I've been waiting quite some time for a good solid RPG game. I plowed through Jade Empire which was enjoyable, but light on the RPG elements. Then I worked through Shining Tears, which was not enjoyable and light on the RPG elements. Untold Legends was also crap. Namco x Capcom was a disappointment in all RPG aspects.
Recently, I picked up Arc the Lad: End of Darkness and was just not having fun with that at all. I was reluctantly plodding through that for review purposes, when a copy of Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana arrived in the mail from Nippon Ichi. I kicked Arc the Lad down to dust collection detail, and dove into Atelier Iris when it became evident that this game was at least something close to what I was craving.
Story
You take the role of Klein Kiesling, an alchemist who apparently didn't get the memo that alchemy was played out, and that nobody liked it anymore. Apparently, Klein picked up the alchemy jones from his grandmother who passed on her knowledge to Klein. Combine all that and you come to the obvious conclusion that you are the "Chosen One"TM, and you're going to need to save the world somehow.
Klein and his lifelong companion, the Wood Mana Popo are just outside Kavoc in the kingdom of Regallzine when they're attacked, and Klein finds himself in a position where he's unable to defend himself effectively. A claw-wielding young woman named Lita Blanchimont jumps into to save his sorry behind, and she realizes that he's an alchemist. She tells Klein the story of Avenberry, a kingdom of alchemists that was founded and then spectacularly collapsed. There do seem to be a lot of alchemy relics in the ruins, so Lita tells him he should look there if he wants to train his abilities.
Once Klein reaches Regallzine, Klein runs afoul of Beggur and the Alkavana Knights after Klein frees the Fire Mana, Uru, from Beggur's grasp. The resident womanizer/barfly Delsus steps into assist, and this draws the ire of an evil alchemist named Mull. And so the pieces are set. Klein thrust onto the side of good, and Mull trying to destroy the world on the evil side.
2 alchemists enter, 1 alchemist leaves! It's the Rumble in Regallzine!
Gameplay
The basic controls are pretty simple. O jumps, X is your action button, Triangle pops up the menu and Square executes whatever command is currently in the action dial. L1 and R1 rotate through the actions on the dial respectively. The basic controls for the most part are executed very cleanly, a stark contrast to some of the horrid UI I've encountered recently.
Most new gameplay elements are made fairly easy to grasp by Popo's Fourth Wall Lectures, in-game training sequences that feature Popo and guest lecturers explaining whatever new thing you just encountered set to a backdrop of helpfully marked screenshots. Once again, I have to commend the guys at Gust for good presentation. I actually found myself looking forward to these tutorial sequences whereas in other games I would just bypass them as quickly as possible.
The game and the series' (this game's first titles was released in 1997, and this game's already got a prequel coming out.) main offering is their spin on alchemy. In Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, that's quickly apparent through a number of wrinkles in gameplay. First off, on the Action Dial, you'll see an icon for Elemental Extraction. Klein walks up to a number of different objects in the world and pounds it with his staff (totally not a euphemism...no "Hot Coffee" here.), which breaks it down into its component elements. Klein can literally remove almost anything from the map this way. Boulders, signs, crates, barrels, bushels of fruit, etc. Even the items in your inventory can be broken down into component elements. It's kind of disappointing that the destructible items on the field maps don't get rearranged as you exit and reenter the screen. It's just kind of weird to see these huge stacks of crates reappear in the exact same way in the span of a couple seconds.
Klein then hands the elements off to the various mana he controls (most alchemists were only able to partner up with one, but since Klein is the "Chosen One"TM he can partner with about a half-dozen.) and like the drunken elves from the "Tale of 2 Santas Episode" of Futurama they take the elements that they can handle and craft them into Mana Items for Klein to use.
But that's not the only item crafting that goes on. In a lot of stores, you'll find a "Synthesize" option. You can take items you found throughout the world and combine them according to "recipes" that the particular shopkeeps know. Here's where it gets fun, though. Most of the recipes allow for variance between the items. Say the recipe calls for flour as an ingredient. You can use any powdered substance you find in the game as a substitute. Spice, wax, breadcrumbs, even poison. If the variance is significantly different from the recipe, you'll end up with something completely different. This method is a vast improvement over the crappy "invention" system in Star Ocean: Til the End of Time where you were inventing the same thing over and over and had no real control over it, and some of the crap you invented didn't make a damn bit of sense.
As you tweak which components make the product the highest quality, it will start attracting people to the store. The stores will actually start filling up with people, you'll see the townspeople lining up outside as they start raving about the products that you've created. The more you raise the store's rating the more recipes they'll get and you'll also get specific events related to that shopkeep to happen. It's a really good system that adds a lot of replay to the game without being an unnecessary burden if you don't really want to get into it.
In addition to item crafting, there's a bit of modification you can do to your weapon as well. I have to say I prefer Star Ocean's weapon crafting methods over Atelier Iris'. In Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, you're only allowed to slap benefits onto certain weapons and they're pretty limited. In addition, some of the benefits are really vague. I don't know what differentiates ATK + Lv 1 from ATK COMP + Lv 1, or the difference between PSN RES + Lv 1 and POISON RES. Is Evil Slayer better than Demon Slayer? I don't know. The manual doesn't say what these things do. (Though I do have to show love to the manual team for not giving away all the attacks your characters get and the names of all the characters who will join you.) The fact that the item creation system was done so well is in stark contrast to this system, especially since the guys at Gust could have theoretically just used the same system, and it would have been excellent.
When you're all done with crafting, you might want to start fighting things. Combat is fairly straightforward. If you're played any of the 8 or 16-bit RPGs you'll know the drill. You get a turn, the enemies wait until you go, and you attack in order. There's a bit of a twist, in that you're able to swap people in and out while in the midst of battle. Even if your entire current line-up of 3 is wiped out in one attack, the backup 2 characters, providing they're alive, will jump into the fray. Characters that are still alive and in the attacking 3 will gain twice as much XP as the characters on the sideline, and the character with the killing blow will gain an additional 10%.
As you level you'll get 3 Skill Points to assign to your characters skillsets. Their skills will grow in damage over time, and can be augmented by the growth of the Mana equipped to the character. Your Mana also level after fights, and each of them will boost specific skills for the character they're attached to. The Mana without leveling also give minor stat bonuses to the character equipping them, as well.
The Mana also have feelings, which are aided by bribery! Give them gifts that they enjoy, and the Mana will gain in health and in Friendliness. If either of the stats drops below a certain point, the action associated with the Mana on the Action Dial cannot be utilized until the Mana's status is upgraded by giving it a bunch of gifts.
Whether it's combat, crafting, or questing, the one thing you can count on is humor. This game is one of the funniest I have played in a long time. Every time you create a new drink at the Kavoc bar, the bartender Norman lets the party try it out. At one point, Delsus and Lita get into a heated argument about chick drinks, and whether or not you're supposed to eat buffalo wings with non-alcoholic beverages. (That's right, alcohol. The game doesn't wimp out and make them all juices or sodas or magical drinks.) The girl at the Kavoc Magic Shop, Veola is outright hostile to Lita for 2/3s of the game, completely dissing her while asking Klein what he needs. And you gotta love a game that has a fruit named "Sweet Lando". This is just the tip of the iceberg. The game uses the text brilliantly, utilizing changes in font size, bold text, and other writing effects to do things in a game that I've literally never seen anyone attempt throughout the course of an entire game before.
Graphics
Combat looks a little rough, with a lot of monster types, attacks, and effects repeating a lot. There's also a problem with some of the areas not having the proper amount of shading so you can't tell where an obstruction is. It's always going to be an issue with 2D games that allow a degree of 3D movement.
Aside from that, everything looks sharp and clean. Gust does a good job with the 2D artwork, and even though this is a continuation of an ongoing series, the lively colors, the range of character emotions and the large portraits give the game the look and feel of a Nippon Ichi production.
Audio
For the first time a game includes Japanese and English voiceovers where the English voices were good enough that I didn't care which voice set I was using. (Except for when the English voice actors are yelling out "BARREL!") The Japanese voice overs are good, but the US ones are surprisingly spot on, too. Delsus is a bit TOO pimpesque, and Lita's a bit too shrill, but everyone else fits quite well.
The other thing that struck me as odd was that there's a TON more things voiced in the US version. Enemies that didn't have voiceovers in Japanese have voices if you use the English sounds. Really odd, but still cool.
As far as the music goes, everything's pretty nice. Popo's lecturing music is pretty groovy, and the main theme song is average. All in all, pretty good stuff.
Gripes
I didn't like the way the Settings always reset whenever I reloaded a game. All of a sudden I was listening to the English voices and not the Japanese and it would throw me off. I'd also change the volume because I couldn't hear dialogue over the music at some points, and the game would just reset it. That got really annoying after a while.
Then there's the boss. I think. I got an ending but it was only halfway finished when the game crashed on me. I wasn't going to sit through fighting that stupid thing again though. The end boss is right out of the "Everything BaronSamedi hates about bosses" handbook. I think it had more than triple the HP of anything else I fought in the game. There's no "weakness" to him, as he just takes a lot of hits and hopes he kills you before you kill him. I literally used up every item in my inventory that would do more than 100 points of damage to the thing, and when I used my last one, he died. That's no way to end a fine game like this. Put some effort into your boss characters, please, Gust.
The other big gripe I had is that this game simultaneously has both the best and worst localization in any game I've ever seen. I addressed the high points in the gameplay section, but the low points are really low. The product descriptions in synthesis are awful. I couldn't make a product at the beginning that didn't have a combination result in "Deadly Odor" being one of the reviews. "Deadly Odor" would come as a result of combining "Little Smells Good" and "Smells Good". I'm guessing "Pungent" is what they were going for. Other times people will talk about aspects of the hot item and why they like it. You'll get sentences like, "I just love its A lot hard". Other people reference stuff that's in left field when they're supposed to be helping you, and weird punctuation causes text boxes to get thrown out of whack. Hopefully the guys at NIS get this locked down for their next game, because this got really distracting during parts of the game.
Overall
If you like RPGs and games that have a sense of humor you should get this now. You'll be happy that you did. Given the almost utter wasteland that is the RPG market right now, this game will give you more than enough to tide you over until Dragon Quest 8, or the new Front Mission, or Radiata Stories comes out. (And if not, well, NIS is releasing Makai Kingdom, too.) If NIS in the US means I get to see more solid, yet quirky Japanese games like this and Generation of Chaos series finally find an audience here in the US, then I'm all for it.
