Developer Gust's Iris series, like most in the RPG genre, has a core group of fans that find the experience to be second-to-none. Usually it's easy to understand the appeal: Baten Kaitos' deck system or Final Fantasy's magnificent 3-D graphics, for example. With the Atelier Iris 3, though, it's a bit harder to find something. The game's cover is generic, almost as if it were a placeholder for the real thing. In a way, this feels like the entire game-the story, characters, enemies and worlds all feel like generic fillers just begging to be replaced by something better.

In this installment, players control "Raiders" Edge Vanhite and Iris Fortner, as well as various other characters through the story. The dialogue is at least somewhat entertaining, but the story is just painful. For a quest-based RPG, Grand Phantasm is disappointingly linear. Sure, there are sidequests, but they have absolutely no bearing on the gameplay or story, so they only serve to make getting experience slightly less mind-numbing. Many of these quests involve just talking to people around the area, which is a painful experience considering how many times it makes players walk the same paths.

Gust had many attempts at innovation, but most are failures. The timed element is interesting, though. Battle areas, called "Alterworlds," kick players out after a certain amount of time. This adds a sense of urgency to the game, but once the novelty wears off it becomes a nuisance. The game's Alchemy system is strange and, sadly, has little effect on gameplay. NIS America also touts the new "Active Cost Card Battle System," which functions strictly to show the order of attacks, which isn't so new, and the "Enemy Symbol Encounter System," which just means you see enemies on the map and can avoid or intentionally battle them, and that's not new either.

The graphics in this game are just barely last-gen, which is standard for the series and for NIS America. They're at least functional, but at this point in the system's lifespan, they should have more polish. The game is deep and long, with a few dozen hours of play without repeating anything.

With the PS2 slowly riding into the sunset, a new release's gameplay has to be spectacular for it to get any playtime over new-gen titles. Atelier Iris just isn't. It's decent, but people don't waste dozens of hours on something that's just decent. Treat it like the placeholder it resembles and leave it on the shelf.

Jun 29, 2007 | 0 comments
Graham Russell