Forum - View topicINTEREST: Character Desinger Mel Kishida 'Ran Out of Ideas' After Working on 3 Atelier Games
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ETX
Posts: 344 Location: England |
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For a series that has more installments than Call of Duty and still releases a game every 1-2 years I'm not surprised.
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5526 |
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Regardless, his designs are still awesome. One of my favorite designers in the industry
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Pokenatic
 Posts: 563 Location: Neo Venezia |
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He only did the character designs for the Arland Trilogy though. |
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ETX
Posts: 344 Location: England |
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Even so, having seen all the character designs for past installments, I bet that limited the number of ideas he had because a lot of them might have already been done to some degree. |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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After working on multiple projects so fast, it's only a matter of time before creative burnout sets in...
Even then, Mel Kishida's works are still a wonderful sight to see. 
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Juno016
 Posts: 2381 |
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I own Rorona, but I haven't played it yet. To be honest, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the number of games in the franchise, so I have a question:
Is the franchise like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy, where most games or short series of games (grouped by artist, I believe?) take place in their own world/setting? Or is there an overarching background plot going on? Or is it some mix of the two, like how Persona 3 and Persona 4 are technically connected and you can learn more about both worlds by playing both, but this makes no overall difference in the plots of each? Basically, if I want to just play the games with Kishida's art, am I getting a complete picture, or am I going to be left with questions and want to invest in past and future games in the franchise? |
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CrownKlown
 Posts: 1762 |
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I've played bits and pieces here and there, I think the closest thing I would compare it to is Legend of Heroes franchise; where its a series of unrelated trilogies, ie you had the first three LOH games for the psp, then trails in the sky, then trails of steel; atelier is the same, they might be loosely related but only distantly so |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Never once played a game in this franchise, but I love the hell out of Kishida's designs. And have probably every possible wallpaper of any of those characters on my PC just because of how pretty they are. Also love his work for Hanasaku Iroha and Heaven's Memo Pad, though I think he really shines when he has a little more color to work with. Atelier is his best art, in my opinion.
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belvadeer
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Kishida's art for Atelier is quite beautiful and some of the loveliest I've seen in video games for a while now. Sadly I don't think I'm ever going to catch up with finishing the Arland trilogy (yup, years later, I still haven't finished Rorona, barely started Totori and don't even own Meruru). Hidari's art is gorgeous too, not going to deny that.
It must have been something amazing to play the very first Atelier ever, while here in the U.S. we were drooling over Final Fantasy VII. It took eight years before we'd ever see our first localized Atelier title, which even played differently from the rest of the series prior to it. And the only localized appearance of Marie (not her clothes) was in Cross Edge. I think that will be the closest we'll ever get to seeing anything about Atelier Marie. |
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tootbrush
Posts: 230 |
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This comparison doesn't really work. With Atelier, it doesn't matter which trilogy nor which game within a trilogy you start with. There can be references and returning characters, but you can jump in anywhere without being lost. On the other hand, while the Gagharv trilogy (the PSP games) is a standalone thing, the Sky trilogy, the Crossbell duology (Zero, Azure) and the Cold Steel trilogy are one continuous series set on the same continent. You can start with a trilogy/duology, but jumping in in the middle of one isn't recommended. There's also the overarching story to consider, so playing every Trails game certainly helps. Here's a helpful chart to the Dragon Slayer franchise and the LoH sub-franchise (and here's a more detailed one).
Actually, there's a translation patch in the works for Atelier Marie + Elie (that's the enhanced PS2 port of both games). Not sure about progress right now, but back in October translation was finished and they had started editing. |
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belvadeer
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Thank you for linking this. The Lord Monarch series was one I was curious about among the Dragon Slayer games as I couldn't find much info about it elsewhere. And wow, there certainly were a lot of entries for it.
Oh really? I don't follow fan translation circles, so I didn't realize someone was actually bothering with anything from the pre-Iris era. Good to know. Come to think of it, there was also the Atelier Marie and Elie manga, which we surprisingly got, and this was long before Cross Edge. I heard the fifth volume supposedly was denied release years ago, so I think the series remains unfinished in English? |
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NishizawaMihashi
 Posts: 29 Location: Malaysia |
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Well, I managed to get into the PS3-gen Atelier games 4 years ago (own all of em except Ayesha and Totori) and basically these latest 3 trilogies are completely unrelated. Each game within a trilogy series is related to each other but unrelated inter-series wise.
But for some reason, there's somewhat of a connection between the Dusk trilogy and the Mysterious trilogy. Most probably the connection's just a cameo thing though. The games are pretty fun but can be challenging or brutal. So far logged a total of close to 1,000 hours played for all the Atelier games I own so far |
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manapear
Posts: 1525 |
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Lol at the comment Yuugen. Pretty art, but not very solid in terms of character design.
It's kind of impressive to know now that Hidari played Marie. I kept feeling that Ayesha's design reminds me a lot of Marie (in the color scheme, general direction), and that really adds up. I enjoy Mel Kishida's designs a lot for the series, but Hidari is my favorite so far of the modern group. I;m curious to see what kind of direction they'll go with for the next trilogy. I feel like they had better separation before with their other titles and Atelier, but they've lost that on a design sense. (Questionable choices anyway for Atelier.) |
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