Atelier Meruru Plus: The Apprentice of Arland

The Vita isn’t a system thats short of JRPGs. Outside of specific Vita releases, access to digital PSP games and PS1 classics means a terrific title isn’t more than a few quid and half an hour of download away. It’s into this already expansive genre then that Gust and Tecmo Koei have released what I’m sure they hope to be another standout game- Atelier Meruru Plus: The Apprentice of Arland. While a solid JRPG, Meruru has a few issues that hold this game back from using up memory card real estate that could otherwise hold Final Fantasy VII and Persona 4 Golden.

While it’s name may be incredibly complex, the rest of the writing is anything but. The main storyline is one of the major downsides of the game. In all honesty it’s a little hard to decide just what exactly the main storyline is. The overarching narrative involves the titular princess – Meruru- and her quest to expand her kingdom to gain her father’s approval in becoming an alchemist. What this amounts to is best described as a collection of side quests and meta-games, wherein you do a variety of tasks for the people of the kingdom, mostly along the likes of kill x enemies or bring me x items, in order to gain points to build facilities, which causes the population to increase to meet set quotas each year. This is the main quest, and it lacks any real sense of urgency.

Battles carry the same low sense of importance as well, with no real main antagonist there is no real battle to be fought. This coupled with the minimal penalty for death – a few days in game pass and you wake up back home – mean that the fights in Meruru lack any sense of weight, which is a shame because the combat system is very well done. There is a fail scenario however. With death not being an option the threat of a game over is held by the aforementioned population quotas. If these numbers go unmet then the game comes to a premature end, and with the fact that population increases require time to come into effect it’s all too possible to create a save with the game in a literally unwinnable state, which is a nightmare scenario in any game, let alone a multi tens of hours JRPG.

It’s all too possible to create a save with the game in a literally unwinnable state, which is a nightmare scenario

It isn’t all bad news, however. As I mentioned before the battle system is very well done. While it’s the standard turn based menu driven JRPG standard (that has unfortunately seem to have gone out of style in recent years) it’s in the preparation that it really shines. Being a game focusing on alchemy, all the items usable in battle can be created back at the workshop using easily gatherable items from the environment. This bypasses the usual hoarding instinct many players experience in such games, keeping the powerful items for later ‘just in case’. When you can easily and quickly make more items using them in battle becomes a very real possibility.

The speed at which you assemble further party members is a breath of fresh air as well, allowing you to find and develop a party that works to your playstyle early on. With characters that vary between strong one on one fighters and weaker area of effect combatants, choosing the right party can add a further layer to the combat. As a bonus every character also has unique scenes that play out constantly, forging relationships between people and promoting them all from back bench fodder to almost friendship-sim like levels of companionship.

Overall Meruru is a mixed bag. While the game itself is thoroughly enjoyable it lacks any real sense of purpose. This lack of drive means that oftentimes it’s possible to feel frustrated at the seeming purposelessness of the game, and it’s all to easy to forget to pick it up after a break. Shame really ,because once you do pick it up it’s, thanks to the preparation and battle systems, incredibly hard to put back down.