A while back, I heard of a little known series called Atelier Iris. I was interested, but could never find a copy. Until now. I found it at a Gamestop at a good price, and got to play through it. Here's my review.



Developer: Gust
Publisher: NISA
Genre: RPG
Year: 2005

The story has you take the role of Klein, an alchemist. You soon encounter a Gelgazit named Lita, and soon become one yourself. It doesn't take long for you to become involved in a quest to save the world and restore its mana (the magical energy, of sorts). There's plenty of humor, but it is an otherwise generic story. The characters are pretty typical, but still likable. The "skits" (side events) are what help make the story more enjoyable, and contains most of the game's humor.


Some abilities are pretty useful.

The game plays like a typical turn-based RPG, with you taking turns attacking enemies. You level up like any other RPG, but you can also level up your skills to increase their effectiveness. Skills are leveled up with the points you gain after leveling your self up. You can also equip mana to your characters to boost their stats or help level up skills. There isn't anything remarkable here, but it is not bad. You can also create new items with alchemy, which requires you to either have enough elements (gained by extracting them from objects on the field) or just getting items. It is fun to create items, and to see what new formulas come from altering the ingredients. You will also get more mana as you progress, and each has a feature usable on the map (like wardingoff monsters). Speaking of the map, you'll get from place to place by walking, and tends to feel tedious (as places feel too far apart, with no action inbetween).

There are a few technical issues that are present in the game. One problem can be encountered early on, and will force you to restart your game if you make the mistake of progressing too far. The cause of the problem is how events are generated, as you must walk to a certain spot to activate them. This spot is easy to avoid, and you may not realize you made a mistake until it's too late. I also got stuck over an edge, and there was no way out. There are also many reports of the game freezing after beating the game if you have the voice acting on, and it will prevent you from accessing the bonus content. There is also a bit of slowdown present, too.


The battle system is fairly basic.

The audio of the portion is pretty good. The American voice acting is pretty meh, but you can change it to Japanese, so that's not an issue. The soundtrack holds up better. There are a few battle songs, and some various background tracks. There's a bit of rock, and some instrumental pieces in the sound tack. None are great, but they are nice to listen to.

The graphics are good, with the sprites being large and detailed. The characters are animated well, with movement being pretty fluid. The environments have plenty of detail in them, but they are a bit generic in terms of design. There is a bit of recycling of enemy design, but it's not a major issue.


Extracting elements is vital for survival.

There is a bit of extra content, which helps because the game is a bit short. Upon beating the game, you can save onto another slot and access a bonus dungeon (on the original file). There quite a few sidequests, and each is about half an hour long at most. There is also a bonus feature, that lets you look at art, listen to music, view profiles, and view some movies.

Overall, Atelier Iris is an above average game. The gameplay is very basic, with the saving grace being the fun alchemy system. Unfortunately, there are some glitches and the event system can lead to problems. There is an enjoyable experience to be had, but you have to get through some fairly serious problems to get to it.

My Score
6.5/10