While the American audience is hearing about the Atelier series for the first time, Atelier Iris Eternal Mana is actually the sixth Atelier game developed by Gust. Nippon Ichi, known for developing Disgaea and Phantom Brave has stepped up to the challenge to localize this series for the US. The game starts out with a nicely designed anime sequence, that shows some off the main characters Lita and Klein. Lita is a hardened claw wielding warrior and Klein is a shy alchemist. Through a chance encounter the two aid take on a sky hawk and find out they have the same goal, to get to the "Castle in the Sky". A more worldly problem is that mana is being drained from the world. Naturally, it's something that the two characters will have to fix.

Atelier Iris has been unfortunately pigeonholed into the strategy RPG genre, which is far from the truth. In actuality it plays more like a traditional 16 bit RPG with all of your characters on the right side of the screen and all of the enemies on the left. If you don't feel the party you have is up to par you have the ability to switch characters in and out of battle. Strategy elements come into play when you use special attacks, like alchemy. Different spells have different areas of effect. Some can only hit a single enemy, while others have a circular area. There is an element of strategy when deciding which spell can hit the most monsters. Just be forewarned that there isn't a battle grid to move around in. Other abilities that you will be use are sword skills and team attacks. The battle system is pretty refined from the standard fight, magic, item that many RPGs have.

Alchemy is one of the most important features in the game. You'll spend a lot of time interacting with your environment to draw out mana. By transforming background objects into different mana you will gain the ability to use stocked mana for spells. For instance if you want to cast Bomb Ice you should absorb an ice crystal to power up your water element. If you need to cast wood based spells extract the elements from wood crates. Collecting elements has another purpose besides spell use. Elements can also be attributed to a weapon to power it up. Or they can be used in shop synthesis where you can create unique items that relate to the story. The more mana you have, the more spells you'll be able to cast. Players will want to spend time finding elements in each area they are in.

Atelier Iris Eternal Mana has a distinct SD (super deformed) anime style to it. From the cheerful opening video to the smiling characters Atelier Iris feels lighter than the wave of dark RPGs that have been released. It is refreshing after playing through games like SMT: Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga. The graphics do look sharp, even through they are sprite based. Characters have a lot of animated detail and the environments are full of objects, most of which you can interact with. You even get a glimpse of some of the hand drawn art when conversation occurs.

The biggest question is probably the quality of localization. Even great titles, with poor US localization end up being mediocre at best. The version of Atelier Iris we have has a sample of the English voiceovers. Similar to the style of the game, the US voices have a more upbeat feel to them. We haven't heard if Nippon Ichi will add in the original Japanese language track, but we can only hope they will. This way gamers who aren't in tune with the US voices can hear the original language track.

Nippon Ichi has Atelier Iris Eternal Mana slated for a release in May. We'll have a full review of the English version as we approach closer to the release date. For now enjoy these screenshots.