This three disc set of Atelier music covers the whole spectrum of handheld/portable Atelier gaming. The first disc was for a rather recent project, Atelier Lise (Nintendo DS). The second disc is for the GBA game "Atelier Marie, Elie, and Anis." The third disc covers music from "Atelier Elie and Marie" for the WSC (Wonder Swan Color), a Japan-only handheld platform.

The Atelier Lise soundtrack introduces two new composers to the Gust lineup: Eri Arakawa and Miyoko Takaoka. Though they attempt to imitate the stars of the Atelier music world (Achiwa, Nakagawa, Tsuchiya), it simply cannot be done. There are a couple of great tracks on the disc, and they may fool you into thinking it's "the real deal," but the rest of the album gives itself away...as does the DS sound quality. I respect these two composers for attempting the difficult job of putting awesome, rhythmic, Atelier-style music into a Nintendo DS. The soundtrack is good, but easily forgotten.

The second disc is by far the worst of the three. Though the music mostly comes from the old Marie and Elie games, the GBA synth simply does not work here. I think that, with the right sound manipulators behind the project, it could have gone well. But simply downgrading the synth tracks from PlayStation to GBA was a bad move, and that seems to be what happened here. There are a few new tracks on this album, thanks to the appearance of a third alchemist, "Anis." And, though I generally dislike this disc, some tracks did work out well. I was pleased with the way "CRASH!" turned out, for instance.

But then comes a surprise: disc three is good! This WSC game is actually a port/combination of the two Game Boy Color installments of Marie and Elie. And while Game Boy Color had graphical improvements over the original Game Boy, the sound was the exact same, limited to three channels of audio. Now, this music isn't a direct port of the GBC audio files, but I believe they are close in nature, as the audio samples provided should demonstrate. And for old synth-junky audiophiles (like myself), this is heaven. To hear Atelier music arranged in such a manner is certainly a gift. Unfortunately, this disc is far shorter than the other two, coming in at a mere 40 minutes.

All three discs have a common strand: the music is downgraded to handhelds, so the strength of the composition has to outweigh the sound quality. The story is essentially the same for all three discs: there aren't enough solid compositions to keep the thing above water. I dare say this is especially the case for Lise, and it attempts to make up for this with (relatively) superior audio.

The Lise OST is available separately for purchase, but my line of thinking is this: if you're a die-hard enough fan to want to own the Lise OST (which isn't all that great), why not spring for the extras as well? Personally, I think disc three makes it all worthwhile, but to each his/her own I suppose.

Reviewed by: Patrick Gann