Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana

"More often than not, Atelier Iris:Eternal Mana is a fun, addictive RPG"

The Atelier series is big in Japan. There are 7 installments, (This game is the 6th installment,) and these games, developed by Gust, are apparently popular. Atelier Iris; Eternal Mana is the first game in this series to focus on a story, though, where the other games in the series really only focused on the alchemy system, (more on that later.) Due to this, Nippon Ichi, a publisher of mostly strategic RPG's with 2-D visuals, decided that this game should be brought to North America. NIS America handled the localization, and the game is finally here.

Sony was apparently reluctant to allow it over here in the first place, (they have a policy against 2-D games, apparently, though this is a fully 3-D game, it just uses sprite-inspired visuals) and the Japanese version of this game contained many bugs. Everything was sorted out, and this game was planned for a late May 2005 release, but was delayed literally a week from its release date. Apparently because the game was still too buggy to pass a test at Sony, they had to delay its release a month to correct it.

Now, we finally have the game, and I'm impressed with it. What we have is a bright, charming RPG with great music, characters, and some surprisingly deep gameplay.

Graphics; If you look at screenshots for this game, you know how the graphics look. There's really nothing else to say in this category. I don't know if the graphics are good or bad, because of the style used. All I really can say is that if you look at a screenshot, you'll be able to make up your own mind about the graphics. I can say, though, that the world is definitely colorful, and I, personally, found the graphics to be very impressive. (For what they are.) Cutscenes are presented mainly with characters standing there, and huge pictures of them on the left and right sides of the screen talking to each other. This works surprisingly well, and that's good, because there are a lot of character conversations in this game. The unfortunate point to the graphics is the lack of anime cutscenes. With an anime intro, it's disappointing to see them not take advantage of these during the game itself. As for the world map...sure, it's not as detailed as the rest of the game, but it doesn't look as bad as...say...the world map in Tales of Symphonia. (At least, in my opinion.) The visual style generally fits that of the game.

Gameplay; This game's a fun RPG, and that's all the developers seemed concerned about making. The combat system's very simple, reminiscent of Final Fantasy 10's but with a bit less reliance on specific characters, though you can switch characters in and out of battle. You get EXP for winning battles, and your characters level up, as well as giving you a chance to give stat points to level certain skills up.

In general, the game's difficulty isn't too much of a problem. If I had to rank Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana's difficulty, it would be about a "medium." Not too easy, but not too hard. If you're looking for a very challenging RPG, then this isn't it. Some boss battles in this game's 2nd half are quite tough, but most of it's fairly relaxing and easy. The main feature in this game is the Alchemy, which is surprisingly simple, yet there's so much to it. First of all, Klein, the main character, (pronounced "Klane") can extract elements from almost anything. With these elements, he can create copies of a magic. For example....let's say you have a Heal Jar. If you get enough water elements, you can create more heal jars. Certain Mana that you collect along your adventure can synthesize certain elements, so it's important to find as many of these mana creatures as possible, which is easy as most aren't too hard to find.

That's the magic system. Then, there's Item Synthesizing. Get valuable items, and go to an item shop, and you mix various items together to create new ones. I really didn't use this system much, but apparently, there are MANY results and combos you can create. It's simple, but there's a lot to it. If you synthesize often at a shop, you get to know the shop keeper, and surprisingly, these shop keepers have very well-developed personalities, and sometimes it's very interesting to hear what they have to say. I didn't do much item synthesizing over the course of this game, but I got to know the shopkeeper in Kavoc, and if all the shopkeepers have that kind of depth, then I feel like I really missed out. Those who liked Star Ocean; Till the End of Time's item creation system will really like this game.

To top it all off, there's Weapon Synthesizing, which I didn't even bother with, so I can't really go into it.

It's really amazing how well developed all these systems are in an otherwise very simple game. While it sounds like a lot to learn, Atelier Iris gives you plenty of tutorials (maybe too many, actually) to help you during this adventure.

The game itself mainly consists of main characters who meet, and go on an adventure, get involved in a conflict, etc. It seems pretty standard but the interesting thing here, (besides the visuals,) is that unlike many RPG's, where you leave town for an adventure, this RPG actually has a town where the main characters live. This town is called Kavoc. You actually have a house that you return to to get some rest, plan your next move, etc. You return to your house very often, so it kind of takes away (a little bit,) from the whole idea of this being an adventure, but only a little bit. The world is surprisingly big, and you do get to see very many other locations. Atelier Iris; Eternal Mana is a fun, "hassle-free" RPG that doesn't take itself too seriously, and that isn't afraid to occasionally challenge you.

Does this gameplay have its flaws? Yeah, it does. The combat system is very simple, and, frankly, boring. It would really have been nice to have seen something new. Sometimes the way they go about combat is just lazy as well. To increase the difficulty, what do they do? Throw more enemies into battle. I can't even describe how annoying it is to be fighting 6-8 enemies at a time, and they are all seemingly faster than your characters, which allows them to usually get to move first, severely damaging your party before you even get a chance to attack them. This is annoying enough during the random battles, but when they try it with bosses, it's just really upsetting. It doesn't increase the difficulty as much as increase the tediousness of the game.

Another flaw with the combat system is the fact that reviving someone from a KO is nearly impossible for most of the game, as the only way to do this is with a magic ability called New Life, which Klein doesn't receive until late in the game. And of course he's the only one who can use it, which sucks, because Klein has fairly weak defense compared to others in his party, and he dies very often in combat. If he dies, though, you might as well restart the boss battle, since without his healing, (the healing items in this game don't help at all. The only way to heal well is with Klein's magic,) you're really going to have a difficult time fighting some of these bosses. Why did they make it so difficult to revive characters during battle? Why didn't they have items that do this? Now...to be fair, as I said, I haven't experimented much with the item synthesizing, so there may be a way to create more powerful healing items and items that revive people who are KO'ed in battle. But these items are REALLY essential in an RPG, and they should be readily available from the start, not something that should be "unlocked."

Another problem I have with the battle system is the way EXP is given. Everyone gets EXP, which is really nice. Those who didn't participate in battle, or were KO'ed in battle still get 1/3 of the EXP. Unfortunately, in Atelier Iris, only the 3 party members who are fighting when the battle ends get the EXP. Let's say you have your 3 favorite characters fighting a challenging boss. You're nearing the end of the boss, but you see the boss charging up a powerful attack. You switch one of your characters out of battle to avoid him taking heavy damage, but then you hit the boss again and kill it. The character switched out of battle at the last second only gets 1/3 of the EXP, since he wasn't in the battle at the end of it, and the character who you switched in gets the full EXP, even if he or she didn't actually do anything. A big annoyance. Another annoyance; the final boss is a little too challenging. In a game where your characters only have about 300 Max HP (at the end of it!!!) this final boss has 32,000 HP. (!!!) To top it all off, he has a move that kills you instantly. MAKE SURE he doesn't kill Klein, or you have no hope of reviving him, and, likely, no hope of winning the battle. Although I beat the final boss on my second try, I spent hours of leveling up to do this. (And I was probably slightly overleveled to begin with.) So the final boss wasn't impossibly difficult, but with its ridiculously high HP, it was a little too much.

The game's biggest flaw, though, is its repetition. Atelier Iris's easy-going "fetch quests" are fun for most of the game, but as you reach the game's 3rd act, it begins to get extremely tedious. You basically go from town to town OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. You discover every town this world has to offer fairly early in the game, and for the rest of the game, you go from location to location over and over again. It wouldn't be as bad if there was more in towns to explore, but in general, there isn't. Kavoc, the first town in the game, (and the town where you spend most of your time,) is a decent sized town. It's unfortunate to learn that it is really the biggest town in the game. Other towns are very small, and offer little in the way of exploration and interaction, most consisting of 1 town square with a couple of essential shops, and that's it. It's too bad that they decided to do this, because towns are definitely nice to look at, and with all the sidequests in this game, it would be cool if the towns were much bigger and more fun to explore.

Aside from those flaws, though, the gameplay of Atelier Iris is fun and addicting.

Plot; Though the game features a strong cast of characters, the plot's fairly weak. They all want to go to Avenberry, the City in the Sky, for their own reasons. Eventually, they learn more, and, at one point, the whole world's on the brink of destruction. There's not much else to say as far as plot goes. I'll be honest here; the plot in this game completely sucks. When you finally discover this game's main villain, (if you can call him that,) it's just incredibly disappointing. He's probably one of the worst I've seen in an RPG. He has no motivation at all and does nothing particularly noteworthy except to act "sinister," all the time. He hardly even gets to talk to the main characters, (he just shows up occasionally to remind us of his existence before instantly fleeing the scene,) and you never even get to fight this villain! Ever! His voice actor, (with English voices turned on,) does very little to help the situation, (His voice sounds like The Brain from The Animaniacs...) and we never even find out what happens to this guy at the end of the game. Bad.

So, look. The plot is terrible. But what saves this from ruining the game is the great characters. This game is very much a character-driven RPG. Characters talk to each other very often over the course of the game, and you really get to know each one very well. Almost all characters are likable, (Except Norn....WHO THE HELL came up with her!?) and they manage to keep this dead-in-the-water storyline afloat. Great characters. I really wish more RPG's would make this a priority.

Sound; You'd be surprised. When you look at this game, you'd expect a fairly low-budget game. But I was surprised to find out that the game supports Dolby Pro Logic II, which is nice. Those able to take advantage of this feature really should. Similarly, Atelier Iris is almost fully voiced, (and you even have an option of English or Japanese voices!) to very good results. I haven't heard much of the Japanese voice acting, but the English voices are great. (Except for the villain and of course, Norn, who's basically as annoying as her character, and I doubt her Japanese voice is an improvement.) The voices all fit the characters, and while there aren't many emotional moments, they're very well acted when they do occur. The voice actors and actresses all seem to try to bring some personality to the characters, and it ends up working very well. I have an issue with the voice of Mull, and sometimes Klein's voice didn't really fit the situation, but overall, the English voice acting of this game was top notch. Voices of enemies in some battles are INCREDIBLY annoying, though, which is really the only big flaw in this game's voice acting. On another note, what bugs me is that the English voice actors are not listed in the credits, something I always feel should be done. Especially in this case, where the acting's actually excellent and I feel that the actors deserve some recognition.

As for the music, it's very catchy and nostalgic, and like the synthesis systems, surprisingly complex. Though music for Kavoc isn't what I would have chosen, I have very few other complaints about this pretty excellent little soundtrack, which provides the game with a very charming and warm atmosphere.

Replay Value; Playing through this game the way I did, (very little time devoted to item synthesizing, no weapon synthesizing, staying mainly on the game's quest, very few sidequests,) the game lasts about 30 hours, which is decent for an RPG. If you try to do everything in this game, I hear it's from 60 to 100 hours of play time, which doesn't surprise me at all. Since there's no plot twists, and no foreshadowing of any kind, there isn't much incentive to play through this story again, but I don't see how anyone could feel they didn't get their money's worth.

On a final negative note, I have to mention the various bugs still in this game. Despite the delays, quite a few still remain. The audio will occasionally begin skipping for no apparent reason, and sometimes the characters' voices will just cut off in mid-sentence. That's the worst I've experienced with this game glitch-wise, but I've seen others complaining about game freezes, writing going outside text boxes, and other types of glitches. They delayed this game for a month, and still couldn't get rid of all the glitches? I don't even want to think how many bugs and glitches were in the original Japanese version.

Overall, Atelier Iris; Eternal Mana is a fun, character-driven RPG. It does nothing to push the boundaries of the genre, and the plot sucks. But setting those flaws aside, what we have here is a fun, harmless RPG with very good characters. If that interests you, then this is definitely worth a try, (if you can even find it.) There was a sequel to this game released in Japan just recently, (May 2005), and maybe this game will sell well enough to get the sequel released in North America as well. I am still undecided about whether I would play the sequel or not. If they improved the plot, made towns a little bigger and more interactive, and cut down on the repetition, then I might seriously consider it. If it's just more of the same, though, I may not. I don't think I'd have the patience for a repeat of this game. As good as Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana is, it's really only something you'll want to play once. But you'll like it a lot that one time, and that's what matters, right?

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/05, Updated 05/21/09

Game Release: Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (US, 06/28/05)