In Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists Ateliers of the New World, you play as Nelke, the daughter of a lord overseeing the lands. You are tasked with developing the small village of Westbald and helping it bloom into a bustling metropolis.
In the beginning, you struggle to complete your tasks as you only have help from your self and your maid, the town planner and local handyman.
However, as you progress, Alchemists from all the previous Atelier games appear to lend aid. Be it hunting the lands for materials to sell, manning an alchemy lab to craft items or operate a shop to sell such things.
Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists Ateliers of the New World Review
The game itself is split into turns. Each turn is a week in game time. At the start of the turn, you set everyone up with their jobs and town planning. Then you progress to the holiday or free time part of the week.
Here, you work on things involving Nelke and her relationships with the folk of her town. There’s a limited amount of time to do things here and everything you do takes time out of your weekend. There are too many things to do most weeks which is where some mad time management skills come into play.
You need to decide if each character needs your attention or if you’ll be going out into the wild with a group to source new items for your stores.
Out in the open world, you task a group of up to five alchemists to scour the lands for new items or materials for your stores. Here there is again more management.
You have to have the time to make it to the end to unlock the next area. Go too fast and you’ll make it to the end but wont look for items. Go too slow and you will loot all the things but miss the end and have to try again.
The time you have to do this is manipulated by the amount of time you spend consorting with friends before you ventured out. Once you finish with your ‘eye spy bush walk’ you return to town and you turn is over.
Build it up Buttercup
The micromanagement side of this game is super simple yet complex enough to simulate the ins and outs of running a business.
You are tasked with maintaining the flow of cash in town to cover the cost of wages, the upkeep of buildings and the outlaid costs of building additional homes, farms, and stores. Added to this is also the need to lay your town out with the fronts of stores facing roads so that trade is able.
The building of gardens, farms and orchids generates produce and the better the “farming” stats, the better yield you will get from said plots of land. Once you have these you can then either sell them or use them to craft better items.
The way the stores work is that you pick an item and with the help of an Alchemist, sell them each game turn. Again, the better the stats are the more they can sell each turn.
Finally, once you obtain the right ingredients and again with the help of an Alchemist, you can craft or conjure better items which will sell for a much greater profit. These items are made at a pace of ease of ingredient generation plus the difficulty of crafting.
Make It!
Through all of these things, you should be able to maintain a positive level of commercial growth. This helps your town bloom, however, that would be too easy.
Your father pops up now and then to issue challenges that need to be completed before a certain time. Although not once did I miss these, they come across as the driving force of the game.
This game is addictive as hell and although it gets repetitive at times I found myself blowing away a large part of my weekend.
I managed and manipulated my townsfolk to achieve a task set by my in-game father and before I knew it, I’d spent two days of my real-life in this world.
Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists Ateliers of the New World was reviewed on PS4 using a digital code provided by the publisher.
PowerUp! Reviews
Game Title: Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists Ateliers of the New World
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Quirky addictive game mechanics. - 6.1/106.1/10
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Easy to achieve challenges. - 6/106/10
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City planning is fun - 6.8/106.8/10
