Unlike all the other Star Ocean games which are a sci-fi/Fantasy hybrid with themes around technology affecting underdeveloped worlds, Star Ocean The Second Story is more of an isekai that just happens to have one of the characters being from outer space. Unlike the other games, Second Story doesn’t explore much in regards to sci-fi concepts, sure Rena’s backstory is kind of a Sci-Fi concept but at the same time it kinda isn’t because it doesn’t really influence anything. I mean it’s not like Rena is a synthetic lifeform or anything like Relia is in 5, she’s just a humanoid from another race who can heal people and that is moreso a fantasy concept than sci-fi. Claude’s side is just full on isekai, you don’t even get to go to a world that feels super technologically advanced, Energy Nede feels like a modern day setting but with teleporters and symbological knowledge, sure they are highly gifted symbologists and are advanced in the arts of symbology but technology… not so much. Seemingly everything that is advanced that shows up in Energy Nede is or could very well be considered to be tied to Symbology, which makes it more of a magical world than a futuristic world.
Enjoy it while it lasts, Laser Guns are banned after this part.
Everything in Star Ocean 2 feels like your typical Isekai anime, lots of getting sidetracked with events not tied directly to the main goal, lots of mystical aspects and fantastical stuff to separate the “other world” from the “normal world”. The bad guys come across as being extremely powerful and highly intimidating but they aren’t really expanded on save for a bit of lore in the nede section detailing things but even when you find out who they are, you realize that the villains don’t really matter all that much, they’re just kinda there. The purpose of them is just to provide an opposing force for the “heroes” to fight because otherwise, the whole game would have been a slice of life isekai with no real threat, it would just be “man gets stuck on a planet and… I dunno, settles there?”
“What a quaint little village, would be nice to settle down here with my new blue goblin girlfriend that I just met 2 seconds ago… but I have to save the world from a bunch of nobodies because I’m the hero of light.” How isn’t this an Isekai???
Then you have games like Star Ocean 6 which does a similar thing with Raymond but it doesn’t feel like an isekai at all and doesn’t present itself as such, Raymond ends up on an underdeveloped planet sure but he treats it like it is tuesday. He’s more concerned with other things like the federation and his crew, he is able to communicate with his brother and is guarenteed a lift back home on the Aldous but he gets caught up in something that actually ties in with sci-fi meddling so he plays a major role using his knowledge of technology as a means of fighting back against the threat. It feels like there’s less of a feeling of wanderlust that comes from entering a new world than there is in Star Ocean 2 as you’re getting straight to business. Claude on the other hand is going on an adventure with his pals to explore the El continent, there’s no immediate stakes like Raymond, where his crew could be in danger and the interferance from the Vyr could cause even more trouble.
Even the other Star Ocean games don’t feel like an Isekai, the first game has you going to the past to acquire a serum, the third game has you dealing with numerous technological threats as well as some crazy stuff near the end, Star Ocean 4 introduces the whole idea of providing underdeveloped worlds with new technology, Blue Sphere has you traveling through ancient technologically advanced ruins that have been colonized by more underdeveloped settlers who are being affected by the technology around them. Star Ocean 5 deals with technology turning your peaceful world upside down.
Pretty sure using firearms is cheating.
But Second Story is just your typical isekai, like you take away all the setting prior to Claude getting warped out of Milokeenia and that’s pretty much what it is, it’s every Isekai anime you’ve seen before. Now that isn’t to say that it’s a bad thing, people do enjoy Isekai after all, it just makes Second Story stand out as being the most conventional storyline and therefore the odd one out of the series. You don’t even get to explore a space ship if you pick Rena, only very briefly with Claude and your airship is just some fantastical creature that flies around as opposed to say a shuttle. It’s as if Second Story was deliberately trying to eliminate all traits of science fiction from the story, finding more fantastical alternatives to the point that it doesn’t really feel like a Sci-Fi RPG at all. One of my friends who tried the game expecting a science fiction setting was disappointed by this and I had to explain to him that Star Ocean 2 doesn’t really have much Sci-Fi in it and that it’s just an isekai but when you see it for what it truly is, an isekai, it’s not so bad. I just think that it’s kinda easy for people to be misled by Star Ocean 2’s lack of Sci-fi because it truly is the odd one out.
As we all know, the 2000’s was a time where seemingly every game franchise tried to cater to broody rebellious teenagers, with even games like Jak 2, Pokemon Colosseum and Shadow The Hedgehog taking their respective franchises in a whole new direction to pander to this crowd. Atelier was no exception, so out with the wholesome innocence and in with the edge! Now somebody at the board meeting clearly took the phrase “we need to give this game more edge” too literally as the solution to this was to simply name the protagonist of the game Edge and boy oh boy does he live up to his name.
Of course it is, JRPG characters get all the cool names.
Now like all edgelords, they each come in different varieties. You have the angry ones, the broody ones, the flamboyant ones, the snarky ones and of course the cool, calm and collected professional ass kicker who doesn’t say a word but you know that they are the coolest motherfucker on planet earth. Well Edge Vanhite is on the milder side of the edgeometer, he’s a dude with a no nonsense attitude and he’s a bit of a dick but deep down he has a heart of gold, you know, that kind of edgelord. He’s kind of like a milder version of Ryudo from Grandia 2 but without the wisecracks and a little broody. Of course hes accompanied with not one, but two hyperactive super peppy happy go lucky girls to balance things out so you can clearly see what sort of shenanagins you’re going to encounter in this game’s story.
Atelier Iris 3 is split into two parts. You have the main story and sort of like an interlude where you do missions unrelated to the story that have their own side stories. As you’d expect, this brings about a lot of padding and you are forced to partake in these “missions” to progress through the story, which may seem kinda tedious, and it is but the game does try to put some effort into them by giving the missions their own side stories revolving around the game’s NPC’s whom you are helping out. While there were occasionally some funny moments, I felt that these missions do more harm than good as they bog the game down needlessly. On top of this, because these missions happen in an interlude between chapters, it’s easy to forget the events that occurred in the previous chapter due to all of the missions being completely irrelevant to it, making it difficult to keep up with the main story, not that it matters because the main story isn’t really all that brilliant to begin with. In a way it kind of reminds me of how Resonance Of Fate handled its progression as just like that game, it feels like a slog getting through each chapter due to the sheer volume of fluff to get through. This is without a doubt the biggest issue with Atelier Iris 3 as a whole and it is the thing that will ultimately make or break the game for you.
Stop being so edgy Edge!!!
Each mission will take you to one of five alterworlds to explore and these worlds are huge, filled with lots of secrets and items to harvest. The weird thing is though that each time you enter one of these worlds, there’s a time limit. I personally never found the time limit to be too taxing but it is a strange design choice nonetheless. The worst case scenario is that you get sent back to town when the timer runs out and while it may seem like a bit of a nuisance, it doesn’t prevent you from revisiting a second time. I find that once you know your way around the alterworlds, it does get a bit easier to traverse through them quickly and upon gaining new abilities you can use your powers to access new areas, sort of like a metroidvania game in the sense that it encourages backtracking. Given the fact that alchemy is the primary focus of these games, getting players to backtrack to find secret recipes and items to create new items is a good idea and with each mission requiring you to backtrack to each area anyway, it doesn’t feel like an additional chore to go off the beaten path to discover something new, even with the time limit in place, I find that the game gives you plenty of time to explore the alterworlds.
One interesting thing about the alterworlds is the fact that there are different colored enemy blobs that trigger encounters. You have blue blobs for easy enemies, red blobs for tougher enemies and white blobs which are kind of the in-between. While attacking white and red blobs will trigger encounters, attacking blue blobs will kill them instantly and may drop materials, this doesn’t give you any experience or money though but it can be handy to bypass all the easy battles. There are also giant red blobs which are kind of like mini-boss enemies but not quite mini-bosses, they’re just enemies that are slightly tougher than the others and typically have a lot more health. There are also some even bigger red blobs that are tied to hunt quests that may show up in certain areas. My issue with these enemies is that the game doesn’t mark their location on the map, only the area that they are in is mentioned, so you have to go looking for them yourself which is a pain. Thankfully these quests are optional and aren’t required to progress through the main story.
One area that Atelier Iris 3 particularly excels in is the combat. Atelier Iris 3’s combat works closer to that of Mana Khemia than it does the previous entry, Atelier Iris 2, which felt more like a Grandia game. There is a turn order that can be manipulated like in Atelier Iris 2 but it works a little differently as you have attacks that have knockback properties that can push enemy turns back a bit. Attacks build up a charge gauge which can be spent on special moves like in Atelier Iris 2, however Atelier Iris 3’s new burst mode not only fills your charge gauge up to max but it also increases the damage dealt by your attacks by an insane amount. Just like the charge gauge, all of your attacks increase the burst gauge and this includes special moves too, encouraging players to play more aggressively to fill the burst gauge. I really like the whole “thinking outside the box” approach to combat that this brings about as it discourages players from spamming the same moves repeatedly and instead consider the situation as well as the amount of charge they have. It should also be noted that weaknesses and resistances affect the rate in which the burst gauge rises, so it may be better to use abilities enemies are weak to to build the gauge up faster. If players fail to fill the burst gauge however, the enemy attacks can decrease it so you can’t always count on getting burst mode but if you do, it will make you absurdly powerful to the point that it pretty much lets you steamroll most encounters.
Given the fact that this is an Atelier game, it goes without saying that there’s a crafting system. Atelier Iris 3’s crafting isn’t too different from Atelier Iris 2’s crafting, you simply combine ingredients together to make an item but can also replace certain ingredients to make completely new items or add another property to the pool of properties available for the item. Properties are effects that are applied to the item such as being able to gain an extra hit with a regular attack if applied to a weapon or the ability to regenerate health as well as stat boosts. It’s a very simple system but the ability to change ingredients and choose properties makes you think a little more than the average crafting system you see in most games nowadays. Those looking to craft absolutely everything will spend an insane amount of time in this game hunting for ingredients and recipes as there’s quite a lot to be found, as well as certain recipes requiring Iris to visit certain places to come up with alchemy ideas.
While the combat, alchemy and exploration may be fun on paper, I feel that the overall structure of the game lets it all down as you spend a lot of time going back and forth between each alterworld doing all kinds of errands, which can get pretty monotonous after a while as they have you visiting the same places constantly. Each time you travel to an alterworld, you have to start in the exact same spot and work your way through to the area you need to be in to do each quest, sometimes the game is generous enough to let you fast travel to places but other times it feels like the game is sending you on a wild goose chase for some mundane errand just to add even more needless padding, expecting you to fight all the enemies and explore along the way. This just doesn’t work for a game this long as you get sick of it after a while. In an era where fast travel is mocked for being the norm, Atelier Iris 3 showcases the exact reason why it has become a staple in gaming to this very day. I do not see why the developers had to needlessly pad this game out, I could have settled for only having 5 alterworlds with all of their subsections as I honestly do not mind the idea of having few dungeons that are vast and full of secrets but for a game this long, it feels criminal. This game should have been 5 chapters long tops, the fact that I had to go through 10 chapters, having to follow the same structure for each and every one of them save for the final one is unbelievably absurd.
It’s a good thing that the game’s soundtrack is nice to listen to, because you will spend the entire game listening to the same few songs on repeat time and time again. While the music does change a little when reaching certain areas in an alterworld, some alterworlds have the same song playing throughout. There are some nice battle tracks too but like the alterworld tracks, you’ll be hearing them a lot, so they should be good. Now that’s not to say that the soundtrack is on the same level as Atelier Iris 2 and Ar Tonelico but there’s still a good mixture of catchy, serene tracks to accompany you as you bop around all of the alterworlds. The voice acting on the other hand is a mixed bag. On one hand you have Kirk Thornton voicing Ash, who is totally not Vergil, on the other hand you have the worst role that Jessica Straus has ever played, Nell. Now anyone who knows Jessica Straus knows that she tends to voice a lot of older characters in games and this is probably why. While her voice work for older characters tends to be pretty good, her voice work for Nell is rather grating.
Me if I have to listen to Nell’s voice ever again
Now this might be a weird thing to say given its age but Atelier Iris 3 might quite possibly be the best looking Atelier game I’ve seen in regards to visuals. I feel that the sprites hold up extremely well and while the landscapes are the usual blocky roads, there’s a lot to love about the aesthetic design of some of the backgrounds and clutter throughout the levels. I particularly love the design of the Grimoire Castle as you enter it, it has that absurd sense of scale that you’d expect from a Vanillaware game. Like the music though, you’ll be seeing the same locations often so it’s a good thing that the game isn’t lacking in the aesthetic department.
I think that Atelier Iris 3 has been widely ignored by the majority of people as while Atelier Iris 2 and Mana Khemia tend to get mentioned a lot, Atelier Iris 3 has been ignored. I think the structure of the game might be the biggest reason for this, that and the fact that the story, while servicable isn’t going to keep you on the edge of your seat, no pun intended. It’s definitely not a game that you’re going to want to binge through. You’ll find it a lot more enjoyable if you only play it for short sessions at a time, doing the occasional quest every so often but don’t expect to finish this game quickly and if you do, brace yourself for some serious burnout because you’ll have had enough of this game by the end, believe me. I think the same can be said for Atelier Sophie as well, though that game has way more problems than this one does and it wasn’t half as enjoyable as this game was. I haven’t played many of the Atelier games so I can’t compare them all but if you enjoyed Atelier Iris 2 and you want more of that, Atelier Iris 3 might be worth giving a try so long as you keep your expectations low. Atelier Iris 3 is still an enjoyable game, it just overstayed its welcome for me.
She might if she accidentally trips and falls backwards off the EDGE.
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