Atelier Iris 3

[zeroboo]

Never done a first play before so bare with me.

I've never played any of its predecessors but I'm really enjoying this old school rpg at the moment. Some websites have slated it for its dungeon crawling system but personally I find that to be its selling point. No fuss, no puzzle, get a quest- now do it! The story almost feels like a tag on.

I'm only on chapter 2 but I've managed to make my own healing potions along with some armour and weapons. I've yet to find use for my cash. A nice diversion from your traditional armour/weapon store.

The battle system is fun though nothing special. Basically, the more combo/hits you do the more your burst bar fills up. When your burst bar maxes out you go into... ... ... yep, burst mode! You then automatically get 9 points to spend on special attacks. The aim in burst mode is again maximise your combo/hits, this way you will stay in burst mode and cause greater damage for a longer period of time.

I've also been playing FF12 lately and find the pause when opening up the map to be very annoying. This problem is not present in Atelier 3. Infact, I do not recall encountering any load times besides loading/saving a game. Again making comparison with FF12, travelling through town is a chore; not so in Atelier 3. You can opt to pay a little cash and immedietely be transported to your destination of choice in town.

All in all, I'm loving it, albeit a little easy. Also, there's something satisfying about being able to jump up and down whilst running around and being able to rack up a large number when hitting an enemy.

[briareos_kerensky]

No fuss, no puzzle, get a quest- now do it! The story almost feels like a tag on.

This reminds me of Grandia Xtreme and it's not a good thing.
I've played the previous two titles and I really hope Grand Phantasm will improve alchemy over combat...the second chapter was only fight, fight, fight and sometimes alchemy to pass a closed door, I'd prefer something more the first chapter where alchemy was part of the game and led to secondary quests about NPCs. Well, I'll have to wait until I get my hands on the game.

[Champloo]

Blimey, didn't realise a 3rd was ever released. Is this import or is it out in the US?

[Mad Gear]

US. Mine just arrived from VG+. Recently started Disgaea 2 so it won't be going anywhere for a while yet.

[briareos_kerensky]

Got mine today.

So far, I have mixed feelings about it.

First, alchemy. Why the hell do I have to wait to experiment alchemy? All Atelier games are based on alchemy. Give me alchemy in the very beginning, not some random quests about fetching items and a tutorial on how to navigate menus.

Music is basic Gust stuff. Just with a bit more Blind Guardian in the opening song. Wasn't expecting much though. And this is the third game in which Iris gets a new voice, way to go Gust.

Graphics are good, a good improvement over the previous AI games and even Ar Tonelico. Backgrounds are much more detailed and less pixellated, sprites are big and there are some basic stuff have been redrawn instead of reusing sprites from the previous games.
There still are some problems (especially in understanding depth and height), but so far graphics are good. Not the best 2D sprites I've ever seen, but good.
In-game character portraits are horrible, completely ignoring the original character design and totally lack depth;all girls seem to have come out from an hentai game (especially Iris), which is good for an hentai game, but somewhat out of place for this particular game. It's fan service not fan servicing enough...I'd have preferred a more "plain" charades like the first two games, at least it blended well with the rest.

Game-wise...hell, right now I feel like playing Grandia Xtreme. Accept the quest, roam into a dungeon, level up, maybe a boss battle, complete the quest, wash, rinse and repeat. Boring.
There are a few improvements over the previous games and the whole quest thing is well thought and designed, but it feels out of place...the previous AI games were heavily based on the story sorrounding the main characters, I really hope it will take off before it gets boring.

[briareos_kerensky]

Been able to spend a good ten hours with the game.
As I suspected, it's a mixed bag of very good things and bad/boring things; gameplay-wise it's a lot more enjoyable than the second chapter and probably even of the first Atelier Iris, though it falls short on a couple of things.

Alchemy is back in its full glory, and even more. It's true that you have to play roughly half an hour to get the alchemy pot running and a bit more to get your first mana, but the system has been refined and improved, though it's not as flexible as it was in the first chapter.
You cannot use alchemy in battle to create alchemy items on the fly as you cannot collect elements from background objects, but only at Iris' workshop with the right ingredients.

Each recipe now clearly shows which ingredient can be switched and once you discover a new recipe it will be added to the log book with all the ingredients you need, if you have them, if you ever collected them and a series of "?" to indicate that you don't know what the recipe will produce.
The more recipes you complete, the more Iris become skilled, improving her alchemy level. Gaining an alchemy level directly increases her magical battle stats and gives her new ideas on what can be done.
These ideas need to be finalized by finding object to give Iris the final inspiration, then it's back to the workshop for some mixing.
The best thing, however, is that most alchemy items have a certain property (like more HPs, more damage, more speed, healing at each turn, weapons can have elemental damage assigned to them etc etc) that is clearly displayed and explained. If you mix items with properties you can obtain more of them or strenghten existing effetcs; these effects can be then assigned before finalizing the alchemic item, making easy to personalize party members the way you want.
The whole interface has been reworked a bit and everything is clear and the whole alchemy procedure is very easy to follow.
The number of items you can create it's also at the very least on par with the first chapter, which is very good. Unfortunately so far creation of new items hasn't triggered any subplot with the various shops in town, something I really miss from the first Atelier Iris.

Battle system is a mix of the previous Atelier Iris and Ar Tonelico. Battle progression is represented as a series of cards on the top edge of the screen. Each party member and enemy is represented by a card and when a card reach the right end of the line, the corresponding character takes action. After each action, the cards are placed where they will act, effectively showing when each character will act and to let the player formulate his battle strategy. Some attacks can knock back cards delaying character actions and special skills can take more turns to take effect or their effect last for more than one turn. Those skills are represented with their own card, further representing how the battle will evolve.
There are two more bars on screen, the skill bar, which fills up when you attack or are attacked and it's used to unleash skills and the burst bar, which fills up when you attack and decreases when attacked. When filled, this bar will award the player with a temporary increase in attack and magic power and will fill the skill bar to the maximum; each attack will also let you gain money and killing an enemy with the burst bar full will give you extra items and money.

In the previous Atelier Iris manas were used to unlock certain alchemic skills, while here are used to change how the characters will behave in battle. At Iris' workshop, it's possible to assign certain manas to certain characters, effectively changing how they should be used in battle. For example, Edge (the lead male character) can "equip" manas to make him fast and able to dish a lot of weak hits during a single attack or to give him incredible attack power at expense of speed; changing manas also changes the weapons a character can wield and his/her skills, completely change to role he/she can have in battle.
Along with alchemy, this makes the setup phase of the game really fun and lets you customize the party the way you want to better face the next dungeon.

The rest of the game is standard stuff, and that's were the game falls in quality. Gone is the standard city-dungeon-city routine with imposed goals, you can chose the quests you want to do to advance your raider rank to unlock more dungeons and more rewarding quests.
Quests are of three kinds: fetch (gather items), help (various tasks from making objects, finding people and so on) and combat (find a mid-boss and defeat it).
You can accept all the quests you want at the same time, a logbook keeps track of them and reminds you of what needs to be done, where and even what you did before. As with the alchemy interface, the logbook is very clear and easy to use.

Then there are missions: missions are automatically started by the game (usually when you gain a new raider level) and are used to advance on the game' storyline; they have to be completed before anything else as you can't complete any quest as long there's an open mission.
With such an open structure, the inability of completing quests is somewhat upsetting, quests themselves doesn't give you experience and you can level up before going for the boss at the end of the mission; developers should have let players finish the quests they had in their logbook and simply wait to post others.

Dungeons can be entered through portals on the main hub map (the city where you live) and are time-limited. Once the time runs out, you'll be kicked out and you'll have to begin from the very start again and again. It's possible to collect hourglasses to extend time, but as they are time-limited, most dungeons are fairly easy to navigate and there's even a map to further help players. Some of these dungeons can be pretty complex however, so there are various way to teleport from a location to an other to quickly reach the deepest parts of these dungeons.

The main problem in the game lies in backtracking: you backtrack a lot, from the very beginning. There is a single savepoint in the whole game. Yes, one. Just one save point. And it's at Iris' workshop. To accept quests you have to go to the raider guild (4/5 screens between Iris' and the guild) and then go where you need to.
Need to save the game? Go to Iris' workshop.
Dungeon? Other four/five screens to navigate.
Character to hear about the quest details? Probably even more.
Then you usually go to a dungeon, do what you need to do, wait for the time to run out or return to two. Either way, you're back at Iris' place and you need to go back to the guild or the client to complete the quest. The it's back to Iris' for some alchemy or at the raider guild for more quests.
In terms of backtracking, the game will put anyone's patience to the test. The city where you are has a taxy service which speeds things up a bit, but developers could have though of at least a save point at the guild and at each dungeon's entrance.

The game is fun, but it's nothing groundbreaking. The whole quest structure is good, but it could have been improved with more variety and having players forcefully advance along the storyline partially breaks the freedom you have with such an open structure.

Technically speaking, the game is better than all previous Iris games and even Ar Tonelico.
Although there are some enemies that are taken from the those games (like Punies, but they are like Cid to Final Fantasy), most enemies are new, as well backgrounds are more varied and detailed. Battle sprites are smaller, maybe less detailed than before but this makes loading times faster.
Character design, however, is poorer when compared to all other Atelier games; all girls in the game are half naked, showing their often extremely generous cleavage and belly button; not at a bad thing per se, but the two only girls with a full outfit are more intriguing (visually speaking) than the rest; in-game portraits are done as anime cells and aren't up to the original illustrations and there are still problems understaing height and depth in dungeons.

[John Beaulieu]

Just wanted to say thanks for the in-depth first play posts - this is a game I had zero interest in but thanks to your words I am now looking at picking this up

[Johnny]

Anyone know if any knowledge of the previous games is required or which is better betwen the 3rd and 2nd games?

I'm guessing that this is a standalone story but just want to make sure.

I enjoyed the first game but still have the 2nd game sealed sitting on my shelf from the PAL release last September, so I'm unsure whether to get this now and play it or whether I should just go through the 2nd one first.

[Bassman]

Got my PAL version from Shopto.net the other week as it was on special at £17.99.

I have the first two games on US disks. I much prefer this to the other two. There seems to be a nice line in humour. The game also seems more playable for some reason.

Had a strange one with one Quest. I came to the boss (it was the weeping in the Forest Depths one) and managed to die. Reverting to my previous save I did some levelling to better cope with that boss and next time I did the Quest, the boss was different though of a similar type. It did make life easier.

[briareos_kerensky]

Anyone know if any knowledge of the previous games is required or which is better betwen the 3rd and 2nd games?

The third is set in some sort of alternate reality - it's not directly connected to the first two AIs even if there are connection points.