Atlelier Iris 3: The Grand Phantasm – one of the last 2D PS2 RPGs

By Katie . May 22, 2007 . 2:10pm

The Playstation 2’s reign has been long, lucrative, and stacked to the brim with games. While that makeup has allowed considerable wiggle room for the niche market, much more than on Gamecube or Xbox, many smaller titles have nevertheless fallen into the sky-high cracks between the Final Fantasy Xs and Soul Caliburs of the world. For example, I’ve crossed paths with the Atelier Iris games but a handful of times. I’d heard good things about the alchemy-centric, quest-based RPGs from little-known developer Gust and Nippon Ichi Software, the better-known makers of Disgaea. But while that game eventually cropped up everywhere, only a few copies of AI ever trickled into stores near me, at a prohibitive price even as pre-owns. I nobly forsook my interests and grabbed the first game, subtitled Eternal Mana, as a birthday gift for my friend, and that was the last I ever saw of it. When shelves were briefly flush with the second game, The Azoth of Destiny, I did the same. That time, the price was right – perhaps a little too right, as even with its reasonable numbers, that game too soon sold out.

By the time I was offered the third PS2 game, Atelier Iris: The Grand Phantasm, I had largely lost interest. But since they keep making these things, I figured there must be something to them. The result, happily enough, is that I can highly recommend AI3 to players new and returning alike, who want one last 2-D RPG hurrah for the exiting console. If you like your dungeons challenging, your objectives plentiful, your story in just the right doses and your freedom in experimenting with powers of creation, you’ll like Atelier Iris 3.

Purchase at Play-Asia 

In the quiet town of Zey Meruze, the people spend their uneventful lives submitting jobs to the Raider’s Guild, or else becoming Raiders and taking on said jobs. Such work takes the game’s two young heroes, Edge the swordsman and Iris the alchemist, to mist-cloaked, portal-bound venues known as the Alterworlds. These realms, populated by beasts friend and foe, a human can walk only for so long before being ejected. I think it’s due to the mist, but since the Beastmen shack up in the human realm with impunity, I don’t think we’re supposed to question these things. The story doesn’t sweat the details more than absolutely necessary – which is a good thing in a game like this, actually, because no matter how well voice-acted it may be (and Nippon Ichi scores again here), this tale has the most hackneyed, mundane JRPG makings. With her lineage’s unique ability to synthesize items out of raw materials, and the strange, shackled book she came to possess by her ancestors, standard animé semi-ditz Iris can provide invaluable Alterworld items and services to the Guild, and will form many comical rivalries with jealous Raiders. Edge, her serious, emotionally damaged counterpart, is all business; he’ll temper Iris’ talkative streaks with a well-placed word, but otherwise sticks to reality and the job at hand. But the silence must eventually lift on their secret – that Iris possesses the Libram of Escalario, the sacred tome of infinite wishing, of which all have dreamed, and to which eight keys are conveniently scattered throughout time and space for you to find. Yes folks, it’s got the works.

It’s a plot that recedes behind the trials of adventure, battle, and plundering, and while the complete package might not be that impressive by end-of-gen standards, Atelier Iris 3 excels in the aforementioned arenas. By jumping, slashing, fishing and more, Edge can interact with snaking environments that are much fun to explore. The time limit and the added end-of-level bonus objectives, awarded based on your actions in the Alterworld, ensure that the quests aren’t the only point of playing. However, the rudimentary, static maps are of little help when you’re not quite sure of how to reach an objective, so going through areas multiple times might be your only recourse to learning their layout. Fortunately, future quests that take you back to previous areas address just such a learning curve, and enemies you’ve far surpassed in strength can be disposed of without entering battle to save precious time.

As for the battle system, AI3 makes nods to various sources of inspiration: to Valkyrie Profile for its side-view, scaling set-ups and animation design, to Guilty Gear with its Burst Gauge, and to others I’m sure exist but that I can’t quite place. The row of cards running across the top represents turn order, which may be turned to your advantage by attacking, guarding, or using knockback skills in the right order. Just watch your Skill Points gauge, which decreases as you cast elemental attacks and increases (up to 9 levels) upon other actions. Once you’ve inflicted and received enough damage, the Burst Gauge activates, stunning the current enemy target, sending your Skill Gauge to 9, and granting you Critical Hits on all offensive maneuvers. It’s definitely a lifesaver in some of the tougher fights, but on the whole battling is not as tactical as the in-game Tutorials make it out to be – just simple, good ol’ fashioned fun.

The rest of the system hinges largely on the big cauldron in Iris and Edge’s shared pad (no they’re not like that, but if RPGs have taught me anything, it only takes time). Anyway… here Iris performs transmutations of the manifold items found throughout the Worlds, and here you’ll assuredly be wasting lots of time and loads of materials trying to create the perfect weapon, armor, accessory, or a new ingredient towards another recipe. The bland presentation – entirely menu-driven and using cards, cards and more cards – belies a fantastic addiction that comes from satisfying the need to discover the billion-and-one uses for any given ingredient. Whether Iris has just had an idea for a new concoction or whether you’ve bought the recipe, you can do the cooking by the book or swap the components as you fancy, which results in different stat-boosting properties for final product. You’re free to experiment within the confines of actually producing a successful item, which means no failures – hooray! – and just the right element of surprise.

As said before, while the voice acting is top notch, that’s about the largest artistic/technical achievement of the game. While not unsightly, Atelier Iris 3 initially falls flat in the looks department – quite literally, as neither foreground nor background have much depth; movement within them is rare as well aside from the roving enemies. After a time your eyes will adjust, mind you, but the static camera and isometric overhead view may still fool them from time to time (n.b.: there’s a side door in the Guild!) Battle graphics fare substantially better than those in the field, given their razor-sharp, high-definition sprites (albeit with stock PS2 light effects for spells), and zooming and scaling go off without a single pixel of a hitch. Where the sound figures in, poppy, light melodies carry the game in somewhat outdated synth, and while some have quite the pleasant rhythms (as with the tune in your house), others seem sorely out of place and can prove irritating. The town theme itself is far too overbearing with its sugar-puff progression, but thankfully it undergoes a slight change with each chapter you beat (kinda like NiGHTs into Dreams’ songs, but crappier). As with the visual effects, the sound effect library should be familiar to any user of RPGMaker, but it gets the job done.

With the PS2 on its way out, now may be your last chance to experience one of the series that may not have defined a generation, but is defined by some of the better RPG tropes of our times. Atelier Iris 3 should be available later this month at a store near you – just remember that time is of the essence for those who would walk the mists.

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