So why the history lesson? Simple: these are deep games -- ones that often require a half-dozen hours of play time before one can glean the entirety of mixing and matching items and the layers present in the battle system. Not exactly the kind of game you can just plop down and play at a crowded event. Still, we gave it a shot and were quickly inundated by the usual string of mostly-static-screened reams of dialogue (sadly the event was too loud to hear if any voices were present).

The result? Well, it's exactly what we've described up above; a mix of friendly banter in a quaint little town where little Rorolina (everyone just calls her Rorona) is a budding alchemist sent in place of her sleep-prone master alchemist mentor. Tasked with a dozen do-em-or-the-workshop-closes tasks that each take three months to complete, the plucky lass is joined quickly by her frilly-garbed friend Cordelia and... well, that's about as far as we could get before we started feeling guilty for hogging the demo stations.

We were able to glean some of the basics of the game's timeline, however. Given that Rorona has a fixed window with which to explore around, collect materials and craft items for the regal leaders of her town, the passage of days is important. Nearly every major transition from the towns to the outside world where things are a little more dangerous takes up a day, as does healing and crafting. In short, time has to be managed, but at least there's a three month window.

When actually whipping something up, it costs a bit of stamina, meaning Rorona and her pals have to give a bit of their own HP to make things, which must be balanced by the exploratory and combat parts of the game. It's a shame that we didn't get a chance to see more of the actual battle system as this is one of the key components of the series, but we should have far more time with the game soon.

One thing we were absolutely surprised by was the lushness of environments. The move to 3D (though things are more or less locked along planes with some camera moves to make traversal cinematic) hasn't hurt the series a bit, and it actually runs quite well, though NISA says they're making inroads to clean everything up and keep it consistent. It's a bit of a shame to see all that HD real estate wasted on characters that don't have, say, jointed sprites to allow for thinks like breathing or moving mouths or smoothly changing expressions like the recent Trinity Universe, also from NISA, but we've seen very little of the game so far.

What we did glimpse showed promise. It's clear that Gust was taking their time in entering the next generation, and though Atelier Rorona will arrive almost four months after the PS3 launched when it hits stores in September, it would appear the series (and others from Gust like Ar Tonelico) are in good hands. We'll have a build of the game in the office soon, and as soon as we do, we'll be sure to update you on all the goods. For now, check out the media we were able to pluck from NISA.