Atelier Escha & Logy uses the Dynasty Warriors engine (no, not Atelier Warriors)

[Cyril]

I apologize for the double post, but I just saw the new DLC for Ayesha, and I have to say someone needs to have a word with NIS. If they're going to sell ultimately pointless DLC like costumes, they might want to try pricing it a little cheaper than $3 each. For the new characters, I can kind of see $3, but for a simple costume? Feh.

You should probably be saying this to Bamco, not NISA or GUST.

On the subject of the new screens, I like how down-to-earth most of the male characters are, which is in contrast to the more over-the-top females, a similar trend to Ayesha.  On the graphics: I feel like the models aren't necessarily as high of quality, just from the stills.  I don't quite think that GUST is familiar with their new engine yet as overall they've taken a graphical step down.  It's not bad, mind you, I just am feeling nitpicky.

On an entirely unrelated note: The song played in Ayesha's Atelier after you complete the main storyline has the "item creation" sound effect at 3:30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Lxfx7cp_E
Are there any other songs that do clever little additions like this that I've missed?

[Farron]

^ Ayesha, rather the Atelier series is a bit of a tough thing to reccomend.

I think if Gust spent another...maybe few weeks or a month to polish the games, they'd be bumped a full-letter grade.  And while the alchemy system is extremely well-done and incredible in-depth, too much of the rest is somewhat sloppy (music and artwork aside).
Since Rorona, the graphics have gotten exponentially better.  But, and in Ayesha, there are about 10 variaties of enemies and I think only 3 storyline bosses (so yeah, the rest are enemies and harder versions of those enemies as "area bosses").  The game is also dialogue-heavy, which is good if you love light-hearted anime, but bad to the rest of the world because the "quality" of writing  (rather lack of) makes cutscenes a drag and the characters as 3D anime tropes.

There's also a lack of direction in the games.  Of course, Ayesha is the most lenient of the [traditional-style] Atelier games.

If you can excuse that, I totally recommend it because there are few games quite like the Atelier series that really exist.

It's sad to hear about the lack of polish, especially the lack of bosses. I started playing the Atelier series this gen and finally in the 3rd game (Meruru) when I started getting good and actually owning the bosses with my alchemy this game gas only 3...
The thing about the light-hearted anime style suits me fine, I think it's perfect for those days you want something to relax. The sad thing is it as once again the dual audio thing, as I like to use these games as a way to practice my japanese. If think I've gained quite a bit of vocabulary playing through these 3 atelier games. The characters dialogue has in my opinion a perfect tempo for an average speaker like me (the dialogue rarely have obscure words, no one speaks too fast and there aren't many hard structures in their grammar)

In short, I'll just wait to see if I'll gain the US version, if not, probably before June I'll get the downloadable version on PSN or get the discounted "best" edition from Japan.