Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk was originally released as a PS3 game almost 3 years ago. Now, it has been remade for the PS Vita as Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk. You will get all of the original game, plus some new stuff.

The first thing you will notice when you boot up the game is how beautiful everything looks. Everything is very crisp and clear, with well-defined lines. The world they live in allows for both magic and alchemy. They people seem mostly happy with their lives or at least content. Everything is bright and cheery, but not overly obnoxious. The clothing is quite varied and you can unlock new costumes for Ayesha just to change the look of things up a bit. You can even mix and match the costume parts.

When you start up a game, you can choose between Japanese or English voices. That was a pleasant surprise as I am used to games just giving you the option of one or the other. It’s odd, but not all of the lines are spoken out loud. Sometimes they’ll say the whole thing, sometimes just the first sentence or two, and sometimes they don’t speak at all. You never know how much they will say and how much you need to read. I found myself enjoying the background music of the game. It does change from time to time as well. I quite liked the marsh area music. The sound effects are very well done. You can hear little things, like the change in the sound of the footsteps when you step onto a different terrain. It’s the attention to the little details that really makes Atelier Ayesha Plus a beautiful game.

As you might know from other Atelier games, you will have an alchemist as your lead character. Ayesha Altugle is your alchemist for this game, even though she has no clue what an alchemist is and claims to simply be an apothecary. Pana is her pet giant pig beast, which they call cows. Ayesha is a bit absent-minded, but she is very kind and sweet. She will do anything to help a friend or even a stranger. Ernie Lyttleton is her friend and delivery driver. You’ll see a lot of him in the game, but he will not join you to fight. Nio is Ayesha’s little sister and she simply disappeared a few years ago. Now, Ayesha has seen her spirit. Keithgriff Hazeldine (a random man she ran into at the ruins where she saw her sister) tells her to study alchemy and research the glowing flowers in the area to understand them and maybe she will be able to save her sister. After meeting Keithgriff, Ayesha sets off to travel so she can figure out what she needs to know how to save Nio. At that point, the game actually starts.

On her travels, Ayesha is going to run into a lot of different people. Regina Kurtis is a longtime friend of Ayesha and Nio. She is a character you can choose to fight with you. Wilbell Voll-Erstead is a quirky witch that you will meet pretty quickly and she can join you as well. You can take up to two people with you on your journeys to fight beside you. Linea is the bodyguard for Marion Quinn. Marion is investigating the ruins. They will both be recruitable eventually. Odelia is the mistress left at Zweiteturm, a 928-year-old massive library. Sadly, you cannot simply borrow the books. You must purchase them (other than the one to advance the story). Odelia is nice to have battle with you because when she attacks, she attacks many enemies at once. Ranum Ettes is a bit of a drama queen. He’s a musician always looking for new sounds. Eventually you will be able to buy things from him. Harry Olson is an odd bird as well. He is a collector and also set up the bazaar that happens one a month in Vierzeberg. You should definitely go there when you can as you can find rare items. It is in Vierzeberg between the 10th and 19th each month. He will also set up a "treasure hunt" you can display at eventually. There are quite a few more people that you will meet up with continually. Ayesha is a very friendly person!

Ayesha will also have lots of things that she needs to do. You can tell when there is an event you can trigger by the (!) on the location. A lot of times, you will have several of these at once. Atelier Ayesha Plus is a very loose game in that you can pretty much do these things in any order you want. You might find some are harder than others if you try to do the wrong thing before you’ve leveled a bit, but usually that isn’t a problem. The Notes are very helpful. They keep track of what you have done and what you still need to do. This is nice to have when you haven’t played in a few days and forgot what you were doing. The System Menu also has handy information. These will all help you figure out where to go and how to find Nio.

Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk provides two difficulty modes: Normal and Hard. The Hard was added for this new version. As far as the fighting goes, I found the Normal Mode to be a bit on the easier side. Granted, every now and then, I would hit an area that I really didn’t need to be in yet and have to flee a battle or two, but that was only in the beginning of the game when their HP were very low. After you increase your basket size so that you can carry a lot of items, you can bring as many healing items as you could possibly need, making your life much easier. If you do die, you will wake up on the world map outside that area with your stuff, so as far as I can tell, it doesn’t really hurt to die.

For each area, you will have a certain number of items that you have to gather to meet the goal. You also have a "hunt" goal to achieve. You have to beat all of the enemies in an area to get credit for the "hunt" for that area. You can check for what you need to do under your Notes section. Time does pass while you are gathering and roaming the ruins, so if you’re trying to get back for the bazaar or something like that on a schedule, keep an eye on your time. Time does not pass when you are in towns (except when synthesizing, of course). In town, you will also get requests from people. Requests from people are always good to do as they earn you money. Some of them will be easier than others, of course. Overall, none are really hard though.

The DLC Hidden Paradise is an area where the first part is quite easy. The difficulty is about the same as the herb garden you can get to it from. When you go on to the other stages of it, I recommend being cautious, as they are significantly harder. For the most part, the areas flow in a predictable easy-to-hard pattern, so you shouldn’t have much trouble with the game on Normal. If you want a challenge, start the game on Hard Mode.

The controls are quite easy to get the hang of and the game does a pretty good job of explaining them. The rest of it, I recommend playing around with every option to learn what does what as they don’t always explain every little thing. Some things to note are that you can save on the World Map by pressing (Start). This is very handy when you’re 12 days away from your rooms. You can use (Start) in towns to warp between areas in town. You cannot turn the camera; it will automatically turn for you. For the most part that works, but there were times, especially in battle, when I wanted to be able to see things from a different angle.

Synthesis is a very important part of the game. It can become very complex as well. The more you synthesize, the higher your alchemy level will get, which will then give you the ability to synthesize more things. You will also unlock skills that will let you do things like pick specific traits, choose the order to put the items in, and more. Sometimes they can be a bit difficult to figure out how to use or what ingredients will create what effects on the synthesized items, but you’ll figure it out if you keep playing.

As you play, you collect memory points for everything you do. Some things earn more than others. These allow you to write down your memories in your journal. It’s a bit of a way to keep you from blowing through everything as you will need to talk to people, gather things, deliver items, etc. to earn these points. Of course, you don’t have to save the memories, but considering they can do things like raise your stats, give you items, and more, saving those memories will greatly benefit you.

It feels to me like Atelier Ayesha Plus is a bit more on the adventure side than the fighting side. I found I spent a lot more time talking to people, synthesizing, and doing errands rather than fighting, even compared to Atelier Rorona Plus. On most games, that would turn me off, but for some reason I just couldn’t stop playing Atelier Ayesha Plus. I found that the game provides a great story with quite a number of side quests that keep you coming back. If you’re looking for an RPG that is heavy on story and side quests, check out Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk.