Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg was my first foray into the Atelier series after doing some research online for a good starting point. Atlier Marie is indeed the first entry into the series, but the remake is an updated version of the game adding a lot of quality of life improvements to make it much more accessible to play (as well as translating it in English for the first time I believe). They did add a translated version of the original game within this package, though I did not try that at all.

The premise of the game is that you are an alchemist at a prestigious academy. Due to falling behind other students and not doing well, you are given a special assignment for your graduation in a few years to try and pass. You're given a home where you can make new items, potions, and others and initially told that you are to make something worthy of graduating. Gameplay consists of going around the town talking to villagers, going to the library where there's also a store, a weapon store, and the local tavern where you can listen to rumors and take on quests. There are a few locations you can navigate to for finding crafting equipment or battling monsters to level up. That's basically the game! It was almost a bit daunting at first, thinking I don't know what I'm doing and there's a good chance I'm falling behind. I can almost guarantee though that you'll have nothing to worry about as seemingly without trying, I was almost always ahead of schedule being able to turn in quests as soon as I picked them up having already crafted/leveled up/etc.

It's a relatively short game, I think completing my run in around 13 or so hours. There are multiple endings to get, though I only completed one play through and ending so I'm not sure how different they are. There's a lot of humor throughout and the characters all have a cute anime style look to them.

It's a fun, mostly relaxing game that lets you go about the tasks/completion however you want. I guess the game play and style of these games are quite different between series so I'll probably try another entry or two before deciding if I want to continue on with the series.