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Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm Walkthrough Video Game Strategy Guide (PS2)
 
Release Date:05/15/2007
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Genre: RPG
Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Gust

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 <sigh>) 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.

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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.