Gust reveals a new Atelier-related game Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists
Koei Tecmo's Gust has just revealed, in this week, a new game related to their mainstay Atelier series titled Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Atelier of the New Land. This is a spinoff title with a new genre which combines Town-Building with RPG.
This game is being featured in both of this week's Weekly Famitsu and Dengeki PlayStation magazines, where the general producer Junzo Hosoi and the development producer Keisuke Kikuchi confirmed that this title is intended to be the 'festival' title for celebrating the 20th anniversary of their long-running Atelier series, after the previous title—Atelier Lydie and Suelle—served to conclude the trilogy that included Atelier Sophie and Atelier Firis.
In this game, players will assume the role of Nelke von Lushtarm (voiced in Japanese by Rina Honnizumi), a talented noble lady who graduated with top grades in the capital academy but does not have any skills in alchemy. She has been appointed as the administrator of Westwald in place of her father. While she is building a village as a noble, she is also searching the Sage's Artifact which is said to be located nearby, as she admires the Sage of Granzweit who had a mysterious power which is now known as alchemy.
As the genre suggests, the main objective of this game is to develop Westwald and have it grow from a village to a town and eventually a city. The player will have a huge degree of freedom in developing the area as they can place any kinds of buildings wherever they wish. As Westwald grows up, various characters from legacy Atelier series will come to visit the area and interact with Nelke.
There are not just female characters like Marlone (Marie) from Atelier Marie and Sophie Neuenmuller from Atelier Sophie, but even male characters like Klein Kiesling from Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana and Vayne Aurelius from Mana Khemia will visit as well. All characters that appear in this game are being newly designed by Sophie's illustrator NOCO.
While Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists focuses on the town-building system, it still has Investigation, Battle, and Compounding phases which are commonly seen in other Atelier games. Each character will also have their own episodes when interacted with; How you develop the area will determine which characters will get along with you faster, although it wouldn't affect the main story. You can even set up Atelier buildings and give them to the legacy characters (such as Marie) for them to work and settle in the area.
Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Atelier of the New Land is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Nintendo Switch in Japan within 2018.
