Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (PS2)

Atelier Iris
Gust / Nippon Ichi

Review by Anthony

A few years before Lauren and I were wonderfully surprised by Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, a little Japanese company called Gust made its first appearance on North American soil with a quirky game called Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. And I had a passing interest in it that never manifested as far as me actually playing it. Well, fast forward four years to the present and here I am, finally getting to it. Call it an attempt to see the roots of a game we adored.

Atelier Iris follows the story of Klein, an aspiring alchemist who befriends people and mana on a quest to discovering the secret of a lost race of alchemists, and tries to simultaneously stop the world’s flow of mana from dwindling. Exploration takes place with a 3/4-view platformer design, battles are turn based affairs, and an emphasis is given on crafting and augmenting items through synthesis. The result is a pretty solid and enjoyable RPG that in the light of its more mature sequels, notably shows its age.

What’s good:
- Gust has a knack for making some of the most absurdly catchy and silly songs you’ll hear in RPGs, and I’m pleased to report that this is absolutely the case here. Numerous songs in different situations got hopelessly stuck in our heads, and they managed to break it up nicely with a few rocking tunes too.
- Some surprisingly high talent voice actors were recruited for the game, and as a result, the voice acting is very solid. Basically the entire main cast of Cowboy Bebop is here with roles of varying importance, and Crispin Freeman does a fantastic job as Delsus. Some lines are made more amusing in how they’re performed, which is great.
- In another case of “what you should expect from a Gust game,” the graphics are full of vibrant coloring that adds life to characters, enemies and areas alike. It’s all pleasant and sometimes even quite pretty to look at.
- The battle system, while certainly dated by today’s standards, was still pretty enjoyable to play and was well-balanced. Though the game starts quite easy, before long they’ll start throwing bosses and enemies at you that will cause you to question whether you were truly overlevelled or not. Each character has unique traits to him/her that will make or break their case for being in your main party, with no one being useless or overpowered.
- Atelier Iris is at its best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. And the good news here is there are plenty of moments that fit the bill. The game not only breaks, but tramples on the fourth wall frequently, offering cute tutorials, amusing commentary on created items, and just some oddly silly moments in general. Why exactly is a chicken attending a theater performance?
- Exploration and item/mana collection in the field is pretty entertaining. Various ingredients and mana-laden items are strewn about all areas of the game. These can be collected, smashed, absorbed, climbed, or whatever the situation calls for. But simple things like absorbing some water elements so you can synthesize some healing items for free are satisfying, and plenty of those moments are to be found as you platform your way through the game.

What’s neutral:
- The concept of utilizing mana’s abilities in the field and in battle is an exercise of “almost, but not quite”. In the field, manas can be used to provide simple things like stepping stones, to services like healing or protection from monsters. The downside is many of these take annoyingly long to activate - you’ll probably want to not see the animations after the first few times. Equipping manas in battle can help increase stats and level skills up faster... but inevitably, some skills will max before others, and some manas seems borderline useless otherwise. Why would I want a mana that gives a few puny points of darkness resistance over a mana that restores HP and SP every turn of battle? They allow you to give gifts to mana as a way to keep them happy and energized after continued use, and although the system wasn’t a chore, it also wasn’t necessary. With the item limit of nine on every item, it was too easy to just continuously feed them overloads of junk items to keep them happy.
- The story is nothing to write home about. The good news is there are some enjoyable moments with the campy characters and villains. The bad news is if you strip away the humor and lighthearted nature, they do actually attempt a serious storyline, and it’s strictly by-the-numbers. Dwindling mana, villain trying to exploit it, yadda yadda. And if character development is important to you, don’t expect to find it here.
- There’s a whole lot of backtracking to be done in this game. I didn’t mind at first, but later on, when you realize that the bulk of all quests and storyline elements involve you going back to previous zones... well, it eventually got to be wearisome. It’s not entirely nonsensical, but not having you transported there makes it feel like it’s padding the playtime.
- Characters only get half experience if they weren’t in the front line after a battle ends. That’s kind of silly since you could have a character do all the damage, then they get punished if they’re switched out by the end. That said, even with that aspect and a fairly major character permanently leaving you with no replacement, it’s not too hard to make use of other characters, even if they’re lagged behind in levels.
- Between synthesizing items and crystallizing mana, there’s a lot of time you can spend in the game doing these side projects for filling up the item lists and powering up your items. That said, these tasks are slow, and not particularly fun to do. While mana crystallization can have pretty immediate benefits in your equipment, only a very small number of equipment pieces can utilize them, and without a guide, it’s trial and error to find out which manas make which crystals. Although synthesizing items can produce some pretty useful items and equipment, more often than not, it doesn’t do that. While you’ll get some cute scenes and fill up your collections, overall you’ll mostly be spending hours and hours making items that have absolutely no use to you. Unless you’re odd and constantly rely on items for healing, it can feel like there was no real purpose to spending hours and hours collecting and synthesizing items.

What’s bad:
- The maximum collected item limit of nine is inexcusable for a game that wants you spend so much time on item creation. Combine that with shops that inexplicably stock or run out of important items, and it can be an absolute chore to collect and make the items you need.
- The transfer points to get between major areas are incredibly important for navigating all the backtracking that needs to be done. Two big problems exist with it though. You won’t know until after you enter a transfer point if you can return to that spot you entered. That, in turn, leads to the problem of not having enough places to warp to. Although you can run through some areas fairly quickly, it still seems unnecessary when they could just give you a few more places to warp in the world.
- Sound sometimes randomly cuts out during voice clips. Other times, a character will have multiple lines voice-acted, then a few that aren’t, followed by a few more that are. It’s hard to tell if this was a bizarre writing oversight or the audio glitches causing it.
- Extremely grating voice work exists for enemy monsters and characters in battle. Hearing the game’s music was great, but some of the shrill sounds to come out of characters and monsters during battle were uncomfortable to hear.
- Pretty disappointingly short ending.

So this was an odd little game overall. The storyline was fluff, but a big helping of silly humor, fourth-wall jokes and intentional camp still kept it interesting. Of their two currently outdated elements - battle system and item creation, the battle system still felt enjoyable to me, while the item creation did not, despite being very robust for its time. Exploration was pretty fun, but the heavy amounts of backtracking eventually wore it down.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid RPG and quite a good offering for 2005. There are plenty of smile-inducing moments and a lot of enjoyable gameplay to be found in the main game, but this also came out before the much appreciated refinements to item creation and world travel. If nothing else, it’s a pleasantly short little game to pass the time that’s equally unlikely to make you break your joystick in anger as it is to inspire you to write fanfiction and doodle the character designs in your trapper keeper. Wait, what?