Not exactly worthy of being called an impressive game, though the gameplay is enough to keep you playing.
The game would've been great if it had better characters and a nice story to back it, but instead there's plenty to be had of overused, cliche story ideas and character personalities. Nothing feels fresh or new, which is especially dangerous for a game that just came out last year.
I was delighted to discover the game has the option of changing the voices to Japanese, but a little disheartened as I continued with the story and found the voices weren't even much of an improvement. The majority of the female characters have high-pitched, yelly voices and it seems inescapable.
As for graphics, they certainly aren't anything special. Playing Odin Sphere before this title amazed me with 2D potential... and then to fall back on this game makes me feel it's better to pretend Atelier Iris 3 was released in 2003.
The negative aside, there's a lot of fun to be had in the game. The alchemy system is great and fun to tinker with and the battle system is admittedly pretty enjoyable as well. It's more fast-paced, the skills are awesome and there's a decent variance of them. The game's version of MP is a "skill gauge" you can refill by simply walking in a dungeon or attacking an enemy in battle, and it's pretty creative and adds a challenge. I don't believe there are any items that can refill the skill gauge, but you can keep attacking and scoring hits to increase your "burst gauge". When it hits max, you're thrown into burst mode and your skill gauge hits max as well... not to mention using skills in burst mode greatly increases their destructive power.
Another plus is no random battles. Enemies wander dungeons and are usually one of three colours: Blue for weaker than you (in which case you can just slash it away without entering battle), grey for matching your strength, and red for stronger. Most of the time these enemies are easy to dodge or jump over if you don't want to fight, which is nice when you're doing a quest.
All in all, great gameplay makes the game a tad addictive, though the story, characters, music and graphics lack luster, it's still worth a play.