Category Archives: 2020

Atelier, Atelier Iris, Cover Games

Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny – The Fight for Eden

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The Atelier Iris subseries is, as we’ve already seen with Eternal Mana, something of an outlier in the Atelier series as a whole.

While all of the Atelier games involve RPG-style combat to varying degrees, the Iris subseries places a particular emphasis on what many would think of as a more “conventional” RPG-style structure: the protagonist goes on a journey, explores dungeons, acquires allies, seeks out wondrous treasures… there just happens to be some alchemy involved on the side.

Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny has a particularly strong emphasis on its combat and progression mechanics, making it a satisfying game for those who like making numbers get bigger. Let’s take a closer look at this aspect today.

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Atelier, Atelier Iris, Cover Games

Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny – Alchemy Evolution

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Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana was very clearly an attempt to do something different with the Atelier series… and also a bit of a playground for the development team to experiment with a wide variety of ideas.

This much becomes obvious almost from the moment you boot up 2005’s Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny, which takes many of the things that worked from Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, fixes the things that almost worked and ditches the things that didn’t.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny builds on its predecessor, and how this becomes clear over the course of the game’s early hours.

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Cover Games, LAMUNATION!

LAMUNATION!: Keeping It In The Family

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Well, it’s been quite a journey so far, hasn’t it? Between Lamune’s dramatic reversal of fortunes and Iris and Rayla’s somewhat open, fluid views on sexuality, one certainly cannot call White Powder’s visual novel LAMUNATION! “boring”.

You haven’t seen anything yet, though, because we’re about to explore probably the strangest and most chaotic narrative path of all: that of protagonist Luna’s sister Corona.

We’ve got incest. We’ve got magic. We’ve got musings on the nature of visual novels as a medium. Grab a cold Red Bull, strap yourself in and hold on tight, ’cause we’re going in.

Some NSFW stuff ahead!

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LAMUNATION!

LAMUNATION!: Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

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Central to LAMUNATION!, whichever narrative route you choose to explore, is the setting of the Cherry Crown Diner.

A diner inspired by 1950s Americana, the Cherry Crown serves as something of a social hub for the main cast — and, in pretty much all of the paths through the game, ends up becoming a successful landmark and tourist attraction in the unusual corporate-run city of Saint Aria.

There are a lot of interesting things about the Cherry Crown Diner — not least of which are the charismatic, chaotic twin sisters Iris and Rayla, who run it in their parents’ seemingly perpetual absence. That seems like as good a place as any to continue our exploration of this delightfully delirious visual novel!

Some NSFW stuff ahead!

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Cover Games, LAMUNATION!

LAMUNATION!: Welcome to Youkoso Saint Aria

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LAMUNATION! is an absolute fever dream of a visual novel. It’s one of the most gleefully, joyfully chaotic narrative experiences I’ve ever sat through.

One thing I found particularly interesting about it was the fact that depending on the order in which you explore the three main narrative routes, you either start with material that is relatively easy to digest… or just throw yourself right in to the insanity.

The choices I made, as it happens, resulted in a gradual escalation of chaos — so that’s how we’ll take a look at things over the course of the next few articles.

Some NSFW content ahead.

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Cover Games, LAMUNATION!

LAMUNATION!: Introduction

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One of the things I love about Japanese popular media is its willingness to create manga, anime and visual novels about all manner of subject matter — not just “safe”, predictable options that we see all the time.

As such, when the prospect of taking a look at LAMUNATION!, a visual novel that appeared to mostly be about fizzy pop, reared its head, I was more than happy to take a closer look — particularly given the track record of the localiser-publisher Love Lab, who we’ve previously seen here on MoeGamer with the beautifully presented, Ishikei-illustrated, polyamory-themed visual novel  Love³ -Love Cube- and Shade’s highly enjoyable (and exceedingly sexy) Bullet Girls Phantasia.

And with that in mind, I was particularly delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Meru and Blick from Love Lab and find out a bit more about the game, Love Lab’s approach to localisation and some of the challenges they encountered with this peculiar project! Grab a bottle, chug it down (don’t forget to go “Pwaaaahhh!!” afterwards, this is non-negotiable) and let’s get started.

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