Good
The success of that adorable, hilarious, and utterly involving game paved the way for its developer, Nippon Ichi, to open up a publishing branch in the United States. Atelier Iris is not a Nippon Ichi product in Japan, instead coming from a long-running but little-known series from small-time publisher Gust. It's the sixth Atelier game, though none have before hit the U.S. before Disgaea, it's easy to understand why -- but that doesn't mean things necessarily should be that way.
The most noticeable thing about Atelier Iris is its lush, crystal-clear 2D artwork. Fans of the quickly vanishing art of 2D games have few they can point to as really stellar works in the genre this generation. The Guilty Gear X games still dominate for high-resolution artistry, but Atelier Iris is now a viable contender. While the art style is almost suffocatingly precious, it's also highly refined and full of life. Each background is detailed, the character art is sumptuous, and the enemies are full of life.
Despite its cuter-than-cute aesthetics, the game actually contains a story of suitably interesting, snarky, and serious caliber. The lead is not, in fact, the title character Iris, but instead a young alchemist named Klein. He's a student of the ways of alchemy, but he's inexperienced. He happens to see a tower in the distance that's rumored to contain all sorts of arcane secrets of the trade, and he's eager to get his chance to explore it. Of course, things don't quite go as he might have hoped, and he's quickly swept up into a struggle much bigger than he planned.
What keeps the story from getting to pompous and thus boring is the characters. The vivacious Lita, a monster hunter with a sassy mouth and a good heart, joins Klein. Yeah, these are RPG cliches, but the writers know just what they're doing with them. There's a very fine line between tedious and endearing when it comes to trotting out the old staples, but the developers, translators, and voice actors -- both in Japanese and English, by the way -- keep to the correct side of that line, assuring Atelier Iris has an amusing, if not particularly original story.
The gameplay definitely helps to shore up any weak spots in the narrative, too. For one, while the game has fairly typical turn-based battles -- on which I'll speak more later -- there are also pleasant action elements: you can jump around in the dungeons and solve the puzzles, offering a bit of activity and fast-paced gaming to keep the game from getting bogged down. Then there's the alchemy. You can forge special items and use them both in and out of battle to assist your party. Klein, in fact, is an invaluable RPG hero because he can create powerful special items. As you collect more mana spirits and uncover hidden items, the kind of stuff you can create increases, giving you good reason to fully explore the game's maps as well. You can even create weapons and items, which not only allows you to equip your party exceptionally well, but adds in a mini-game based around increasing the popularity of stores in the game.
