Atelier Lulua Reveals Meruru and Keina’s New Designs; Story Details and Screenshots

February 21, 2019 11:27:10 AM EST

All three Arland trilogy protagonists, Rorona, Totori, and Meruru, are now confirmed in Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland.

Koei Tecmo and Gust revealed new information on Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland. Most notably, they revealed that Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland‘s protagonist Merurulince Rede Arls will be appearing in the game.

Merurulince Rede Arls, voiced by Satomi Akesaka.
Meruru is an alchemist and the former princess of the Arls kingdom, which is now part of the Republic of Arland. In Atelier Meruru, using her alchemy, she strived to transform her kingdom and make it part of the Arland Republic. Now that she reached this goal, she can freely enjoy life and travel to various places. She used to be very curious about the outside world and became even more outgoing now that she isn’t a princess anymore.

As a side note, while Rorona is playable, none of the screenshots so far showed Totori and Meruru in the party, so we don’t know if they are playable in Atelier Lulua.

Keina Swaya, voiced by Yuki Iwabuchi. In Atelier Meruru, Keina was voiced by Kaori Sato.
Meruru’s childhood friend who always helped her around. Nowadays she’s an experienced government official of Arls and takes care of desk work, but her fighting skills are still top-notch. She takes her work at heart and wishes to better the lives of Arls’ citizens, a wish shared by Meruru.

Benon, voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda.
The man in charge of Arklys’ orphanage, where Eva works. As he always thinks about the children’ happiness, he often overworks himself, which leads to him getting scolded by Lulua and Eva. It seems he had a different occupation before becoming the orphanage’s director.

As we already explained, Atelier Lulua‘s prologue has Lulua finding a mysterious Codex. Only Lulua can read it and other people see its pages blank. Whenever she’s at a loss at what to do with an alchemy item she needs to create, the Codex mysteriously shines and leads her to the solution with a riddle she must solve. Gameplay-wise, this requires you to find “keywords”, most of the time alchemy ingredients, either found by gathering or through monster drops, then go back to Piana’s carriage atelier and summarize your thoughts to solve the riddle. The book also gives you hints as to where to find these ingredients. At some point in the story, Totori gets suspicious of the Codex and warns Lulua to not constantly rely on something so convenient. Soon after, it turns out the Codex stops reacting to Lulua’s problems, so she’ll travel even more to try and solve its mysteries.

Like in past games, besides the main story you’ve also got sub stories and events in Atelier Lulua, which unlock as you progress in the main story and become friendlier with the characters. When you’re in town and open the fast-travel menu, places where an event will happen are marked with a star.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the characters and their abilities in battle from the press release: Lulua is an alchemist so she can use items and the Interrupt system (which is really overpowered as you keep the item used). She’s a good healer who can also regenerate the party’s MP. Eva can attack multiple enemies at the same time with some of her skills. Aurel is very fast and often acts multiple times before enemies, his skills are very strong but most of them make his next turn come later. He can heal the party too. Lastly, Piana has the advantages of being an alchemist character, and when part of the front row, she can use status ailment inflicting skills too.

Deepening your bonds with the characters through the sub-events can also unlock Primal Arts, which are basically team skills. Two of them were revealed: “Muscle & Slender” a Primal Arts which can be used when Lulua and Nico are part of your front row, which makes your next turn comes sooner when you receive damage. The second one is “The powerful bond between a Student and their Master” which is usable with Lulua and Piana in the front row. It reduces the chances of the characters fainting when receiving damage, and makes it so an alchemist character’s next turn comes faster when using items.

A DLC code for a demo of Atelier Lulua‘s Japanese version was included in this week’s Famitsu. The demo covers the beginning of the game and you’ll also be able to transfer your save to the final Japanese version. A similar demo will probably be released in the west at some point too. I’m planning to make an article with my impressions of the demo so look forward to it.

The gallery below includes multiple new screenshots, 3D models, Lulua and Meruru’s 2D artworks by Kishida Mel.

Our previous coverage of Atelier Lulua:

Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland launches on March 20 in Japan for PS4 and Switch. The game will be available on May 21 in America, and on May 24 in Europe, for PS4, Switch and PC.