theme song of the game is great and the rest of the game’s music score is good but not overly great.

At the end, Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 makes some great improvements over the first and is by far the better game, but not as much better as we would hope. The gameplay takes a huge step forward to provide the fun, albeit easy, combat that the first game lacked. However, the story takes a huge step back, making even the game of golf seem interesting, which becomes even more frustrating with the quick and small dungeons that push you quickly back to the story. The game is a bit short for its genre, clocking in right around 20 hours, but even with the shortcomings of the story, the easy but fun combat, along with item and party customization options, should be enough to keep you interested for the 20 hour trek.

PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score + Combat is fluid and fast paced fun - Blah blah blah, the story is just boring +/- Graphics take a step up, audio drags it right back down

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© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

Surge Concerto: Ciel no Surge is categorized as a “realtime life simulation” by Gust, and the idea is that players communicate with a girl named Ion, who lives inside your Vita. Whether it’s online-only or not, it appears to use the network functions quite a bit. Here are the first screens and art:

Interested gamers can check out the official Japanese website here. Surge Concerto is slated for release in Japan on April 26th. This early, it’s of course too soon to tell if it will leave Japan, though NIS America brings over a lot of Gust games. It could happen.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Japanese Developer Gust will see yet another installment of perhaps its most popular international series head abroad this May, as NIS America has announced North American and European localization plans for the PS3′s Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland.

This is the third title in Gust’s Arland sub-series of the Atelier franchise, so naturally, the game will have a look, sound, and feel comparable to those of Atelier Rorona and Atelier Totori.

NIS America has launched the following prologue video to go with this announcement. It’s basically recapping the first two Arland games before briefly introducing the third:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Atelier series always sells well in Japan, with its PS3 titles being no strangers to the number one spot on software charts. They’ve apparently been doing well abroad, too, as NIS America’s localization announcements are coming faster and faster. Rorona took about a year and a half to get from Japan to North America, Totori was released internationally about a year after its Japanese launch, and now, Meruru is slated to debut with an 11 month gap.

NISA has recently launched the game’s official website here. Interested gamers can check that out, and don’t forget we’ve got some screenshots and a pair of Japanese trailers right here at PSLS.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us

The latest game in the Atelier series has finally made its way out here to Western audiences, bringing with it a light-hearted story and plenty of adventuring to the table. Players will revisit the world of Arland two years after the events of the first game, Rorona. The trip isn’t a smooth one and though there are some definite upgrades to the game, there is still just something missing in this series. Read on for the rest of our look at Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland.

Atelier Totori takes place two years after its prequel, Atelier Rorona, and places gamers in the shoes of Totooria Helmold, an alchemist in training who has her eyes set on becoming one of the best adventurers around, just like her mother. Totori’s mother disappeared on an adventure and, though everyone else has given up hope, Totori still believes her mother is alive, but to search for her, she must first get an adventurer license. On her way to getting this license and searching for her mother, Totori will meet new friends, work on her alchemy, and have the experience of a lifetime, though it may not be an experience for most gamers out there.

The story isn’t one that throws itself in your face and forces you to pay attention. Instead, in Atelier Totori, the story comes and goes at certain points in your exploration, kind of popping up unexpectedly to remind you that there is in fact a point to this all. This can be a double-edged sword, as it provides you more time to gather ingredients for your alchemy, but it also makes the story feel at times detached and brings about some serious pacing issues. Luckily, the game is backed by a more than average cast of characters, with all kinds of quirkiness oozing out to help pass the time, but it only passes it so far.

In Totori, the name of the game is adventuring. In fact, the only real deadline to the plot is that you must reach a certain adventurer rank every three years in the game or else its curtains for you. Outside of this, you are free to roam the world, pick up items, fight baddies, and blend together all kinds of ingredients for the perfect creation. To upgrade your adventurer license in the game, you must take on different tasks from the local bartenders. These tasks range from gathering items and killing off a certain number of enemies, to traveling across the globe or fully exploring each area of the map. On the surface, this may sound like one deep experience, after 10 quests or so, you will start to see the extremely repetitive nature of these tasks. There is really only so many ways to kill 5 of these, or gather 3 of these. Though for some, this open system of taking on tasks, roaming the world, and crafting items may be just what the doctor ordered. Each task you accept will carry with it a competition date and reward total. It will also give special bonuses to the player based on how quickly they finish it, so make sure to be quick about it for a few extra items.

After accepting the quests, you must now go out into the world and complete them. As you travel from place to place on the map, you will notice that each destination will tell you how many days it takes to travel there. Pay close attention to this and when your quests are due, so you’re not stuck out completing the quest when its deadline passes by. Whenever you enter the areas, you will have the option of fighting enemies and gathering ingredients from around the area. As you gather items in the area you will notice your gauge in the upper left corner going down. After gathering a few items, it will deplete and refill, which costs you a day in your adventure. To help you save some time, when you highlight an area on the main map, it will tell you the main ingredients located there and which monsters you might face, but it won’t do this for every area, as some show just a question mark. One area to item gathering that has actually taken a step down since Rorona is the scale of the areas where you search. There is less to see once you click on a place, however Gust has added more total locations to explore to make up for this.

Now, while you are out exploring, you will have to get your hands dirty and take of some blue puni’s or other enemies. Thankfully, the combat in Totori is a step up from what it was in Rorona, but it is still not enough. To trigger a battle, you simply run up to an enemy and slap him with your wand, starting a turn-based battle between you’re three characters and the enemies. Each character has the option of a basic attack or a special skill, though Totori has the best skill of all and that’s items. In fact, Totori and Rorona are the only characters with the ability to use items, so make sure to stock up before battle or you won’t last long. Created items in your workshop play a huge part in combat and characters can do follow-up attacks or block Totori right before an oncoming attack. The combat is by no means terrible and this time around it actually serves a purpose, allowing you to gain points to your license. However, there is still so much untapped potential in what could be a really great part of the game. Instead the combat feels at time like it brought its sword, but forgot its armor.

Now what would an Atelier game be without the Alchemy? Thankfully, this part of the game took what was good in Rorona and added some very nice tweaks to the system. In alchemy, Totori can make as many items as she wants until her MP gauge empties out and her ingredients are gone. Each item that is gathered or synthesized has a quality ranking from one to one hundred, with the higher quality items being the most desirable. Select the item you want to make, then pick the ingredients and mix them together in your cauldron. Once the item is completed, you will have the option to add traits to the item based off of a point value, which in turn adds quality to the item. Items with lower quality will do less damage in battle and will lower quality over time, so there is incentive to throw out the bad ingredients and find yourself only the best. These additions do a great job of pushing players to be picky about what they put in their stew and to improve items as many times as they can.

Developer Gust once again provides a solid audio and visual experience for gamers to enjoy. The amount of details in the characters and environments are top-notch, with the world and especially the world map really bursting with color and popping out at you. The audio is no slouch either, as music from Rorona makes an appearance and the theme song for Totori is very pleasing to the ears. If only the same could be said for the voice acting, which, like a JRPG, is completely hit-or-miss, though mostly miss. The voice work done for Totori is up to speed and really fits the character, but others are a pain to your ears, causing for more taps of the mute button then should be necessary. Thankfully, the original Japanese voice work has been added to ease your pain.

Aterlier Totori is not a game for everyone, as some gamers might find themselves bored with the gather and create formula, but it is still a solid RPG experience. The story won’t leap out and get you but does a good job of gradually building up and delivering a story not centered around demon’s or apocalyptic implications. The combat in the game does just enough to grab you attention without being overly flashy or deep. Atelier Totori is a game that is fundamentally solid across the board but doesn’t have any real area of WOW factor. The game is around 20 hours or so to complete and will offer a solid (there’s that word again) experience if you are willing to work through the horrible pacing. Don’t be surprised though if you find yourself getting bored a few hours in after completing your 10th gathering quest while waiting for the story scene to happen and breathe some life into you.

PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score +Quirky Characters and Interesting Story Once it Really Gets Going. +/-Combat is Good but Lacks Anything to Make it Great -Quests are Repetitive and Get Boring Fast, Leaving a Sometimes Boring Grind.

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© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

The video features a shortened version of the Japanese theme song, “Pilgrimage,” composed by Ken Nakagawa and Kazuki Yanagawa. We also see some battle action with Rorona and Sterk, lead characters from last year’s PS3 Atelier title.

Console versions of the Gust-developed RPG series have been making their way across the Pacific lately, but role playing fans haven’t been so lucky when it comes to handhelds. DS incarnations such as Atelier Lina stayed in Japan due to Annie not putting out on the sales charts, and none of the PSP-based Atelier titles have been announced for localization at this time. Given the system’s general decline in North America, it will likely stay that way.

Players of Atelier Rorona will remember a scandalous story translated hilariously by NIS America’s localization staff. Per tradition and seeing as this game takes place in the same country with many overlapping characters, fans can expect a similar experience when this game launches in September.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

NIS America is in the giving mood, having already released new screenshots of Disgaea 4, and now giving that same treatment to Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. There are a total of 65 screens for your viewing pleasure, which show the main characters Totori, Rorona, Chim, and others.

Atelier Totori is developed by Gust and is the sequel to Atelier Rorona, which released for the PlayStation 3 back in October. The story takes place five years after the original and follows Totooria Helmold, Totori for short, a student to Rorona. The game will feature many upgrades over the previous title and looks to build upon the strong foundation of the first.

Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland releases exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in North America on August 27 and later this fall in Europe. Look for more coverage from us in the coming months and for our review closer to release date.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

The very first English trailer of Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland has been released today, courtesy of the fine folks over at NIS America. By now, many of you have seen dozens of trailers in Japanese, so it is nice to finally be able to understand what is going on it the trailer.

In this English trailer, we get a good look at the game’s story, along with an introduction to the various characters in the game. Atelier Totori is a direct sequel to Rorona, taking place five years after the events of the first game. The game focuses on item creation through Alchemy and features plenty of enhancements from the first title, such as the revamped world map and upgrade in character models. You can check out our impressions of Totori at this year’s E3 and take a look at the trailer below.

Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland is releasing September 27th, exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

The top of the Japanese software charts for the past week is up and it is all about Sony with a jaw-dropped seven of the top 10 titles appearing on PlayStation hardware. Topping the charts is the newly released Atelier Meruru: The Alchemist of Arland 3, which in its first week sold a very respectable 82,585 copies for the PlayStation 3. Such high sales had been expected.

Other notable new releases this past week include Steins; Gate for the PSP which sold 63,558 copies, Gundam Memories: Memories of the Battle for PSP with 52,067 sold, and Bleach: Soul Ignition for the PS3 which moved 23,516 copies. Little Battle eXperience and Yakuza: Of the End continued their strong sales with the first one breaching 200K and Yakuza slaying over 370K.

See the full list below and check out the entire top 20.

[PS3] 1. Atelier Meruru: Alchemist of Arland 3 (Gust, 06.23.11): 82,585 NEW!
[PSP] 2. Steins; Gate (5pb., 06.23.11): 63,558 NEW!
[PSP] 3. Gundam Memories: Memories of the Battle (Namco Bandai, 06.23.11): 52,067 NEW!
[PSP] 4. Little Battle eXperience (Level 5, 06.16.11): 38,326 (204,513)
[N3DS] 5. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time 3D (Nintendo, 06.16.11): 37,452 (201,563)
[NDS] 6. Tennis no Oujisama Gyutto! Doki Doki Survival Umi to Yama no Love Passion (Konami, 06.23.11): 30,234 NEW!
[PS3] 7. Yakuza Of The End (Sega, 06.09.11): 24,247 (376,738)
[PS3] 8. Bleach Soul Ignition (SCEJ, 06.23.11): 23,516 NEW!
[WII] 9. Wii Sports Resort (Wii Remote Plus Pack) (Nintendo, 11.11.10): 9,874 (362,957)
[PSP] 10. Gloria Union (Atlus, 06.23.11): 8,933 NEW!
[NDS] 11. Pokemon Black & White (Pokemon, 09.18.10): 7,086 (5,211,443)
[WII] 12. Wii Party (Nintendo, 07.08.10): 5,980 (1,923,731)
[PS3] 13. Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts, 06.23.11): 5,885 NEW!
[NDS] 14. Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 Professional (Square Enix, 03.31.11): 5,814 (543,834)
[N3DS] 15. Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D (Capcom, 06.02.11): 5,633 (89,038)
[PSP] 16. Mother Goose no Himitsu no Kan Nursery Rhymes for You (QuinRose, 06.23.11): 5,295 NEW!
[PS3] 17. Grand Theft Auto IV Complete Edition (Take-Two, 06.23.11): 4,629 NEW!
[N3DS] 18. One Piece Unlimited Cruise Special (Namco Bandai, 05.26.11): 4,289 (116,463)
[WII] 19. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo, 04.10.08): 4,154 (3,249,050)
[WII] 20. Earth Seeker (Kadokawa Games, 06.23.11): 4,055 NEW!

[Source]

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

Today marks the Japanese launch of the latest installment in Gust’s flagship franchise, Atelier. The newest game, called Atelier Meruru: The Alchemist of Arland 3, is likely to follow the trend of its elders. That is to say, selling like hotcakes… or rather, hotcakes that were synthesized out of cabbage, water, logs, and a pair of sandals.

In the first two weeks or so of their respective releases, gamers in Japan had trouble finding either Meruru‘s two immediate predecessors, Rorona and Totori as they were sold out practically everywhere. This month, the game will find itself going head to head with another Japanese juggernaut from the Yakuza series in Ryu Ga Gotoku: Of the End by Sega. Released on the ninth of this month, Of the End is off to a phenomenal start, already shipping almost half a million units to retail shops across the country.

In my biking past local game shops today, Meruru was already sold out at one of them, as it had a sign posted to say as much. “There is no Atelier Meruru,” it said. “Copies will come tomorrow.”

All signs are pointing towards good Japanese sales for Meruru. We’ll see if who ends up being number one overall though, as topping a Yakuza game is a tall order. Congratulations go out to the teams behind these two hot-selling games.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

NIS America is always looking to give their fans out here in the West plenty of great Role-playing games to enjoy. Atelier Totori: The Alchemist of Arland 2 is that next game and we recently got a chance to sit down and play it at the NIS America booth. With a lot of upgrades over the previous title in series, Atelier Rorona, we were very eager to see just how much had changed with Totori.

In the demo time that we got on the game we were shown just a tiny part of the overall map to be found in the game. And from that we could see that this will be one hell of a huge game. While on the topic of the world map, this has seen a huge change from Rorona and for the good; it looks beautiful and allows for much easier traversal from place to place. While traveling you will have your friends with you but thankfully paying your friends traveling expenses has been taken out of the game, making it a bit easier to explore the world.

The characters and environments have seen a huge improvement over the previous game. The characters look much more crisp, and close attention detail has been paid to each individual character, making for a better overall experience. The environment around your characters as well as the towns in the game have also received a nice level of polish – heck even the menu’s look gorgeous in the game. Totori also includes dual-audio for those fans who like to hear the voices in their native Japanese tongue.

However you don’t really play an RPG for all of this, you play it for the deep story and engaging combat. We cannot tell you a lot about the story because most of our hands on dealt with the combat, characters, and new features. However the combat is a lot faster than it was in Rorona and feels a lot more fun and needed. In the combat you have your basic attacks, magic and item attacks, and then your joint attacks where you call in a teammate to assist you in doing damage or blocking an attack. The music played during combat was extremely cute and enjoyable, adding a nice bonus to engaging enemies on the field of battle.

Gone in Totori are the main timed missions which moved along the story. In fact the only time specific mission that has to do with the main story is that your character must obtain a certain license rank by your 3rd year or the game is over. Licenses play a huge part in the game as you can take on various quests to fulfill certain licenses, thus ranking you up and providing you with more destinations on the map. You still have missions in the game that you can accept which will have you finding specific items to turn in or quests to kill specific monsters. As you continue to fulfill the quests you will gain popularity and in turn will gain more money. Raising your popularity with specific characters in the game will also affect the kind of ending you will have. Events will still unfold in the game at specified dates and with specific characters in your party.

Item creation is back in the game and while it is basically the same from Rorona it does have a feature a bit more elaborate customization. First off you must select the item you want to create in the end and then select the ingredients that you want to add into the pot for creation. While in Rorona traits added to your final product were randomly selected for you; in Totori you can actually select which traits you would like applied. Each item you want to create will have a cost level at the end and here you can select the traits you wanted added but you cannot go over the cost level of the item. So if your cost level is five, you can only apply traits that add up to but do not surpass that five.

We walked up to the NIS America station hoping to see a game that would be fun to play and walked away from a game that felt addicting. The characters we saw looked great, the combat was fun, and all the things that held Rorona back were gone. This is a game that has a lot of upside and unless something drastic changes before it releases, it is a game you will need to pick up.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

Gust has let loose some new screenshots and story details on its upcoming addition to the Atelier series, Atelier Meruru: Alchemist of Arland 3. Due out on the 23rd of this month in Japan, these shots show a few new characters. The young man with the oversized sword is Geno, the short-haired girl is Philly, and the guy who looks like a king is… the king.

Atelier, like many others, is a series whose localization decisions are made almost wholly based on the sales of the previous entry, so if you’re thinking Meruru looks or sounds like your thing, show your support for Atelier Totori: The Alchemist of Arland 2, which is set to come to North America this fall. If it sells well, you can probably look for an announcement of Meruru’s translation in 2012, based on NIS America’s established publishing patterns with the series.

[Source]

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

It was only a couple of months ago when the latest in the line of Alchemist of Arland games was announced. Titled Atelier Meruru: The Alchemist of Arland 3, the game is scheduled to release next month in Japan, and although there are no plans to release the game outside of its home country, many of the previous titles have released internationally. The game carries some of the oldschool JRPG tones we saw on the original PlayStation, which is something many role-playing fans have been dying for all generation long.

See for yourself in the many screenshots below:

There’s definitely a “cutesy” vibe going on here, which reminds me of Eternal Sonata. There’s little known about the game other than that it centers around a princess which goes by the name of Meruru, hence the game title. Some typical bourgeois stuff goes down, rich people get upset, and you have yourself a reason for guys in twill armor to take up arms and start attacking medieval knights. Oh, and there are kitty cats and bunnies too. This is one of those games that either makes you wish you knew how to read Japanese, or makes you glad you already know how.

We also have a few trailers if you’d like to see these cute asian girls in motion.

© jleack for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Nippon Ichi’s North American publishing branch NIS America, which routinely handles titles by its parent company as well as other Japanese developers, has revealed three more titles for North America, all projected to arrive this year and all exclusively under the PlayStation brand.

First up, beat-em-up game Bleach: Soul Resurrección, formerly known as Bleach: Soul Ignition and made by SCEI, is on its way to the PS3. Meanwhile, JRPG fans will get a direct sequel to developer Gust’s Atelier Rorona: Alchemist of Arland in the form of Atelier Totori: Alchemist of Arland 2. The game was a smash hit in Japan when it was released a year ago. With that amount of time passing with an announcement, some people (like Heath Hindman) were beginning to doubt if a localization would happen at all. Before Totori hits North American shelves, its sequel Atelier Meruru will be available in Japan. Judging by the trophy he gave it, Cameron apparently had a great time with Atelier Rorona.

Last but not least is Nippon Ichi’s own old-school dungeon crawler Cladun x2 (called Classic Dungeon 2 in Japan), exclusively for the PSP’s PSN. As if laughing in the face of downtime and outages, NIS America shows confidence in the network and newly announces a PSN game. Ryan reviewed the first game for us here at the LifeStyle and loved it.

No exact dates have been set for these games; all the company has said so far is August for Bleach and Cladun, and fall for Totori. With Disgaea 4 coming to North American PS3s in September, NISA is certainly giving gamers lots to do while they stay inside with the air conditioners and game systems.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us