Review by: Neilie Johnson

Aside from Sanrio, Japanese game developer Gust may be one of the biggest purveyors of “cute” in the interactive world. In fact, with the company's long-running Atelier series, it may have the market cornered on cute—or at least have it backed into a commodious cul-de-sac. The latest game in the series, Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland, adds to Gust's massive compendium of cute with an RPG that's predictably beautiful, quirky and engrossing.

Atelier Totori is the sequel to Gust's controversial 2010 RPG, Atelier Rorona, a game that was both lauded and vilified for its bizarre, suggestive dialog, horrid voice acting and unforgiving time-limited gameplay. While Atelier Totori retains some aspects of these things, it also improves on them, making for a game that's easy to pick up and difficult to put down. Named for Totooria Helmold, (Totori to her friends) Atelier Totori tells the story of a simple teenage girl from the fishing village of Alanya who dreams of being an alchemist. No wait—she dreams of being an adventurer. Well really, she wants to be an alchemist-slash-adventurer.

Whatever she wants to become, Totori's main goal is to find her mother, legendary adventurer, Gisela Helmold, who vanished when Totori was just a baby. In a welcome bid to avoid the usual expansive JRPG themes, Atelier Totori eschews epic, “save the world” scenarios to focus on this highly personal story and that's all to the good. It helps us care about Totori and about the people in her life, weird as they may be. And yes, the characters in Atelier Totori—from Totori's doormat of a father to the city of Arland's cross-dressing blacksmith—are undeniably a bunch of oddballs.

The good news is, while the characters are fairly off-the-wall, their interactions aren't quite as creepy as they were in the previous game. Which isn't to say there aren't some hilariously inappropriate exchanges between them. Everyone in the game seems to be mentally 12 years old and obsessed with discussing who's cuter than whom. Oh, and then there's Melvia the amazon woman, who continually mentions butts and boobs while giving people un-asked for massages.

While the storyline and kooky cast are the game's point of entry, the real hook is its gameplay. Building on mechanics established in Atelier Rorona, Atelier Totori features a deep crafting system called “item synthesis”, as well as fun party and turn-based combat systems. Like most RPGs, the game's focus is leveling but in this case, leveling encompasses not only crafting and combat, but adventuring as well. Totori's goal is to become a great adventurer and to hold onto her newly granted adventurer's license, she has to accrue “discoveries” which function like achievements. By scoring points for doing things like “fighting 50 green punis” or “synthesizing 30 different items”, Totori raises her license rank, thus moving the story along and opening up new areas of the map.

Similar to Atelier Rorona, there's a time limit for completing your objectives, in this case, achieving certain ranks. If you don't reach a certain rank within a predetermined timeframe, it's game over—literally—and to continue, you'll have to load an earlier save. What's key is remembering that whether you're synthesizing items or walking from one town to the next, time passes for every action. Gamers complained about this in the previous title and they're likely to feel the same way here. On the surface, it might seem as if you have complete freedom to explore and craft and fight as you see fit, but if you don't fulfill your license requirements, that license will be revoked. That said, fulfilling these requirements isn't difficult and doesn't get in the way of the fun as long as you make a conscious effort to prioritize your tasks.