I’m always up for a good RPG, and if it’s in 2-D then I am even more interested. So I found reason to get on board when NIS first brought us Atelier Iris, and then the second one, and now we have a third entry. By now, I just feel like I bought in to a series that is similar to the .Hack// games, with each title being only slightly different from the last. Granted this series has some things that differentiate it from the past titles. I just feel like it’s high time for NIS and Gust to focus on something else. Or move this series to a platform that is more in need of quality titles, like say the PSP. Atelier Iris 3 is another entry in Gust’s long line of RPGs that focus on 2-D sprite based worlds, a simplistic combat system, and an item creation system that gets further refined as the titles grow in numbers. Not all is bad here, it just feels like it’s a phoned in effort on Gust’s part, while this is probably the best Atelier Iris game to hit US shores yet, there are a few nagging issues that should have been resolved by now and the story takes far too long to get rolling before the game is able to keep interest.

Atelier Iris 3 starts things off with a new story progression system. You have a great deal of quests to complete around town as the two main characters Edge and Iris work for a guild and must rank up, and it’s through these rank increases that the story progresses. It proves to be a fairly good mechanic for moving the story along however there are a large number of side quests that can at times drag on and on, this gets especially annoying when they are forced upon you to reach a plot device. Hell you won’t even get your first additional party member until at least five hours in to the game. The story is also fairly bare bones. Iris is the owner of a book called the Escalario which is said to grant wishes when it is fully assembled, blah blah blah, great power and such. The story is divided in to chapters that come to abrupt ends after a little bit of story appears to punctuate the end of the chapter. A lot of characters are given depth through personal interactions but I’m still trying to figure out why the hell Iris and Edge are hanging out together in the first place.

The battle system has received a few more tweaks and this time I feel like they nailed it. This accomplishment comes from the fact that the user has a lot more control of the flow of battle with abilities that can stall the enemy ala Grandia series. This little tweak makes battles a lot more fun as you can build a strategy around stalling an enemy, provided you have the skill meter to pull it off. This can lead to huge combos and quickly fill up the Burst Meter which, when filled, will completely fill up the skill meter and allow your characters to do even more damage with their regular skills. So the battles are a bit livelier. Add to this the ability to change your character’s “blades” and you will find a lot more depth than what was previously present in the past Atelier games which is actually a big plus because truth be told I don’t think I could slog through another one of these types of battle systems because after the balance and structure that Dragon Quest 8 brought to the table, it’s just hard to hold a candle to it. The only negative I would have for the Burst system though is that it can really turn the tide of a battle and a lot of the tougher boss battles have you scrambling to get the Burst Meter filled, so it’s not like there is a whole lot of strategy to follow when it comes to the tougher battles.

There is one thing I will say I absolutely love about this...