Atelier Elie (エリーのアトリエ〜ザールブルグの錬金術士2〜), released 12/17/1998, developed and published by Gust

This is actually at the end of 1998, but I decided to do a first run-through of the game now, and then I will return to it later. After the unexpected success of Atelier Marie, Gust seems to have immediately started developing a sequel. It came out about a year and a half after Marie, so it’s no surprise that the game is very similar. It takes place in the same town as Marie, with many of the same places and characters. The main character Elie, like Marie, is a struggling student hoping to graduate the alchemy academy.

The new gameplay elements are minor. This is the first game to allow you to affect the quality of an item (this time by changing the formula), although the quality has relatively little effect on the game in comparison to later entries. You can also do “original” crafts where you can choose any items you want to combine, although you have to get reasonably close to pre-set formulas to be able to get items. Elie’s levels are now split into an Alchemy level and an Adventurer level.

What is different is the scope of the game, which is larger than Marie. Marie’s seven endings can be gotten in one playthrough fairly easily (maybe with a bit of backtracking to old saves). Elie has 12 endings, and they are different enough that it would be hard to do them in one playthrough. There are more items, and more events. On the whole it is still fairly simple compared to the later entries but it’s more robust than the first game.

The main character Elfill (Elie) is from a rural village. She had her life saved by an alchemist (Marlone/Marie) and now her goal is to become an alchemist herself and reunite with Marie. The basic gameplay is the same as Marie — go out and gather ingredients, make items, and get money by fulfilling requests in the bar. As you level your alchemy you get access to the academy library and you can make more items, and by hearing rumors in the bar you can access more gathering locations. There are a number of events that either activate at certain dates or seasons, or when you get someone’s friendship level up high enough.

Every year on 8/1 there is a contest at the academy, where you have to craft an item, answer quiz questions, and then try to break a barrel without damaging the contents within. After the contest you can check the next day to see how well you did. To get the best endings you have to do pretty well in the contests. Beyond that I am not entirely certain what the effect is — in my experience it seems like if you skip a contest entirely you get a bad ending regardless of your other conditions, and that doing poorly in the contests does not affect the game unless you are going for one of the top endings. But I am not certain about either of these things.

One of the early events I saw was Shia’s wedding (she is Marie’s friend from the first game; the “best” ending of that game has you crafting a medicine to cure her illness).

One of the rivals of Elie in the academy school is Aizel, who I recognize from Atelier Viorate (one of the top Viorate endings involves her). Here she’s just a student, though, under the tutelage of Helmina, who I gather also shows up in some other Atelier games.

I played without a walkthrough for a while; the “regular” ending is as easy to get as in Marie. All you have to do is make a level 4 item, which I had already done by about halfway through the second year. After that you can just rest until each year’s 8/1, do the contest, and then Elie will graduate and set up her alchemy shop where Marie’s was.

At this point I looked at a guide to see what endings there were. I was hoping I could get what seems to be the “best” ending, but I had already messed up some flags that would make it very hard — in the end I was not able to activate an event and I couldn’t get the best ending.

The battle system is nearly the same as Marie — there’s some kind of weather effect but it rarely seemed to do anything.

To find Marie, you have to raise the friendship of one of the companions (a dancer, who I didn’t get any screenshot of apparently). If you have activated a few of the Marie-related flags, she will eventually tell you about a coastal town you can go to, although it takes a month to travel there.

Once you get here, it opens up a bunch of new gathering locations, and you can pay 100 money to have the items sent back to your home town. You can’t do any crafting here, though. It seems that Marie has left here to go across the sea to a different town, but no ships are going right now because of a sea monster.

By seeing some events related to a woman in this town, she will eventually agree to let you use her ship if you can beat the monster.

The monster is powerful but if you use a sleep medicine on it, it won’t wake up at all and you can defeat it with a few shots of the ship cannon.

Elie then reunites with Marie in the town there, and you can hire her for your party. However, to actually get the ending associated with this, you need 8 out of the 11 possible “marie points” from various things throughout the game. I had already messed up 3 of the points, so theoretically I could still do it, but there is an event that can give you a point that I was never able to get to activate correctly.

So I went ahead and stopped with the “Maister Rank” ending, which you can get by fulfilling some not-so-difficult conditions. This gives you an extension of two more years and allows for the three “top” endings, of which one is just getting the Maister Rank and doing none of the other conditions. Elie graduates the academy with this top honor and decides to go back to her hometown to start a new life there.

I managed to get three of the 12 endings (a bad ending, the “normal” ending, and the Maister Rank ending). I don’t know if I am going to play this game to get all twelve of the endings, but I would at least like to retry to get the Marie-related ending that I didn’t successfully do this time. Along the way I will see if there are other endings I can pick up, although as I said, it’s not as easy as it was in Marie to do this.

One other thing that’s in the game are love events that can set Elie up with some of the characters; I didn’t really do this at all. This is partially because a lot of the love-related flags conflict with the Marie flags.

I’m planning on making another post to just list the endings and conditions, partially for my own benefit (although I suppose since there is a translation patch for the PS2 version this could help someone). I will probably then return to the game once I actually reach December 1998 in the SRPGs and give it another try. Other goals i might try are crafting all 200 items, and getting all the event pictures.

(Actually I may not need the post with the endings…)