Wield a talking sword to bring justice upon Evil
The story takes place in the peaceful world of Eden. Alchemist and Mana Spirits populate the area. For 400 years the land of Eden has always been a peaceful place for humans and mana. One day, Eden starts to experience a crisis when lands starts disappearing. Felt Blanchimont find a talking sword, the Azure Azoth, stuck in the ground and becomes its rightful owner. He decides to investigate the crisis and enters the mysterious world of Belkhyde. Viese Blanchimont receives a pair of mysterious rings and gives one to Felt. She stays at home in Eden and works on Alchemy to assist felt in his investigation. Viese soon realizes that the mysterious ring has powers to send and receive items through alchemy. Thus, the adventure begins.
The core of the game play requires you to fetch items with Felt, mix them with Viese, and use them with Felt. The formula is really simple, and it can be frustrating at times. For example, most of the npc's require that you fetch them a rare item no where to be found, only then shall they help you. You'll spend hours squandering around looking for items with no slightest clue where to get them. It hurts more when an NPC requires a item from another NPC who seems to require you to complete another objective, its like a loop. A game guide comes in real handy for Atelier Iris, which is not to say it's a good thing. If only the clues and mission objectives were more elaborate or if there were an NPC that hinted you toward the area for a certain ingredient, then it wouldn't be so tedious. The fetching system can also be toned down a bit as it is much overused.
The world has been given a much needed face-lift. Gone are the long and tedious walks across the world map. Now you'll be able to travel freely in a point and click style world map. Much like the first title, you'll be restricted to advance further than prohibited areas. New areas will become available only when you've gone far enough in the story to reach it. During your journey, you'll bump into a group of friends who have nothing better to do than save the world. You have Poe, who offers his assistance to Viese become he's attracted to her. There's Fee, the young girl who attacks Felt and mistaken him for someone else. She ends up joining the crew. There's Grey, a man who turned into a dragon, saves Felt in the desert and decides to join him. Finally there's Noin, the member of the anti-imperialist slim silt, who joins up with Felt after rescuing him from the desert. It's almost as if Felt was destined to meet new friends wherever he finds trouble.
While traveling around the field, you'll spend alot of time opening treasures and extracting mana. You'll encounter objects that requires an appropriate item for interactions. For example, a plant signaling a bottle of water needs the "Wonder Grow" to be picked off. Walls signaling a Hammer requires "Flay Hammer" to advance the game. You'll also have an encounter gauge that will signal when a random encounter will occur. It changes color from blue to red, when the gauge is completely empty, you can roam freely in that area with no random encounters. However, returning to a camp will refill the meter completely.
Much like every other RPGs, there are tools and item shops in town. Each shop sells different items that can be used for synthesizing new items. These shops come in real handy when your stuck on a particular recipe. Each character's also have their own base to function in. Viese's base is her home, where she can synthesize items. To do so, you first select the item you want to synthesize from the Item list. Next, you can either substitute items to give the item new properties, or begin the synthesizing. You'll then move onto the property review, which shows the effects of that item. After you've completed the synthesizing process, you'll acquire the item and it can easily be re-produced with mana. Keep in mind that if you don't have all the necessary items, you'll need to go find them. Felt resides inside a camp, where he can forge weapons. You'll be using the same weapon throughout the entire game, with upgrades of course. Forging weapons require rare ingredients, and you can only forge weapons that are connected to your current weapon on the weapon tree. After forging a new weapon, you'll obtain the skill that comes with it, along with the effects of the items you used to combine with it. When you acquired enough skill points by battling, you'll learn that particular skill. Equipments are vital to your character's growth. You can equip up to two accessories at once. Accessories can increase your character's stats. Your also allowed to equip two synthesized items. Each items contain various skills your characters can learn. These skills involve counter attack, blocking, heavier damage, faster movement, etc. They are essential for boss battles and adds much needed customization.
Combat has taken a small step forward, yet one that's big enough to climb the ladders of tedious combat that plagued the first title. You have the Active Cost Time Battle/ACTB Bar on the top corner with a yellow area and a red area. On top of this meter are portraits of your character and the enemies. As the portrait moves closer to the right, that persons turn is coming closer, think Grandia. There's also a Skill Gauge on top, which acts like a MP/SP meter for your entire team. The Skill gauge charges up as you perform charge attacks or get attacked by an enemy. If the enemy is close to the yellow area of the ACTB bar, you can perform the Break Attack command to perform a critical attack and stun them. While their dazed, their vulnerable to take critical damage for every hit. Abusing an enemy while their delaying their attacks is a great way to rack up combos. Keep in mind that the enemy can do the same to you, defend when necessary. You can also use items synthesized into battle. Felt also has an exclusive "Mana Synthesis" command that allows him to synthesize mana on the go and use it in battle, a neat feature that comes in really handy. You can also swap allies on the fly at any time. If your ally somehow dies, they'll automatically be swapped with the next available ally. This in itself provides some strategy for certain boss battles that impairs your status.
Each characters have their own unique skills to use in battle. Its nice to experiment and learn each skill to see what the character's have to offer. Noin has special healing abilities that you'll find very useful early in the game. Felt and Gray are solid at dealing tremendous physical damage to a single opponent. Fee is good at draining enemies attacks and racking up combos. Poe is great at launching dynamites and impairing the enemies status. Its nice to mix things up and experiment with different characters. Ultimately, everyone on your roster is a winner.
There are plenty of cut-scenes in Atelier Iris 2, which is a staple of the series. Beautiful hand-drawn portraits pop up on screen to express the character's emotion. There are also a few anime cut-scenes that are really interesting to watch, sadly there's only about 3 in the entire game. Sometimes text boxes will pop up with no text at all, which doesn't effect the game much, but its just strange to have the occasional empty text boxes to pop up. Its apparent that the graphics are not the selling point of the Atelier Iris series. Characters look pixilated and uninspiring. The environments look blocky and hard to define. It feels old-school, but a little more frames wouldn't hurt this ps2 title. The sound department is a mixed bag. First, music is a strong point in the Atelier iris series, and here its done really well. From the catch intro anime theme, to the charming background music that does a solid job of fitting the mood and theme of the story. The voice-works are also pretty decent, but the actual script is horrible. Aside from Viese, who convinced me that she is an innocent little girl with a strong sense of justice, all the other characters sounded fair. Gray does his job sounding like a tough dragon. Poe, the flirt, does well sounding like an annoying little fairy. Fee, whose just a mystery herself, sounds emotionless and empty. The other characters however falls flat in their deliverance. Felt sounds like Felt, whether he's angry, sad, or just being himself, he has the same tone of voice through out the entire game. His voice actor sounded more grating than an romantic/aspiring young lad to save the world. Noin, though her voice is decent, her smart mouth comes out sounding ridiculously absurd. Her bad jokes will have you cringing in disgust, you'll figure why the game is rated E. The charm and charismatic characters from the first Atelier Iris game isn't apparent here. One scene that still remains in my head is one where Noin and Felt reaches a group of soldier. Noin tells Felt to stand back, approaches the group of soldiers alone and shouts "Listen up you random encounters, I'll play a tune called My fist in your face", possibly the stupidest line in rpg gaming history and cliché. Luckily, there's an option for Japanese language to save your ears from these grating moments.
Atelier Iris 2: Azoth of Destiny takes around 30 hours to complete. You'll be awarded with an option to listen to the game's soundtrack. The amount of customization from your equipments to your alchemy will keep you glued to your tube. The battle system is simple but engaging and fun. Be warn that the story is nothing original, the character's fall a bit flat in development, and the tedious quest design can test your nerves. With its apparent flaws out the way, you have yourselves an enjoyable cliché j-rpg experience. Think you have what it takes to save the world?, have fun.