Game Review: Atelier Iris

[schild]

The dialogue in the game is funnier than I could have ever hoped to be.

[voodoolily]

Schild, what system is this game for? You never said in the review. How can I play it? (I know the answer, I'm just being a pill)

[schild]

Schild, what system is this game for? You never said in the review. How can I play it? (I know the answer, I'm just being a pill)

PS2. I should really fix that.  How many RPGs come out on the Xbox and Gamecube anyway? I can only think of like a total of 10 between those two systems.

[voodoolily]

Well isn't my face red. I thought it was for the PSP. But I'm delighted to know that I can just go pick this up without having to buy something else.

But I guess that’s neither here nor there, you’re reading this to find out what the game offers in terms of *new shiny* to the genre.

I don't give shit one about *new shiny*, I want the quirks and engrish that you so eloquently and hilariously describe. I finnuh play me summa dat. (sorry, I'm drinking)  :-D

[schild]

There's better stuff there than "Blue Bull Gives you Runs." It's all over the place really. I'm just hoping it wasn't the beta copy I played. I'm actually picking up a release version also, because I love supporting NIS America. The game also features the first time I've seen the word whackjob used in a video game.

[voodoolily]

There's better stuff there than "Blue Bull Gives you Runs."

I believe it was "Bull Bull Gives You Run", but I don't know if the sentence can actually be made funnier with engrish. Actually yeah, it can.

Well, it sounds great, and I'm sure you know by now that I'm a nipponophilic fangyrl for this kind of shit.

[dusematic]

Is this a new game or a remake of a classic SNES/PS1 title?

[schild]

Is this a new game or a remake of a classic SNES/PS1 title?

It is a brand new game from Gust. It continues the series by having nothing to do with Atelier Marie or any of the past Gust titles.

[Aenovae]

I got about 32 hours into the game and I can no longer recommend it to anyone.

At first, it's a lot of fun.  Crafting is simple and easy, and even offers you little plot rewards for your accomplishments.  The battle system starts simple but gets more complex as the game goes on.  There are lots of secrets and things to collect in each dungeon, and you gain new abilities which let you go back to old dungeons and nab even more secrets.

But once you get 3/4ths of the way through the game, you realize the developers clearly ran out of time and just padded out the rest of the game.  The monsters start repeating (same graphic, same skills, same sfx, different name!).  The dungeons get much longer and more mazelike, but offer less unique things to find and even less secrets than before.  All the boss fights are significantly harder than before, just to make you level up (in a crafting rpg!) and waste time more.

Even the side missions get obnoxious.  The early missions were nice ones like Defeat the New Monsters in Alexia Cave.  Later missions are like Some NPC Chick is Hiding Somewhere on the World Map - Find Her!  And once you check every single dungeon and finally find the one she's in, you have to do it again.  And again.  Oh and one more time plzkthx.

Worse, the high-level combat takes FOREVER.  You spend five minutes battling each random encounter, barely surviving, and using up your resources the whole time.  Which means going back to old dungeons (again) to collect raw materials just so you can fight again.  Also, there is no character customization and you never get very powerful relative to the monsters you fight.  Every character has unique skills, but you max out each one in no time.  Certain monsters require you to use certain skills just to do damage, so combat 'strategy' devolves into simply finding the designer-approved means of defeating each monster type.

There is a skill to avoid random monster encounters, but it uses a huge amount of resources, doesn't work on the world map, and only lasts for about two minutes.

I could go on and on about all the things that suck about Atelier Iris once you get pretty far into it, but you get the point.  Basically, the game eventually changes from an adventure of discovery into an excercise of tedium.

[Yegolev]

There is a skill to avoid random monster encounters, but it uses a huge amount of resources, doesn't work on the world map, and only lasts for about two minutes.

It stays active until you load a new map.  I mostly use it to make sure I can beat feet to a boss encounter without wasting HP/MP on random mobs, but it does help with exploration.

[schild]

I disagree with Aenovae - it never seemed like tedium to me.