Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland

by NIS America

• Develop your kingdom! - Develop and transform the landscape right before your eyes!
• Synthesize items! - Gather and synthesize items to use in battle or turn in for huge rewards!
• Explore the world! - More dungeons and fields to explore than ever before!
• Brand new skills! - Special character-specific skills with exceptional effects!
• Returning characters! - Catch up with old friends as they return in an all-new adventure!

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B007H44U1W
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches ; 6.4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: May 31, 2012
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,620 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #36 in Video Games > PlayStation 3 > Games > Role-Playing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland is the third and final Atelier game set within the Arland world, and it continues the series' emphasis on adventure and item synthesis. This latest installment is the direct sequel to Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland.

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Overview
This item includes Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland for the PlayStation®3 and a free bonus art book!

Atelier Meruru adopts a mission-based game system wherein you must develop and enhance your kingdom within three years. There are a variety of quests, ranging from synthesizing and delivering items to taking on ferocious beasts, and how you accomplish these missions will contribute to the progress and storyline of the game. Completing quests will reward you with points that can be used to perform different tasks on a national level, such as creating new facilities and leveling up your kingdom, which in turn will allow you access to different areas to develop and explore.

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Game Features

• Develop your kingdom! - Develop and transform the landscape right before your eyes!
• Synthesize items! - Gather and synthesize items to use in battle or turn in for huge rewards!
• Explore the world! - More dungeons and fields to explore than ever before!
• Brand new skills! - Special character-specific skills with exceptional effects!
• Returning characters! - Catch up with old friends as they return in an all-new adventure!
• Improved graphics! - Revel in the stunning cel-shaded art style!
• Multiple endings! - Over 10 different endings! Try to unlock them all!
• Awesome DLC! - Extend the game by downloading additional dungeons, characters, and costumes!

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Product Description

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland is the third and final Atelier game set within the Arland world and it continues the series' emphasis on adventure and item synthesis. This latest installment is the direct sequel to Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. Atelier Meruru adopts a mission-based game system wherein you must develop and enhance your kingdom within three years. There are a variety of quests ranging from synthesizing and delivering items to taking on ferocious beasts and how you accomplish these missions will contribute to the progress and storyline of the game. Completing quests will reward you with points that can be used to perform different tasks on a national level such as creating new facilities and leveling up your kingdom which in turn will allow you access to different areas to develop and explore.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Same great formula with some slight improvements. June 15, 2012

By Recently

Amazon Verified Purchase

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

I'm going to assume you have played at least one of the previous games (this is the 3rd and final installment of the Arland series). If you haven't you can probably learn more from reading a review of the other games, since they are fairly similiar. There are some improvements in this installment however which i'll go over.

1.) More goal-oriented questing. If you played Totori, you might have been like myself picking up the random quests/gathering stuff and just building adventurer points without really understanding the importance of time management (in that game, my first play through i got the normal/bad ending because i ran out of time). Here however, there are more obvious short-term goals; your main focus is to improve your kingdom (which works though doing requests for others). By doing this you gain more tangible results: statistical bonuses, more shop variety, etc. There's also aesthetic changes; area's change in appearance, have different gathering materials as they change, and more NPC's show up as you improve the kingdom and the population increases. It gives the feeling of an the nation evolving and that your actions are actually making changes in the game world.

2.) Less time pressure. Kind of. There are more requests to do. Instead of just the typical gathering/killing stuff quests in totori, theres slightly more variety. You can still get these normal quests (for money/friendship points) in the tavern, but you also have your development quests that are done to improve the kingdom. You can easily be overwhelemed by the number of quests to do, but at the same time i feel less time pressure than the previous games. That might be because i'm a vet of the series however.

All the tried and true stuff remains the same. Fun, lovable, cutsey characters, alot of the casts returns from the previous games which is great (<3 filly), lots of humor and fun dialog. Again, if you played any of the previous games in the series you know what to expect (and probably already bought this game). If you haven't played any in the series yet, i'd definitely give it a try. Its a unique take on your typical JRPG.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The same great gameplay, with different goals in mind. June 17, 2012

By Jeremy Zhang

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

So this review is going to start out really random, but bear with me. If you've ever played Fable 1 or 2 and Fable 3, you will have found that the overall goals of the game transitioned from RPG to kingdom sim. In Fable 1 and 2, your goal was to build a strong character and go on a quest to kill a strong enemy. In Fable 3 however, your goal was to kill enemies, upgrade your kingdom's infrastructure, and ultimately meet the infrastructure goals (with money and development targets) before the end of the game.

Atelier Meruru is the same with respect to Totori and Rorona before it. In Totori and Rorona, you goals were more or less to do some exploration, some alchemy, and build up your inventory/characters until they were strong enough to explore the end targets or synthesize whatever you needed. In Meruru, the primary storyline revolves around building up infrastructure in your kingdom, very similar to Fable 3, to meet development targets by the end of the game. The way you do this is complete quests. Some of them involve synthesizing items for infrastructure to develop farms, outposts, etc... Other quests involve going to a dungeon and killing a big enemy.

Overall the game plays out very similarly to Totori. You explore areas and kill mobs/gather ingredients. Then you return to town and synthesize items for combat or for infrastructure. However, the one major change in Meruru that has made it instantly my favorite game of the 3 (Rorona, Totori, Meruru) is that there is no sudden bad end when you do not meet a time limited goal. Yes, you can theoretically get a bad end in Meruru, but you have to blindly try to go for it. Ultimately you will get one of a few very different endings depending on what goal within the game you set out to do. This makes it so that new game+ saves are quite valuable in terms of planning, and it adds a really fun/engaging element to the game with respect to replay value.

If you have not played any previous Atelier games, you might feel lost at first. These types of games are quite cerebral and really make you think about how to wisely spend your time and not waste it. There's a 99% chance you will need to get to new game+ to complete most of what you want, but the second go around is immensely satisfying as you really need to spend the first try learning what items are the best and what items you need to finish your goals. In terms of improvements over the previous games, there are relatively few graphics, sound, and game engine wise. Once again we have an excellent English voice cast that I actually preferred over the Japanese ones (really rare for me in JRPG's), and excellent BGM/OST.

Atelier Meruru is a really fun and engaging JRPG with a fun, character driven atmosphere. You won't regret picking this up even if you haven't played Totori/Rorona.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun game where you do more than just fight monsters August 26, 2012

By CF

Fun: 4.0 out of 5 stars   

I won't go into the specific gameplay, since the other reviewers have done that (you may also find it useful to look at the reviews of the prequels: Atelier Rorona and Atelier Totori), but I wanted to write this review for people who are on the fence about this game and who aren't sure if they'll like it.

Since modern games these days (first person shooters/single-person [no party] RPGs) don't appeal to me, in the past few years I've turned to Japanese games to fill the gaming niche in my life. I think this game is very similar in spirit to Rune Factory (and less tedious/more exciting than Harvest Moon), so if you liked those you might like the Atelier games too.

The Atelier series gives you something to do beyond just fighting monsters: this game combines dungeon-crawling with the creation of items that either help you fight, develop your kingdom, or be friends with other characters. Since the items are made from the resources that you collect from the dungeons and you choose the characteristics of the items you make, you get to exercise your time and resource management skills. The art is fun and the dialogue is mostly amusing, but I do think there are too many cutscenes (so minus one star for fun-ness): they mostly happen as you level up your friendship with the other characters. (But the cutscenes are brief and you can just keep pressing X to skip the dialogue...)

Atelier Meruru is a little easier than its predecessors, with no time limits on quests, and you can achieve the storyline goals without any stress. Even so, if you're a trophy collector you'll probably be referring to a walkthrough quite a bit. If you haven't played any of the Atelier games before, I'd suggest starting with Atelier Totori (the second game in the trilogy), which I think has the most engaging story, and has a better item creation system than the first game (Rorona). Then you could try Meruru and finally Rorona.

Note that this game has been translated to English (and surprisingly, there were a few typos, unlike the previous games which were perfect), but you can play with the original Japanese voices. The art looks cute, but I do think there are a couple risque scenes and I wouldn't buy this for a young kid.

If you've already played the previous Atelier games and liked them, you'll almost definitely enjoy Meruru too (the synthesis system is pretty much identical to Totori's). It's fun to see all the main characters - especially Astrid! - gathered together in one story.