Atelier Iris 3 - Grand Phantasm

[Equus]

Just saw an article over at RPGFan that mentioned this (along with localization of the Disgaea Portable game...yay!), and I was wondering if anyone else was looking forward to it. I have a soft spot for this series. Yeah, it's not the most original stuff out there and definitely not cutting edge as far as the graphics or game mechanics, but I appreciated the more retro nature of the first two games and will probably get this one as soon as it comes out.
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I can run faster scared than you can mad.

[Cedric]

Hey Equus, me again. You know for a fact I'm getting this game. I've been the Gust fanboy as of late. The series hasn't gotten stale for me yet, but I have to say that they should make a new Atelier game focusing on a new girl besides Iris. It makes me wonder if they're going to turn the Iris games into its own series like Suikoden.

It sure took them a long time to announce it. How long has this game been out in Japan already? I already have the soundtrack to it.

Anyway, it's a revamped turn based system again. Now we're using cards to determine actions if what I'm reading is correct.

This should be the last Atelier game for the PS2, so I'm anxious to see what they will do for the next generation consoles. With the graphics they use, they can even put Atelier games on the Wii.
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[glen]

I Can Not Wait FOR It To Come Out And Get It And Play It. I Enjoy The Last Two Games That Came Out Hope It's As Fun To Play As They Were.
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I fought the law and got my a** kick big time.

[Yohn]

Oooh! Yes! Another Atelier game = Love. <3

Now... if they'd bring Atelier Marie and all the other old ones out, I'd be having a hay-day! :D
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"And as the lion slaughters man, I am the wolf and you're the lamb." ~Blind Guardian

[Luceit]

I've played both Atelier Iris 1 and 2, and I've been waiting for this game for ages. Luckily, the English release of the game happens to coincide with my absymally short term break and the game itself should be fairly short.
I sure hope it won't be too different from the previous two games. From what I've seen so far, the way to play this game sounds fairly odd, having guilds and what not. Then of course, I'm not overly fond of the new item creation system (no Mana? Blasphemy!).
So, here's hoping that Atelier 3 will continue to have what makes me like the game so much.
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[Equus]

Hrm...so it looks like the NIS store has shipped my copy of Atelier Iris 3...the weird thing is that they referenced a different order number than the one I had and I can't really tell if they correctly shipped me the collection with the soundtrack and stuff. I'm going to send them an email just to confirm.

Anyways, looks like I'll soon have yet another game to join the ranks of games that I have in the queue to play. Wooo!
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I can run faster scared than you can mad.

[Celes Tilly]

Once you play it a bit, could you perhaps post some impressions? I like Atelier too, but I'd rather hear some details before considering it.
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"Oh my god--"
"God? God is love. I don't love you."

[Demon Eyes Kyo]

How are Atelier games anyway? I always wanted to try the games out, but I heard they're a steaming pile of crap.
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Return that soul to God.

[Luceit]

Steaming pile of crap? Well, to be fair, they're quite generic in terms of storyline and the plot, but I find the cast of characters very entertaining, the item creation system to be fun, the music is fairly good and I like the colorful 2D graphics. The reviews you saw were propably coming from people used to more high-quality fare, or people comparing it to Lunar. :P

My first impression when I saw this game's preview was that I wasn't going to like it. For one thing, it just doesn't sound too much like the things I enjoyed and I've heard so far that Edge seems to be a boring person (Not a good thing, I already don't like most RPG protagonists). Upon reading further, I was also confused by the Mana description.
I think I'll like the idea of quests though.

With that being said, the wait will be over soon. I have to get my hands on this game as soon as it's out!
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[Equus]

[glen]

I got the game and have played it for four hours so far.

It's alot diffrent then the first two games with the enemy symbol enconunter system were you see the enemys on the map and you can avoid them or fight them.

They have a new alchemy level system were you level up to improve your skills and learn new item creates.

And like alot of games now you are part of a guild doing missions and quest to improve your rating as a person with in the guild of raiders and the town of zey meruze think of your character.


I am really enjoying this game having fun playing it and find it not to hard to play and get in to the story of the game.

What do you guys think of the game so far and have you found any problems with the game yet?
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I fought the law and got my a** kick big time.

[Equus]

Just got my game today. I think I won't be going with standard slow train from California shipping from here on. >.<

I might pop it in tonight for a couple of hours rather than playing Odin Sphere. I'll post some initial feedback from whatever limited experience I have when I can.
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I can run faster scared than you can mad.

[glen]

I am starting to hate the time time limit in the alterworlds it's makes it hard to find people in the area with the fights and if you run from them you lose time so you have to fight them.

Up to chapter 7 the story is getting a little better with all the bad guys trying to fight you or stop you or take stuff away from you or doing stuff to your characters.

Hope the game has a great ending and not one that sucks big time.
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I fought the law and got my a** kick big time.

[Luceit]

No one posted in this topic for two months?
Well, I've finished the game, and this is my review on it. There will be the necessary spoiler tags of course.

Review:

When I first started Atelier Iris 3, I was hoping for something like Atelier Iris 1 or 2, that is, the prerequisite clichéd story, the alchemy system, the nice cast of characters who always manage to be entertaining, the somewhat catchy soundtrack and the easy to learn battle system. I did however know of a few things that I wouldn't like because I had read about it previously. Read on to find out...

Story: The thing that I really disliked about the story was that there was a severe lack of a story. The basic rundown is this: In this world, there is a magical tome called the Escalario. It is rumored that the Escalario can grant a person any wish they want, but that person must first collect all the fragments of the Escalario in order to get their wish granted. The problem is that no one has succeeded so far in collecting all of the fragments.
In order for the story to advance, you have to go up a guild rank (You're a Raider and you have to do quests to get quest points, which in turns increases your Guild Rank). Unfortunately, if it was actually possible, the story here is even more clichéd and empty than the previous two games, probably because it's split up like this:
Quests>Mission>Quests>Mission.
In fact, you'd get more story from doing all of the quests because that's where most of the side characters actually grow. While we're on the subject of characters, if you didn't know it already, you get only three characters this time around instead of six. Three characters! This wouldn't be so much of a problem if they were all stellar, but all three of them (With the possible exception of Nell Ellis) felt very bland at first and they only started to become more interesting after doing a lot of quests, and by that time, you're almost at the end of the game. I liked Ewan Kleines more than I liked any of them, and that's saying a lot.

6/10.

Graphics: It's no secret of course that Atelier Iris is popular largely because of its 2D graphics, but how does Atelier Iris 3 compare to the other two in terms of graphics?
I'll have to say that it doesn't do too well in that area either. For one thing, the character sprites look somewhat blocky and for another, the sprites for Edge's Plua and Luplus and Nell's Normal form and Diemia form look very much alike. The character's eyes also look like black dots, compared to the eyes of the characters in the previous two games.
How about the surroundings though? Atelier Iris 3 fares somewhat better here, as the places have wonderful artwork and it's done quite nicely. Unfortunately, I got lost more than a few times because some of the areas look very alike.
As for the skills, they look okay. There's nothing much to comment about it.
7/10.

Artwork: Oh dear...I wish I could sing praises for the artwork, but my main problem with the artwork is that a lot of the characters look quite alike again. If you look closely, it seems that all of the female characters have the same kind of eyes and they also seem to stand in the same way. On a positive note, I can say that the designers made a lot of expressions available to each character and the characters are wonderfully animated and colored yet again.
I did however find that they could work a bit on the costumes. I liked Iris Blanchimont's character design better than I liked Iris Fortner's design (She just looked more professional last time) and I think it's weird how Ash looks like some modern guy.
8/10

Gameplay: Here we are at the best part!

In Atelier Iris 3, there are some important things to know:

1) Abusing healing items are a big no-no, repeat, NO-NO. In this game, you're going to find that making almost all of the healing items a big pain as they use a lot of rare ingredients. You can get some from the supplies man at the guild every time you go up one guild rank, but it won't be enough.
2) Burst Gauge is your ticket to victory. Early on, you'll find out that the Burst Gauge ensures that you'll win fast, because you get 9 skill gauges at once and your skills will do a lot of damage. You can make this even easier by equipping a weapon the enemy is weak against (which will make the Burst Gauge rise up twice as fast) and increasing your speed. Also, note that the enemy attacks will deplete the gauge.
I like the gameplay a lot. For one thing, both Edge and Nell gain a number of forms depending on how many Mana you rescue, and all of these have their own special skills and stats. Besides that, you'll need to customize your weapons and equipment in order to best fit the Mana forms, as they use either physical or magical attacks. At the harder parts, you'll find yourself taking a lot of time to consider what is suitable and what is not suitable. The downside to this is that some of the items are very rare, meaning that you have to be careful when creating them. For your own sake, remember not to abuse:

Fragment of Aion
Alberich
All other items that are created using one or both of these.

The Alterworld system with its limited time may seem bothersome at first, but you'll soon find that you have plenty of time to explore the worlds. There are Fragments of Time to extend your stay in the Alterworld and if you kill the monsters fast enough in battle, you get a 'Fast Kill', which means that you lost no time in battle. Also, the only real way to lose time quickly is to run away from monsters, and the amount of time you lose depends on what color the monster was (Blue= Easy as pie, White= Somewhat hard, Red= Oh no, it's a mini boss!)
I do have some gripes though. Because there are only 4 Alterworlds, you'll be seeing a lot of the same places over and over again, and it also gets irritating to fight the red monsters all over even though they're actually of no match to you anymore. I also somewhat disliked how hard it was to make healing items.

9/10

And for two unique systems:

The Guild has three types of quests: Fetch, Help! and Combat. You may find the Fetch ones pretty boring at first, but there's a catch; not all the things can be obtained normally and you'll have to find some of these things through other quests. The Combat quests are more fun because you get to fight monsters, and there are some bounty quests where you fight bosses. The Help! Quests however are the ones that give guild points and are the ones you need to do to advance with the story and they also give a lot of character development to the other characters.

Alchemy: It's easier to see what new items you can create now, because there will be a Iris icon that pops out if you substitute the right ingredient (Note: This only work for the first item in the list; don't waste your time with the rest). Iris also levels up as you create more new items, which increases her Magic and Magic Defense, in addition to giving her new alchemy ideas. You'll then have to go look for the source of her 'inspiration' to get the recipe.
An important thing to note here is that effects do not stack (Example: If you have Magic (L) and Magic (M), only Magic (L) applies), so don't get any funny ideas.

Music: The music is quite good, and I liked the opening theme a lot. There aren't too many tracks though.

Conclusion: I started out hating this game a lot, and chances are that you will if you're looking for something with more of a storyline. If you can forget about that and just enjoy doing missions with a bit of alchemy on the side, Atelier Iris 3 will be quite a good experience.

Overall rating: 7.5/10
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