I don't know exactly what it is about this game that makes me love it so much,
Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana is a surprisingly good and highly charming RPG. The storyline is meagre, evil genius trying to take over the world, the main character, in this case a rather short young alchemist by the name of Klein, is the only thing that stands between him, and the destruction of mankind. However, this game is not really about the storyline, in fact to me, the actual story plays a relativley small part in the game. It is driven largely by Item Synthesis, and the concept of spending about 3 hours of trial, error, joy and frustration trying to unlock one of the final elusive items on the "Extras" menu.
There are two types of synthesis, shop and manual. Shop synthesis is incredibly addictive, and the shopkeepers are all charming. The characters may seem stereotypical at first glance, but they are truly lovable, and all have their unique quirks. There are a refreshing number of short cutscenes after you synthesise a new item in the bar, normally involving Delsus complaining about "chick drinks" and Lita asking for more lando juice, which makes the whole thing seem worth it. The voiceacting is also superb, and all the characters seem in-character, although the dubbed enemy voices get rather annoying.
The soundtrack for this game is superb, especially the battle tracks, and the music that plays in the main town. It is truly memorable, and listening to it always makes me smile.
The combat system is simplistic, and reminicent of the 2D Final fantasy games. There is a concept of leveling up special attacks, which is quite interesting. The system is not 'bad', but it is definetly nothing special, and while character levelling is important, it is much more important to keep item synthesis up to date.
The difficulty curve is slightly odd, it is very easy until the fight with that hideous unicorn, when the difficulty of the bosses suddenly shoots through the roof, which can be highly frustrating.
The in-battle sprites are nothing spectacular, but they are not awful, and while the same can be said for some of the scenery, some of it is gorgeous, and I thought the areas were very well-designed, and they dont drag on for too long. The character portraity are lovely, and the artwork of the items is amazingly detailed. The would map is slightly dreadful, however, it doesn't really matter too much, as it was never intended to be beautiful, and it does not really detract from gameplay.
Overall, I think there is a very specific group of people that this game is aimed at. If you are not part of this group, you will probably not enjoy it very much, but if you are a fan of old-school RPGs, enjoy item collecting and are not driven by the storyline, I would definetly and whole-heartedly reccomend it. I know I have thouroughly enjoyed it, despite it's flaws.