A history of Vita games: Developer Spotlight – Gust

The fifth in a series of articles I’m planning on writing, looking at the output of a number of Vita-supporting developers from launch through to the present day. I’ll be examining what their history in the games industry is, what the games they released on Vita were, how these titles performed, what games they could have released on Vita as well as an overall conclusion about their level of Vita support.

Few developers know their audience like Gust – the historic Japanese developer have been around for two decades and in that time they’ve continually catered to the same group of fans who have enjoyed their well-crafted, slice-of-life JRPG’s often built around unique alchemy mechanics. They found a solid audience match on Vita which meant they supported it well from its early months right through to its discontinuation and along the way gave us a sea of enjoyable titles.

 

History – the Atelier factory

Gust are a company that were literally born on PlayStation – their initial titles all hit the PS1 before they slowly transitioned over to its successor, yet just a couple of years into their history they’d already made a name for themselves with the Atelier series.

These JRPG’s invariably cast you as a young girl trying to find her way in the world while learning the ancient art of alchemy (making new creations and items by combining ingredients together in a cauldron) while featuring turn-based combat and exploration/gathering elements thrown in for good measure. It proved to be a winning formula that spawned dozens of sequels, ports and remakes following the original entry Atelier Marie in 1997, landing on nearly every viable console out there from Saturn to Windows to Game Boy to PSP.

Of course, they did explore other ideas at times, the most successful of which was the Ar Tonelico series that saw its first entry land on the PS2 in 2006. The franchise was built around the idea of ‘song magic’ – using music and words to craft powerful abilities, and focused on the struggles between humans and the Reyvateil, a race of artificially-created beings. Thanks to its often emotionally touching stories, fascinating world and unique combat system it proved to be a success, spawning two sequels and proving Gust were more than just an Atelier factory.

Still, as console generations moved on they reverted back to their tested formulas – trilogies of new Atelier games, never deviating far from the gameplay their fanbase had come to expect.

 

Vita – A little experimentation

While the majority of Gust’s output is turn-based JRPG’s, their first title on Vita was a little bit of a detour that had its foundations in their final PSP release, acting as a rather experimental period in their history.

Mostly, the PSP had been a dumping ground for ports of their home console Atelier games – things like Atelier Violet and Mana Khemia, which worked well enough on a portable. As a parting gift for the console they created Atelier Elkrone, a spin-off entry that turned the franchise on its head by offering an otome visual novel experience where the novice alchemist heroine chooses from various handsome men while training in her craft. Created in conjunction with Idea Factory’s Otomate label, it proved that there was more to the franchise than the core formula that had served it for the past decade and a half – although sales were rather weak in Japan at just 13k.

They followed this up with their first release on Sony’s newest handheld that built on the visual novel experience they’d gained with Elkrone but took it in experimental new direction – Ciel nosurge followed the adventures of a young girl named Ion who has lost her memories and uses strange fairy-like creatures known as Sharl to help rebuild her past. As the plot unravels, it quickly becomes apparent that the game takes place in the Ar Tonelico universe, acting as a prequel that takes place thousands of years before those games.

Ciel was unique in a number of ways – you literally talked to Ion through a screen which was ‘connected’ to your Vita via a terminal in Ion’s world, providing an oddly personal experience unlike anything else on the market. It was also released episodically following the initial launch in 2012 and required a constant internet connection to track the passage of time – although this was rectified with the later Ciel nosurge Offline version. It received mostly positive reviews and ended up selling nearly 70k across all versions in Japan, although no western release ever materialised.

This wasn’t the end of their Surge Concerto universe though, as they revisited it with a direct sequel named Ar nosurge in 2014 which, rather confusingly, was revealed only for PS3 and before all the DLC episodes for Ciel had released. It launched to muted commercial success on Sony’s home console so Gust quickly realised that they needed to rectify this and offer a version on handheld instead, which followed just 6 months later with Ar nosurge Plus on Vita.

Ar offered a more traditional JRPG experience that Gust fans would have been used to – turn-based combat, exploration and gathering and even a bit of alchemy mixed in – which worked very well, even if the story could get a little convoluted at times (but was seriously rewarding if you were willing to put the time in), making it a hidden gem in Vita’s library.

 

Atelier plus a little more

Despite their experimentation with the Surge Concerto titles, most of Gust’s output on Vita was business as usual – which meant tonnes of Atelier, albeit definitive versions that offered more content than their console counterparts.

It all started in November of 2012 with Atelier Totori Plus, an expanded version of the breakthrough PS3 entry following the sweet and loving titular alchemist in her adventures through Arland. By just adding a few pieces of extra content (new bosses, costumes, dungeons etc) they provided a compelling enough package to encourage fans to buy the game all over again – it sold 75k in Japan (a massive success by series standards) and was quickly followed by the other two entries in the trilogy, Atelier Meruru Plus and Atelier Rorona Plus (the latter of which was a more substantial remake than simple expanded port, which made sense as the original was their first ever fully 3D game).

They quickly followed these up on Vita with even more PS3 ports using the same mantra – adding a little bit of extra content to encourage double dippers. The first of these was Atelier Ayesha Plus, the debut entry in the Dusk sub-series that opened to series-low sales on the handheld in Japan, suggesting fans were getting a little burnt out with the volume of releases. Therefore Gust took a little more time with Atelier Escha & Logy Plus and Atelier Shallie Plus, adding even more content to both (including whole new elements to the story in the latter) and implement better performance optimisations for each, making them much more essential for long-time fans (plus the dual protagonist design was still fairly new and novel).

Now out of games to port across, Gust started a brand new trilogy (Mysterious) with Vita as a central platform – Atelier Sophie was the first release. It boded well for the future on the console – Sophie was an impressive port with solid performance and nice graphics that clearly had a lot of care poured into it, which couldn’t be said for its follow-up Atelier Firis, an open-world game that was clearly too advanced for the system with major slowdown throughout (although at least the game itself was ambitious in its design). They concluded the trilogy with Atelier Lydie & Suelle which became the first Atelier title on Vita not to release in the west (Escha and Shallie even got physical releases), showing Gust’s new priorities towards the Nintendo Switch.

 

A new era

Possibly as a result of their acquisition by Koei-Tecmo, Gust were afforded a lot of freedom from around 2015 onwards to explore new ideas, which led to some of their most ambitious (if not necessarily best) releases.

The first of these was Nights of Azure in 2015, a gothic action-RPG with yuri undertones that had the player battling demons in a land of eternal night. It was clearly a step outside of their comfort zone and unfortunately another technical mess on Vita, featuring poor resolution and slowdown – although the game as a whole received somewhat middling reviews when it landed on western shores, citing its repetitive combat and environments. It was followed by Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon a few years later which alienated some fans by changing the servan-based combat system – while both landed on Vita, neither was made available in English.

Blue Reflection was another experiment for Gust although this time played a lot more to their knowledge and strengths. A high school RPG with turn-based combat featuring magical girls who can cross over into another dimension, it offered social links and a compelling story that ensured it received fairly positive reviews (and it was gorgeous to boot). Unfortunately, the Vita version failed to hit western shores yet again and Koei-Tecmo cited the title as underperforming in sales.

Their final new idea during this period was the city-building RPG Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World. Acting as a celebration of all the previous entries in the Atelier series, it mixed up the gameplay by simplifying the alchemy, battle and exploration mechanics but adding the ability to create and grow a settlement to your liking including placing buildings, growing populations and managing resources. It proved to be an addictive formula although once again, the Vita version stayed Japan-only.

Gust are continuing to explore new frontiers even beyond Vita – they’re currently working on a turn-based RPG based on the Fairy Tale anime series (for PS4/PC & Switch), but otherwise they’re still sticking to their standard Atelier formula which suggests an uncertain future for the company if sales keep declining post PS3/Vita. Atelier Lulua was a return to the Arland universe which was a moderate success, while Atelier Ryza is the start of a new sub-series – perhaps one of these will strike it big, but mostly it seems they’ll continue selling to the same audience that made their games on Vita a success.

 

Conclusion

In terms of pure volume, there are few developers I’ll examine in this series of articles who have created more Vita games than Gust. Their brand of otaku-friendly JRPG’s found a fantastic home on the handheld ensuring positive sales figures both domestically and abroad as well as positive reviews, and there’s very little they didn’t being to the console during its life (they even stayed to the bitter end).

Unfortunately, their ports often suffered from performance issues and many fans noted increasing fatigue in their slightly-tweaked-every-year formulas (although when they experimented outside their comfort zone, the results weren’t always better, even if we often didn’t see these new ideas on western Vitas). Still, despite these issues their games definitely enhanced Vita’s library and I’m incredibly grateful to have them – if you’re looking for an enjoyable portable JRPG, look no further than one of the eight English Atelier games as I’m sure you’ll have a brilliant time.