[PS2] Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm

The third installment in the Atelier Iris (mini-)series has been officially announced over in the USA. The USA will be getting the game around May this year. (Oh yeah, why did they add the "3" to the USA release? They think people who speak English aren't capable of keeping track of which game comes before the other..?)

Originally Posted by GameZone

Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm Gets Ready for North American Release

NIS America is taking the last step for the Atelier Iris release in May 2007

NIS America, Inc. confirmed the release of Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm. The third generation of the Atelier Iris series has been developed with a taste of the original Atelier Iris and with new and exciting systems.

While you enjoy the same nostalgic feeling of the Atelier Iris series, you will experience distinctively different gameplay. Atelier Iris 3 brings new designs, characters, and an epic story with new systems. It will give players more control and enjoyable game play experience by featuring the Active Cost Card Battle System and the Symbol Encounter System. And, players will also find the Synthesis in Atelier Iris 3 more interesting, creative and challenging than the last two in the series.

Since it features a combination of the new game play with a taste of the original Atelier Iris™, anybody, both new and returning players can enjoy its warm, comical, yet serious, adventure storyline.

“We take great pride in providing a great gaming experience,” said Haru Akenaga, president of NIS America, Inc. “We welcome the new direction Atelier Iris 3 is taking with its combination of new game systems, design, and user friendliness; I can’t wait to play the U.S. version.”

About Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm
Long ago, the power of alchemy allowed people to travel between different worlds through dimensional gates; however, with the collapse of the first great civilization, people lost the means to “jump” worlds. A long time has passed since the great destruction and now people once again are unlocking the mystery surrounding the dimensional gates and adventuring to unforeseen territory, seeking the magical book of infinite wisdom.

• Active Card Cost Battle
  With the fast paced ACCB system, battle sequences are ordered by cards that represent the characters’ action order. The quicker the character, the faster their action turn comes around.
• Symbol Encounter
  An innovative change for Atelier Iris 3 is the introduction of a symbol encounter system. Players will no longer randomly encounter enemies, but visually confirm and engage them.
• Guild Quest
  Unlike previous Atelier Iris titles, the all-new Atelier Iris 3 adopts a guild quest system. With this system, players can easily accept quests and missions that the guild posts.

Key Features

• ACCB system
• Symbol Encounter
• Guild Quest
• Job class system –Blades Master
• Comprehensive item/weapon crafting
• Breathtakingly beautiful animated artwork

Source.

It's good to hear that this game changes things a bit. Hopefully it will be even more successful over here than it's predecessors.

Now if only they brought at least one heavily strategy oriented Atelier game over to the English speaking world...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I only played the first Atelier Iris and eventually lost interest in Azoth of Destiny quickly, seeing as the first one was just all right. The card cost system I might look into, since anything with cards utilized as a battle system catches my attention. Of course job classes are also fun to play around with.

I just hope that the character designs are interesting.

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There will also be Japanese audio and fishing for items.
(Noted after the press release pasting)

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Summonmaster

I only played the first Atelier Iris and eventually lost interest in Azoth of Destiny quickly, seeing as the first one was just all right. The card cost system I might look into, since anything with cards utilized as a battle system catches my attention. Of course job classes are also fun to play around with.

I just hope that the character designs are interesting.

Personally I find prefer the new character design style to the first two games both in sprite and overlay work.




The big thing I hope they can work out is the technical issues normally found with NIS localized GUST games. GUST uses an odd compression for sound and voice and for whatever reason NIS hasn't been able to figure it out. The result is the load pausing found before voice overs and/or sound effects during battles or story sequences in the NIS versions.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Well, maybe Gust made a solid title? Ar Tonelico is unbalanced, and the first two Atelier Iris games were bleh.

I remember back in the day when everyone was excited to be getting a GUST game, talking about how great they are, and a 2D-game developer to boot. Not much besides disappointment (for me) since then.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yeah. It looks like they got a new character artist, but other than the that game looks almost exactly like every other Atelier Iris game released.

I doubt I'll be picking it up :/ I have no problems with 2D, I just have problems when nothing major changes between games.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm digging the graphical style, seems like a step up from the first two. But I wasn't really that hooked by either game, even though my friends keep insisting that Atelier Iris 1 was a great game because of its "charm." What the hell does that even mean?

FELIPE NO

It means that basically they played it for the characters and the basic feeling of the story and the world. AI was mostly a cute story with cute characters with a fair share of drama to keep it interesting. So more or less it was about playing it to enjoy the setting and story and having fun with the gameplay there was.

I have yet to play AI2 even though it's lying in my to do stack. I'm the final stretch of AI and I've enjoyed it fairly well. The combat has a few irks but it's still a lot of fun in a classic RPG sense. I didn't get much satisfaction out of the item creation system as I did in something like Summon Night and Star Ocean. Gust has really hooked me with Ar Tonelico so I anticipate the arrival of this game very anxiously.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Taco

Yeah. It looks like they got a new character artist, but other than the that game looks almost exactly like every other Atelier Iris game released.

I doubt I'll be picking it up :/ I have no problems with 2D, I just have problems when nothing major changes between games.

If something works might as well stick with it :<

I might pick this game up... just to add another atelier game to my collection, I haven't really paid that much attention to everything you can do in them though; I am too busy being distracted by the cute sprites and trying to not die to bosses.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The first Atelier Iris game basically sucked, it had some nice ideas, like the whole alchemy thing, but the way that they implemented it was lame. The second game was a huge improvement, and I enjoyed that one quite a lot actually, it had a decent story (it was nice switching between the alchemy and normal world), the battle system was a huge improvement although a bit unbalanced imo. I am actually looking forward to the third game, especially since it looks even prettier this time. I'm a bit worried about the job system, since those systems never seem to work like I want them to in normal rpgs, even though I prefer them in tac rpgs. Great that they are getting rid of random encounters, even though you had the meter in the second game, being able to see the enemy is still my preferred option.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I never could get into part one, but part two was amazing. That last boss was hard as hell too. In my defense, I was horribly underleveled. (over 10 levels under the average level supposedly)

Spoiler:

That move that made him have 2-3 turns in a row tore my party apart. I think it was called Dimensional Split.

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Originally Posted by Hindman

There will also be Japanese audio

I approve of this thread as of that line right there.

I actually have the first two, but it seems HDLoader didn't want to play nice with the audio on the first one so I may be forced it play it by disc.

Gonna have to play them before this comes around though.

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Originally Posted by Kostaki

I actually have the first two, but it seems HDLoader didn't want to play nice with the audio on the first one so I may be forced it play it by disc.
.

The PS2 system itself doesn't like to play nice with the first game. There's a glitch in it if you have the English voices turned on that cause the game to crash in the ending.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I personally liked the two first games.. though I loved two more then one.. I'm going to pick it up.. would be fun to try out and see if it's any good, and maybe I can get use to the guild thing (I honestly, found the guild stuff in rpgs somewhat boring).

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by B.K.

The PS2 system itself doesn't like to play nice with the first game. There's a glitch in it if you have the English voices turned on that cause the game to crash in the ending.

Luckily they improved the second game, I don't think that there were any bugs in that one. The ending bug was very annoying, especially since the final boss fight took ages, and I wasn't even motivated to play that part again after my game crashed the first time.

FELIPE NO

Really glad to see that they're ditching random encounters. As much as I love traditional RPGs, as the years go by, it's starting to become an annoyance. I didn't have the chance of importing Grand Phantasm, but judging from the trailers, it looks awesome.

How ya doing, buddy?

There was an item that basically took away all random encounters in AI2. Most RPGs should have something like that.

And I guess I can see liking the game for its character interactions. AI1's shop keepers were pretty funny (in one, Veola makes a present for Lita, and its ingredients are poison). Doesn't completely save what I consider to be a pretty average game otherwise, though.

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So hey this is out, and I've been presently surprised with this game so far. Reading the reviews I was expected a dumbed down follow-up of some decent RPGs. Surprisingly I was completely wrong. First off there are only three player characters in this one however this game takes the quality over quantity approach and does it well. It allows for each character to be developed in far more detail than say if you had a cast of 5 or 6 characters and it makes for far more interesting combat as of the three people in the party are adapted to cover a few of the standard RPG archetypes.

The game runs on a central town hub system, but again surprisingly this one town in more detailed than 3-4 towns combined in previous Atelier games. They are also dynamic and the townsfolk are quite sensitive to whats going on in the game and to what you are doing.

Probably the biggest weakness I've found so far is that there aren't too many areas to explore, rather the game sends you to the same areas many times on various different quests. The time limit imposed is a bit frustrating at the beginning until you figure out how to get around each area and exploit the speed at which you kill enemies. But again fortunately there is a quality aspect which helps balance out the lack of quantity. First off these areas are HUGE rather than just being a few screens like in past Atelier games. Placement of objects and enemies also changes as you process so other than the scenery, everything else changes.

Finally, the quests. Again I didn't expect much from a quest driven system, but this game does it so well. There are different kinds of quests and more types might open up as I play more. So far I've been sent on treasure hunting quests which require me to find an item in a dungeon. I've gone on extermination quests which requirement to kill X amount of Y types of enemies. I've been sent on boss hunting quests. There are also quests that don't require fighting. Some quests require you to make certain items through alchemy while some quests are simply social interactions between various NPCs in the town. The best part is you are almost always rewarded with a interesting (and very often humorous) character dialog as you do each quest and complete them. There are no "Go get me 5 rocks." "Okay thanks here is your reward" types quests in Grand Phantasm. All the quests have their own mini-scripts and various reasonings behind them.

If you liked the first two games, check this one out. My biggest enjoyment in the Atelier Iris series is the character interactions and this one by far is the best of the three in that aspect and I'm only about 10 hours into the third game. Also that annoying load pausing found in past NIS games are indeed gone!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

That's a relief to hear. I had my eyes set on very carefully but after reading RPGamer's review I was a bit deterred. What I heard about the job system sounded awesome as great job systems always make better RPGs for me. (That's why FFV is my favorite) And the guy with the mech sword looks awesome. I love mechs so mech + sword = awesome for me.

The time does sound abit ircksome but I hope there would be a way to lengthen it somewhere down the line.

Thanks for the inside look. I feel like getting this again once I get money.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'm going to hold off on getting this game right away, it certainly looks appealing but there are some older games out there that I need to get and start playing.

Thanks for the little inside look though Cetra, at least I know it's something I wouldn't be totally bored with, like some other RPGs out there.

Probably my one concern is that the time limit will prevent me from just exploring the entire area and grabbing everything. I'm the type of player that could spend 3 hours in one area just exploring every nook and cranny while admiring the scenery.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Elixir approves of Atelier Iris 3, it's so colourful and pleasant to play. I like the character designs and overall feel of the game.

I haven't played the previous 2 aterlier iris games though, but this one looks great so far.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Elixir

Elixir approves of Atelier Iris 3, it's so colourful and pleasant to play. I like the character designs and overall feel of the game.

I haven't played the previous 2 aterlier iris games though, but this one looks great so far.

The other two are better in my opinion, though different. Sounds like the things you like about the game aren't the ones that changed, though.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I absolutely loved the first two Atelier Iris games, so I went ahead and bought Grand Phantasm. Sure, the first two games were ridiculously easy, but I loved how both games looked and they were fun to play. The character designs seem a bit better this time around and I hope that Edge isn't nearly as dorky as Felt and Klein are.

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