When comparing Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings vs Overcooked 2, the Slant community recommends Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings for most people. In the question“What are the best casual games on Steam?” Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is ranked 25th while Overcooked 2 is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings is:
Atelier Lydie & Suelle's combat is simple enough for beginners who want to try out a turn-based JRPG. The interface is clean with basic commands for attacking and using skills, magic, and items. It's easy to get the hang of when to go on offense while your health is high, and when to switch to healing when your health starts to get low. The combat doesn't overwhelm you with complicated tutorials or mechanics, staying at a beginner's level with some room to grow down the line. This is a really good choice to start with if you want to get into turn-based combat before moving onto other games.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Solid turn-based combat that's welcoming to beginners
Atelier Lydie & Suelle's combat is simple enough for beginners who want to try out a turn-based JRPG. The interface is clean with basic commands for attacking and using skills, magic, and items. It's easy to get the hang of when to go on offense while your health is high, and when to switch to healing when your health starts to get low. The combat doesn't overwhelm you with complicated tutorials or mechanics, staying at a beginner's level with some room to grow down the line. This is a really good choice to start with if you want to get into turn-based combat before moving onto other games.
Pro Engaging gathering and crafting system with alchemy as the game's main focus
Atelier Lydie & Suelle focuses on gathering materials and synthesizing them into alchemy formulas as the main mechanics. You can lose yourself in the game for hours as you explore the fantasy-like levels, picking up resources from bushes, hacking away at trees, or mining them from rocks. You can take as long you want to gather the stuff you need before going back home to your alchemy lab, or your atelier.
The puzzle-like 4x4 crafting grid has a neat strategy in how you can make the most out of your ingredients. If you just put your ingredients wherever on the grid, you'll end up with a bad product. Arranging your ingredients together in certain ways on the grid boosts the end product's effects, like putting them near green squares to improve your product's healing effect, which improves the item's overall quality. Going for quality gives you more experience points to level up and more money from the jobs you take on.
Taking your time to gather the materials you need and synthesizing them into the best possible items pays off in the end.
Pro Slice-of-life story and gameplay that's relaxing and laid-back
There's a sweet simplicity to the story and gameplay that focuses more on everyday life. Playing as the two twins, Lydie and Suelle, you're mainly trying to make ends meet and become the best possible alchemists you can be. You pass the days at your own pace as you take on jobs from the townspeople, leading you to explore the worlds inside of paintings, gather materials, and craft those materials into items through alchemy. It's nice that this game lets you kick back and relax with a more low-stakes story and simplistic gameplay.
Pro Charming and colorful anime art style
The art style is has many bright colors and well-drawn characters. Everyone has all sorts of colorful hairstyles, eyes, and outfits like pink, blue, and crimson that aren't too over-the-top. Their eyes have cool swirls for pupils, their skin tones are radiant, and every character has a bright and lovely smile. This is a beautiful anime style that looks good in the 3D cel-shaded graphics and the 2D cutscenes with still art that are more like a visual novel.
Pro Creative concept of entering paintings to explore new worlds
The many fantasy-like worlds you explore through the mysterious paintings are very pretty and whimsical. Going into the paintings themselves is fascinating since it's something you don't get to do in real life, and you get to learn more about Lydie and Suelle as you go along. Gathering resources and fighting monsters while surrounded by waterfalls and flowery forests helps keep the gameplay from getting too repetitive or stale. All of this adds a more magical feel to the game's more ordinary slice-of-life sections.
Pro Simple to pick up and learn
Whether you played the first Overcooked or not, Overcooked 2 is easy to figure out right from the get-go. The recipes for each dish are familiar even if you're not much of a chef, so you can remember which raw ingredients you need as you make your way around the kitchen and work with your co-op partner(s). Once you play a few rounds, you should have a good handle on things, helping you focus on getting everything done as quickly as possible from there on out.
Pro Hilariously fun couch and online co-op for up to four players
Playing Overcooked 2 with friends is the best. There's so much going on at once in the kitchen, with barriers moving in your way, hazards popping up like cars in the middle of the road separating the two halves of your area, and ingredients, dishes, and half-prepared dishes to move from one place to another. Working together and communicating with your friends through couch co-op or online play is a constant stream of laughter and excited shouting as you mess up, learn, and hopefully get things done. If you don't have anyone to play with, then you can hop online for matchmaking instead.
Pro Fast and frantic cooking action
Overcooked 2 is really fast-paced and keeps you on your toes. You play as a chef in a crazy kitchen with a ton of things going on all at once, with you mixing, preparing, and cooking in between the chaos of moving platforms and environmental obstacles. There's a time limit constantly ticking down at the bottom of the screen; finishing your tasks on time or ahead of schedule earns you a better score in the end. Tossing ingredients to your teammates across the kitchen, or across the moving platforms or obstacles like bodies of water, is a fresh new addition in this game that wasn't in the first Overcooked, making things even faster this time around. It's such a manic yet well-done mix of many different genres and ideas that all come together in the best ways.
Cons
Con Not for people who hate repetitive busywork
If you can't stand doing the same things over and over again in games, then Atelier Lydie & Suelle probably isn't for you. The whole game is about exploring maps to gather materials and then crafting those materials into something useful through alchemy. There are some turn-based battles thrown in, but these more or less take a backseat to the alchemy mechanics. The heavy focus on gathering and crafting can end up feeling like busywork, turning the game into a drag for players who hate that kind of thing.
Con Graphics for environments aren't that great
The visuals for the environments don't hold up to how pretty the cel-shaded graphics are. The textures are low-quality with jaggies sticking out. It's not so bad on the PC version and the PlayStation 4; things are much more obvious on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation Vita. There are also some invisible walls that cut you off in places like open arches leading to shops, making the maps feel a lot smaller. If you can handle limited maps with so-so graphics, then these problems aren't that big of a deal in the long run.
Con You won't find a sprawling narrative here like in most RPGs
The stories in the Atelier games are more about everyday life mixed in with whimsical fantasy. This isn't the kind of RPG with the type of layered, rich story with dramatic twists and turns that you'd expect from the genre. If you want a heavier narrative with more to say, you won't get that with this game.
Con No English voices even though previous Atelier games included them
For some reason, Atelier Lydie & Suelle doesn't have an English dub and just has the original Japanese voices with English subtitles. There's nothing wrong with only having the Japanese option, but it's really weird considering the other Atelier games in the West have English voice acting. New players don't have much to worry about here unless you can't stand having to read subtitles. If you're a fan of the series and you're used to the English dub, you might be thrown off by the change.
Con Can be incredibly frustrating
Trying to work at such a fast pace with so many obstacles and general mayhem going on at once can wear on you after a while. There's a lot to keep track of at once, and it's easy for things to spiral out of control as your mistakes pile up. If your group isn't doing well and you're running out of time, you might find yourself losing your patience with your team and yelling at them. This might not be the game for you if you don't have a team that's willing to be patient and cooperative with each other, even when you're not doing so well during a particular round.
Con Single-player isn't as fun as co-op
If you only want to play alone, then Overcooked 2 might not be the best game to pick. All the fast-paced fun from co-op mostly comes from communicating with your team and trying to pull off your task together before the time runs out. You control two characters at once while playing alone, but this still lacks the team-based chaos that makes the game so addicting. You could instead go online for matchmaking, though you might get paired with people who don't want to talk or work as an actual team.
Con The controls are a bit sluggish
There's something about the controls that feels heavy and deliberate, and not necessarily in a good way. The feeling goes against the fast-paced nature of the gameplay that demands you in one place and then the next. If you played the first Overcooked, you may notice the difference right away. This change shouldn't be too much of a hassle, though it's still noticeable.