Atelier Iris: another nice import

[kpjam]

Apparently this is another installment in a Japanese game series that hasn't previously been released in the US. Produced by Gust and marketed/released by NIS.  NIS if you remember brought us Disgaea, Phantom Brave, and La Pucelle Tactics.

If you picked this up hoping for a NIS product, you won't find it. You shouldn't be disappointed though, I wasn't.

It's more of a standard RPG, well standard in that you roam around between cities fulfilling quests along the way of saving the world.  The graphics are beautifully rendered 2d stills. The dungeons have some fun and ingenious puzzles.  Well, not really ingenious, but they are fun!

The battles system is nothing to write home about.  Three of your characters fight, and you can change them on the fly, ala FFX. The characters, for the most part are complementary to each other.  The only one that can do real magic is Klien.  So your left deciding between speed, piercing or bludgeoning damage, and other things you might have done to alter your own characters. It makes the battles and interesting and fresh.  You'll have to travel through the noob areas many times, and the fact that some characters have an area of effect strike is a god-send. You earn skill points which level up abilities and others are unlocked through time or puzzles that you find. Norn's ability to change a monster into candy is one of the more amusing ones. The rest are pretty straightforward.

The main characters are Kline and Lita.  They are helped along the way by Norn, Arlin, Delsus, Marietta and quite a few npcs.  The core of the game,is Mana.  Klien is an alchemist, able to work with Mana and their materials.  You destroy items in the world, trees, signs, your save book, enemies, to obtain the material they work with.  Popo is your first mana, he works with Wood, water, and air.  You find items that are really spells and if you have the mana and the materials they need and work with, you can create things.  Ice bombs, lighting rods, healing bulbs, etc.   Simple.  Your inventory of items is limited to 9, and the number of the element you can store is 99.  Some items only need one or two of the desired material, others need up to 10. Also, each mana has a primary material, if you wish to use a mana for a second or third item, they can't use it as efficiently and use up to 3 times the needed material. So your supply isn't unlimited.  Combined with some of the materials being rarer then the others, means that you have to be prudent with some of the items.  Holy, Light, Dark, and Air are some of the useful but really annoying to gather elements. Klien can gather elements by killing monsters, but that means he has to issue the killing blows. Your mana also get tired from working with the elements, so to combat that, you need to give them 'gifts' to refill their energy.  Of course, the items that provided them with the highest boost of energy are the either rare or expensive.

Outside of battle you travel a world map and dungeon maps.  Except for the bosses, the dungeon maps(some are forts and pyramids, not just dungeons) and mazes with puzzles.  The mana you obtain all have the ability to offer talents when in a dungeon area, (The Earth mana forms a step stool so you can get to higher places), which are needed to complete some of the dunfeons.

The items that you can buy are limited and generally basic.  You create or find most of the items worth wearing.  By creating, there are 5 shops in the world that offer the ability to systhesis things.  A large majority of the plans offered by the shopkeepers can be used to create multiple items.  Some items require the synthesis of previous items from the same or other shops. Most plans come during the game after certain events have occurred or you've talked to some of the shop keepers enough.  The plans almost always come with a little story.  The moral indecision of the innkeeper who's creating poison for a customer(I actually wondered for a moment if it was for another character who wanted to kill Lita).  

There are other NPC's you interact with that provide color and additional quests.  Some required for the main storyline, some not.  All generally enjoyable.  

The other major component of the game is the weapon.  You occasionally find large chunks of elements.  These can be made into( I forgot the term) that you can add to certain weapons and items.  They have varying effects like increased poison resistance, attack power, etc.  You use the Mana to create the items, which causes the variety of effects and powers of the effect.  You can combine items of the same effect to create stronger items. The one thing that was kind of annoying was that only certain items could have these things added to them, so I spent most of the game with these things added only to Norn and Lita.

All told, I found it a fun and clever game.  Nothing about it was extraordinary.  But the pieces were all well done and fit together.. The voice acting and dialogue flowed well.  The characters, while clichéd by now, were not cookie cutter, so they worked.  The story and sidestories were woven together well.  The world was consistent.  The battles were easy, made sense, and FIT with story.  It wasn't like some games were the battles and abilities of the characters seem to have no relation to the story.  The music was nice.  Nothing jarring.   Their were two things I found annoying. The 9 item limit and the fact that I killed the last boss twice and the game never saved correctly so I could try the bonus dungeon.  I might try again.

I'd give it a 4/5.

[Dracos]

I'm rather looking forward to playing this one myself.

Dracos

[Rift120]

Word on Gamefaqs.com  is that there is a sound glitch in the final battle, and if you turn of BGM and voice acting you should be able to get a save game + data just fine

I find this believable, if only because my copy is chock full of sound glitchs. Which is really my one big complaint about the game.

[Dracos]

I did get this...and well, my opinion was far less pleasant.  It didn't catch.  I got tired of some of those tricks back in the 90s.  It had a good 5 or so hours with which to hook me and it never did.

Dracos