Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana Review

You know, I have a real soft spot for games that never received much acclaim. It’s really quite fun playing a game that not many people will, and I always figure that someone has to love these games. Unless of course they’re actually terrible games. But for a mediocre or average game, I like to give the underdog a chance. Today’s game is not on many people’s radars, so hopefully I’ll be able to get the word out about it. Now, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana was the first game in the series to be brought to the US, and it apparently fared well enough that the entire series started showing up over here. The subsequent games will have to wait until I can find them somewhere. Until then, let’s start off the series right.

The premise of Eternal Mana is thus. In the not so distant past, alchemists led a golden age of civilization, and created the fabulous city of Avenberry with the help of the mystical beings known as mana. However, one day they tried to create an entirely new mana through which they could channel elements and create artifacts. The plan backfired, and the great city fell into ruin. Generations passed, and alchemist became scarce. Enter Klein, inheritor of a grand family tradition of alchemy, come to the town of Kavoc that sprang up to meet the needs of those adventurous enough to seek their fortunes in the ruined Avenberry. Along the way, the plot thickens, and Klein’s party becomes aware of a new attempt to harness absolute power so as to take over the world. Yes, I’d like one generic RPG plot please, hold the surprise twist at the end. Actually, the plot is pretty segmented, because a lot of the game is made up of apparently pointless fetch quests.

Well shoot. Looks like the story isn’t going to keep us playing. Maybe the characters will? Certainly not our protagonist Klein, because he’s boring and has stupidly overpowered protagonist powers. He’s the only one who can heal for most of the game, and the only one with access to a variety of elemental attacks. Lita, the leading female, is surprisingly decent, combining a good amount of upbeat energy with some quite somber interludes. Delsus is pretty funny, being the older guy of the party who enjoys wine, women, and… well, you get the idea. His interactions with Lita as the foil form some of the more interesting dialogues in the game. The villain and the rival miniboss squad are both underwhelming, with the villain being especially bland. His motivations are left entirely undeveloped, and really, you hardly see him at all during the game. There is a certain amount of anticipation in the game over acquiring your sixth party member, but it’s drawn out a little bit too long.

Let’s see, how about the game system? Battles play out in classic turn based fashion, with each character having their own special moves and passive defensive abilities. Most characters have a few attacks that can affect an area, so enemy grouping is also important in battles. Outside of battle, you can level up each character’s skill by spending skill points gained at each character level. Characters can be equipped with mana gain bonus points to certain skills when their mana accrues a certain amount of experience. In keeping with the alchemical theme of the game, Klein creates mana items from pure elements he absorbs from random junk lying around, and these disposable items form the backbone of his abilities. It’s a simple yet effective system, with at least the illusion of customizability.

Real customization comes in with the crystal synthesizing. Items called mana stone can be turned into crystals which can be combined with other crystals and/or attached to certain weapons and accessories, granting abilities to the weapon itself. It’s an intimidating system at first, since you can use any of your 9 or so mana allies to create crystals from the 11 mana stone types. Once you get the hang of it, you can get some pretty cool effects by combing various properties, assuming you have the patience to try out hundreds of combinations. Or you could just look at a guide.

Finally, this game’s use of mana abilities is worth mentioning. Most of the mana come with a special command. This might be something simple like destroying blocks, or it could be preventing damage floors from affecting you. Combined with a few standalone powers, they form a solid exploration and puzzle solving mechanic. Plus, there are things called growloons to destroy, and reaching a few of these beasties can be tricky.

Replay value is “zilch.” Really, no good reason to play this game more than once. There are a couple of missable items, which could make filling out the item collection impossible, but that’s about it. The game is pretty linear, there’s not much customization at all until the very end game, and there’s only the merest shadow of a carry over feature. Basically, once you beat the game, you can save after the credits, which opens up an optional dungeon. Take your time and get everything in one go, because you won’t have any incentives to go back.

The final numerical score for this game needs to wait just a second, because there are a few things that should be talked about. Shop synthesis involves giving shops ingredients and getting them to make items for you. In two of the game’s shops, this opens up interesting characters who aren’t directly related to the story, but instead provide some pleasant side stories. The item collector who will unlock music and images in exchange for finding sets of items in the game is another fun sidequest. These mitigate some of the unfortunate nature of the plot, and allow this game to be solidly fun instead of mediocre. The rating is simply 7.5 out of 10. It’s got okay puzzle solving and exploration, good enough characters, and surprisingly fun sidequests, but its story is lame, dungeons are ridiculously short, and there’s little in the way of strategy options until quite late in the game.

Quick Tip: If you have a limited supply of one element necessary for an alchemy recipe, one way to stretch things is to make only one item at a time. If the mana are healthy and happy enough, they will frequently make one extra item, so you can sometimes get two items for the price of one.

How I Broke Game: I gave Arlin a weapon with a holy attack, a fire attack, and a straight up extra attack. This made him do ridiculous damage, which was actually necessary for the optional boss at the end of the bonus dungeon.

If you liked this game, you might want to look at some of these games. Wild Arms and Wild Arms 2 both have quite similar puzzle mechanics, but the puzzles in those games are much better. Dark Cloud, and to a certain extent Dark Cloud 2 have weapon synthesis systems that are moderately similar to the one in Eternal Mana. Finally, Thousand Arms is another game with a similarly corny RPG feel to it.

Parasite Eve Review

I haven’t said it before, but it’s hard to make a good horror RPG. A lot of your genre standards simply don’t work in the context of an RPG. If you can theoretically defeat monsters just by leveling up, it’s not really scary, even if the monster designs are ugly. Also, jump scares are more difficult to pull off when you have random battles that require you to move things into a cutscene right before it happens. All told, you end up having to rely on creating a suitably creepy atmosphere, which can be much more challenging than using the tactics mentioned above. One of the few games that managed to pull off this combination of genres was Parasite Eve.

The basic plot of Parasite Eve is actually moderately laughable. The mitochondria within our cells rebel after  be awakened by an entity known only as Eve, who possesses an opera singer in New York city. Enter Aya Brea, NYPD officer (at 19????). For some reason, she’s immune to the mitochondrial attacks, and has to deal with all this shit. Strange as it sounds, it is a decently told tale, with a mystery element added in there. But really, you’re in it for the atmosphere, and the game doesn’t shy away from gory deaths, which only contributes to the dark atmosphere.

The characters are… okay. Aya is really stoic, but that makes sense, since she’s been through a tough life. It would make sense that she’s got some issues. Maeda plays the bumbling suitor, whom Aya ignores and the player comes to hate, since he fills your limited inventory space with useless junk. The villain, Eve, is pretty much content to just monologue and laugh menacingly, without much development of her personality or motives. She’s pretty much a giant space tick given a voice, so all she does is say how she wants to destroy humanity… because. The only thing to be said about the characters is that you don’t spend enough time with them for their mediocre development to grate.

What’s really good is the battle system. It’s pretty simple; you have an action bar, which charges up, and when it’s done, you can act, either by attacking an enemy within your weapon’s attack range, or by using items or what amounts to science magic. Until you choose an action, you can move around the battlefield, trying to avoid enemies’ attacks. You get bonus experience for avoiding attacks, so that’s the main point of battles. You do get experience and level up, but the meat of the advancement system is improving your gun. You can increase the attack power with items, give it abilities like acid or firing two bullets a round, or remove a feature from it and graft it onto another weapon. It makes for an entertaining system where you have to figure out how to get the most out of the weapons you find along the way.

This game does have excellent replay value. Its new game plus features slightly stronger enemies, returns to you your favorite weapon from the first playthrough, and contains an enormous optional area with strong enemies and equipment to be found inside. Still, even with that, it’s a short game, and so the overall rating is “decreasing marginal entertainment after the second playthrough.”

When I look at all the stats, it’s really not a terribly impressive game. It did good on a few specific tasks, like making a truly creepy RPG, and having a good weapon creation mechanic, but it failed in the area of deep story or characters. Unfortunately, the bad slightly outweighs the good, and it’s only getting a 7.0 out of 10 from me. It’s got an appropriate difficulty, but there’s just not enough here to make it more than a mediocre game.

Quick Tip: Shooting more bullets per action is not necessarily better. Each increase in the number of bullets fired by a gun decreases the damage per bullet. Plus shooting a lot of bullets takes long enough that you won’t be able to dodge easily. Around two or three is good.

Fun Fact: Parasite Eve (the game) was essentially a sequel to the novel by the same title, written by Hideaki Sena. Not many games come out that are based on a book, though a movie was also produced about a year before the game.

If you enjoyed this game, you might also want to try one of these games. Vagrant Story doesn’t feature the same ability to dodge enemies, but its real-time combat engine is quite similar. Shadow Hearts is another good example of the rare horror RPG, and a good one at that. Dark Cloud 2 is another game with a good weapon customization system. I haven’t yet played Parasite Eve II, so I don’t know if it lives up to the first game.