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How the "mighty" have fallen

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: June 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

OK, so "Atelier Iris" (hereby dubbed "AI") isn't exactly the first RPG that comes to mind in the genre. This series has always been about the little guy, utilizing old 2-D goodness to break into an overcrowded market of big boys, yet "AI" has managed to produce 3 stateside releases, mainly due to the excellent hook of alchemy. In each game, most of your arsenal is created through alchemic recipes, and indeed, much of the story has often been driven by the ability to utilize these items to progress in the game (in particular, "AI2" forced the player to create oodles of necessary items to progress through trees, locked doors, etc.). Thus, the developers are able to control the flow of the story (if you don't have the ingredients, you don't make the item), and at the same time, provide the gamer with a somewhat fun side bit (I LOVED the alchemic portion of "AI2"). The games themselves have often had cute stories, revolving around romances between a male fighter and female alchemist, as they find themselves in increasingly important situations, while trying to befriend the spirits of their planets ("Mana sprites" or somesuch nonsense).

Indeed, after "AI2", I was expecting a whopper of a game. "AI2" allowed characters to travel across 2 worlds, through multiple towns and dungeons, fighting numerous enemies in various contexts (random encounters, boss fights, tournaments, etc.), all the while hunting for rare and special ingredients and recipes to improve their arsenal and move forward in the game.

Wow. What a step back. "AI3" has exactly ONE town, and FIVE dungeons. That's it (sure, some people may suggest that the dungeons have towns of their own - one freakin' screen a town doth not make!). Houston, we have a problem! How does a 2-D decide that still less is more? It's absurd. Moreover, the patrons of the towns have exactly zero useful nuggets to impart on a world-weary traveller. Zero. In fact, with the exception of those NPG's needed for missions (more on that later), you could simply skip the conversation of EVERY OTHER character in the town (by the way, non-mission NPG's make up about 90% of the residents, and their words never change throughout the game. LAZY.)

The gameplay develops through a series of missions. The main characters (a male fighter, a female alchemist, and an unnervingly busty and...sexual 14-yar-old. Ah, those game programmers ) belong to a town guild, who gives them missions falling into three categories: help, fetch and fight. The "help" missions allow one to increase his guild rank, while the "fetch" and "fight" (which are self-explanatory) allow one to increase his ingredient and weapon list through personal chores. After one's rank has increased to a certain level, a "mission" begins, and all "quests" go on hold. The story develops in these "missions".

That's fine with me - I have generally liked mission-based development of a game. The problem is, the missions are incredible BORING. A fetch mission is often just that - your character runs around the 5 dungeons finding ingredients. The "fight" missions are fun, but repetitive. Sometimes, you will fight a powerful, unique enemy (I like these a lot). Sometimes, you will hunt down one particular group of enemies, which can be clearly seen on the map (these are OK). Finally, sometimes, you'll have to fight random encounters until you defeat a certain number of a particular enemy (these are incredibly painful - even late in the game, you will be assigned missions to hunt some of the weakest enemies of the game). But with only 5 dungeons, ANYONE will get tired of the enormous amount of backtracking involved in completing any of these missions.

The "help" missions are a mixed bag. Early on, you have the ability to find "Mana" and transform your character, with different strengths and weaknesses. This was VERY promising. Unfortunately, you will exhaust most of these missions about a third of the way through the game. Truly, I must be missing something here, but I haven't found a new mana since about chapter 3. The rest of the "help" missions usually involve fighting some boss, although an uncomfortable number of them require the same pedestrian "fetching" described earlier. This would be somewhat acceptable if the missions were fun. Unfortunately, every one of the missions is the EXACT SAME! Go to a dungeon, fight a boss, fetch an item (a gem, as it were). Moreover, the missions are done so quickly that the player forgets the main storyline, instead focusing on,errr, making a dessert. Terrible across the board.

This game wins no awards for graphics. I knew going into it that "AI3" was a 2-D game. I didn't expect it to look IDENTICAL to "AI2" - it even has the same enemies! Actually, "AI2" is superior, due to its larger variety of locations. This is obviously a rushed product, and it shows.

Speaking of rushing, this game is incredibly glitchy. Load times? Load times?!? Are you KIDDING me? The PS2 can't handle what is essentially a PS1 game? Also, the game (rarely, thankfully) freezes up, or skips. This is unacceptable.

Battles are turn-based, blah blah blah. The manual tells you about their active-card-system, or somesuch nonsense, but don't be fooled. Faster characters act quickly, and slower characters act slowly. Sometimes, you can slow an enemy further, or paralyze him, but the idea that this is somehow a bold step forward is laughable. The battles themselves are problematic. It is often difficult to determine the range of a spell, or how many enemies are affected. Spells are cast through "skill points", which have a habit of randomizing due to a "Burst" factor (I'm not even going to bother explaining this one - just think "limit break for everyone in the party"). Enemies are very hardy toward physical attack, but incredibly weak toward skills in general. Finally, eah person can have a maximum of 6 skills, but some of them are prohibitively expensive, so in actuality, you'll be using about one or two skills for each character in the majority of battles. Yeah, that's boring.

There are other issues (such as avoiding, or even SEEING, trivial enemies on the map), but I think I'll stop here. This is NOT a worthy addition to the "AI" series - this is an embarrassment.

Great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: June 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

To be honest, I only heard of this series a few months ago (heck, I finally beat the first one just before I got my hands on this one). But for anyone who has played the first, this is an enjoyable continuation to the series. My only complaint would be that the game is rather short (9 chapters all told, but all done in 35 hours). Other than that, the game is very enjoyable. The combat system works well, and the different forms that you get mixes things up a bit. A good solid game when it all boils down.

Average and boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Atelier Iris 3 offers many things we've seen plenty of times before in plenty of other RPG's, so chances are the game will be feeling familiar to you even though you've never played it before. You play as Edge (not "the" Edge) as you go about recruiting new members into your party and take on the usual assortment of RPG baddies in the usual assortment of RPG areas that populate the underwhelming story of the game. Despite the overall blandness of Atelier Iris 3, it's Edge and the rest of the main characters that offer the most engaging aspects of the game, and offer some very funny dialogue as well. The game does offer a bit of challenge when it comes to it's "alterworlds" (or dungeons) that you only have a limited amount of time to explore. The biggest downsides of Atelier Iris 3 is that the turn based combat is boring and dull, and it offers absolutely nothing new to the concept either. All things considering, there's nothing really bad about Atelier Iris 3, but there's nothing really good about it either. If you're looking for a new RPG to tide you over until something better comes along, Atelier Iris 3 is worth a look, and you could always do worse as far as RPG's go. Then again, you could always do better as well.

a little disappointing

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I just finished this game, and as a newcomer to this series it was a little disappointing I mean you spend all this time doing quest for a mediocore ending to say the least. I got both the normal ending which was a joke and the true ending which you had to do 64 different quest before you got the 1 quest that would give you the true ending, which wasn't much better then the normal ending. The quests become repetive...some you keep doing over and over again. One of the things I noticed while I was playing this game was that some of the quest monsters were harder to beat then the actual bosses. Another thing I didn't care for is the at the start of the game you get these beautiful animation cut scenes, but during the game there are no cut screens everything is done in game format....even the ending is done in game format...come on how lame is that you spend 50 hours on a game the least you should get out of it is a few good cut screens. all and all the game was alright and if you don't mind repetiveness and have 50 hours to kill go ahead and pick up the game.....just don't expect much out of it

A Major Step Down

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This review was written by my son, James Shea

The third AI game to be translated and brought over from Japan, Atelier Iris 3 retains many of the gameplay conventions and stylistic types used in the previous games. However, compared to previous games in the series, it is actually reduced in quality in many ways.

The game centers around a central city. Quests are accepted at the guild, and then the characters go through a portal to reach a smaller sub-world (the "afterworld"). Doing these quests is what advances the plot. There are rules for these afterworlds, though; there is only so much time that can be spent in one. After this time is spent, the party is automatically ejected from the afterworld. Thus, it is necessary to plan wisely. On the afterworld map, enemies show up as colored blobs - red for hard, silver for medium, and blue for easy. Time spent in fights counts as time in the world, so fights must be completed quickly.

There are three characters (a large reduction from AI's previous games) - a swordsman, an alchemist, and another girl who joins later on. Their talents are simplified, lacking the diversity of earlier installments. Besides the regular use of magic and items, the only different gameplay element is the burst chain - racking up hits gives you the game's version of a Limit Break, where your skill and strength are at maximum.

Like in previous games, alchemy is used to construct new items using elemental spirits. However, it has been scaled down from earlier games. For one thing, items in the game field can no longer be turned into elemental points (one of my favorite parts of the first PS2 AI game). Secondly, the general types of items that can be made has been reduced.

Story-and-writing-wise, this game has gone way downhill. Even though the first AI was fairly standard for an RPG, the characters were at least endearing. In AI3, the main characters are one moody guy and two perky girls, and none are particularly charming. The graphics seem to have dropped in quality, and most resembles Ragnarok Online (losing a lot of the little details that made the earlier games more like Disgaea or a similar series). The sound is good, but repetitive, and quality is quickly overshadowed by how much you'll hear it.

As a game, this is a major step down from the earlier Atelier Iris games. It feels a lot less vibrant and real, and seems more like the setting for an MMO than a game in itself.

Rating: 5/10.

It's OK

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I loved the 2nd one...it was so fun!!! This one is kind of annoying to me...not so fun, but it kills time!

Review Page: 1 

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