Atelier: Portable Series Deluxe Pack

Atelier games are kinda chill, you're usually an alchemist running a little shop, brewing potions and going on adventures to gather rare ingredients. Instead of saving the whole world from some dark lord, you're more focused on helping your town, completing requests and hanging out with a colorful cast of lovable goofballs. The charm comes from the time management juggle, every day counts, so you gotta balance synthesis, combat and friendship events before the deadline hits. It's cozy but also stressful in a fun way and this pack rounds up every English fantranslation to date that your 3DS can run, so you can experience pure workshop vibes with a sprinkle of silly humor and a whole lot of crafting on the go. It's a good time, promise.

Atelier: Portable Series Deluxe Pack

Atelier Marie GB and Atelier Elie GB are sidequels to the first two games, where you play as either Marie or Elie after graduation, now running a shop while babysitting a fairy apprentice for four years: in Marie's version it's a lil guy with a crush on her, in Elie's, a girl fairy training to be the next tribe leader. Instead of fighting yourself, you just send your fairy out to dungeons with hired bodyguards while you stay home brewing items and filling requests. It feels cozy, kinda like a simplified life sim mixed with lite RPG elements and it's charming how the game focuses on your bond with the fairy, there's moments where they get depressed or nurse you back to sickness and those bits can hit harder than you'd expect from a Game Boy game, but here's the catch: walking around town to trigger events gets real annoying real fast because you'll miss stuff if you're not at the right spot at the right time and the sluggish menus make everything feel like a chore. Leveling up alchemy or adventurer ranks takes forever too, so you'll probably end up with a basic ending without even knowing what you did wrong. No direct combat means less stress but also less excitement and the gameplay loop can't fully support its own weight. Still, for a portable dose of warm low stakes alchemy management, this duo is a nice little time killer and hey, you can even link them up like Pokémon to trade stuff.

Atelier Marie GB

 

Atelier Elie GB

Atelier Annie ~ Alchemists of Sera Island ~

Atelier Annie is a spinoff where you play as a lazy girl who gets shipped off to a rundown island to win an alchemy contest, and honestly she's kinda hilarious in how open she is about wanting to marry rich and nap forever. The whole thing runs on a three year timer, so you're constantly juggling gathering ingredients, synthesizing stuff, fighting random encounters with super simple turn based fights and managing resort facilities you build with contest prize money. Alchemy becomes addictive once you get the hang of traits and supplements but the real drag is how pushy everyone is, characters barge into your workshop with deadlines and if you ignore them or fail, your fame drops. The writing is funny and charming with a lil fairy assistant named Pepe and a bunch of lovable weirdos, tho some people find Annie's attitude annoying or the humor hit or miss. Graphically it's colorful and cute, music's light and whimsical and there's Japanese voice acting if you're into that. Problem is, the time pressure can get overwhelming, menus are clunky and missing one event might lock you out of the true ending. Still, it's generally short and has New Game Plus, so multiple endings are doable.

Atelier Lina ~ The Alchemist of Strahl ~

Atelier Lina is another spinoff where you play as a newbie alchemist that while she's walking through the forest with his friend Luon, it suddenly just starts burning and gets forced by fairies to fix it in three years, except you're also a wandering merchant living out of a wagon. That wagon is the coolest part 'cuz you can upgrade it, equip it with stuff and even save in the field, which makes traveling between six different towns way less painful. You've gotta juggle nine main requests (starting with someone asking for 600 lumber right off the bat ), manage shop relationships and pay off a massive debt while also clearing out monster groups. Money comes faster if you play the merchant game, like buying weapons low in one town and selling high in another, but alchemy still matters for crafting items and hiring fairy helpers later on. Combat got a nice upgrade from Annie with MP skills and a neat KO system where knocked out characters can revive after a few turns, plus you can autobattle if you're feeling lazy. The music slaps with unlockable tracks from older Atelier heroines as you restore the forest, tho character interactions feel more spread out since you're always on the road. Time pressure is real but New Game Plus makes multiple playthroughs for the 8 endings doable. It's the best of the DS trilogy, less chatter than Annie, more depth and a satisfying loop once you get past the slow start.

And hey, just so you know, there are actually even more Atelier games your 3DS can run like the enhanced port of the first PS3 game, Atelier Rorona, that GBA spinoff with Marie, Elie and Anis, plus the very first DS entry Atelier Lise and even the original Atelier Marie and Atelier Elie themselves, but here's the bummer: none of those have an English translation patch right now and I honestly doubt they ever will. The fantranslation scenes focus on the superior versions like the remaster of the originals which already got an English patch and Atelier Rorona DX is officially in English anyway. So yeah, I'd happily inject any of those if we ever got lucky and fantranslations dropped but I'm not holding my breath.