Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny is the second part of this alchemy based series.
Full Review
Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny Review
By, Josh Ferguson
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
In April of 2006, courtesy of NIS America, the second installment in Gust’s alchemic series, Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny was released for the PlayStation 2 system. The game features much of the same style and charm of the original, but with even more additions. So how does the sequel compare to Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana? Well, you will have to read on to find out!
The storyline in Atelier Iris 2 begins in the world of Eden, with a young boy named Felt and his childhood friend Viese, who are both studying to become great alchemists. One day while the two are walking through Marmel Forest, areas of the world begin to mysteriously vanish! Soon after Felt finds that the Azure Azoth, a legendary magical sword, is speaking to him, and, similar to The Sword and the Stone, pulls it from its resting place. Afterwards the two discover that Eden is actually connected to a completely different world known as Belkhyde. In an attempt to save his homeland, Felt travels alone with the Azoth through the Belkhyde Gate.
Throughout Atelier Iris 2, players will have to switch back and forth between Felt, who is occupied in Belkhyde, and Viese, who stayed back in Eden. Most of the plot and storyline will focus on Felt and his adventure, but it will still be necessary to use Viese to advance in the game. With Felt fighting his way through enemies in Belkhyde, Viese will stay back in Eden and create different alchemy items that will help aide Felt on his quest. While it is interesting to have control over two different characters in two different worlds, at the same time it is somewhat of a letdown. As I said earlier, most of the storyline and plot focuses on Felt’s adventure, so Viese’s can be somewhat dull and boring, with most of her objectives consisting of only crafting items for Felt.
Similar to many RPGs, Atelier Iris 2 is a game that features random battles. While you travel through most of the areas in the game, a gauge will appear at the left side of the screen. When you continue to move around on the field, the gauge will begin to change colors as a random battle draws near. As you continuously go through random battles, the gauge will begin to deplete, and once that happens the enemies in the area have been completely destroyed. However, once you leave the area and return, the enemies will respawn, so if you’d like to try to gain some experience, you can always just return.
Combat in the game is similar to the original Atelier Iris, but with a few new advancements that make it even more entertaining. While the original was strictly a turn-based styled combat system, the sequel features an Active Time Cost Battle bar that indicates when it is a character’s turn. Located on the ACTB bar are icons that will represent each of the individuals in the battle, and when their icon reaches the far right, then it will be that individuals turn to act. However, also new to the combat are the different types of attacks, including the normal attack, which is known as a charge attack. But there is also a new attack command called break attack. With a break attack, the character has a chance of disrupting the enemy’s location on the ACTB bar, and delaying their turn. After performing a break attack, if the enemy is moved onto the orange area of the ACTB bar, they will become broken. When this occurs, your characters can then continuously perform these break attacks and pull off combos, which will not only increase the amount of damage received but also earn more experience bonuses.
Aside from the actual attacks, each of the game’s characters also has their own unique, special skills. There are two forms of skills, passive and active. With active skills you must first have the required number of charges on your gauge located in the top right of the battle screen. When your characters either receive or deal damage, the gauge will begin to increase and charge up. On the downside, since active skills use charges, chances are you might not be completely full of charges and won’t be able to use some of the different skills. Also, many of them really aren’t that useful, and chances are you will be just as effective with merely using your physical attacks. The passive skills, on the other hand, are those that are found on your weapons and equipment, but can be learned and increase your character’s stats. While all of the characters can use skills, Felt and Viese are the only two of the group that are able to use mana synthesis. Mana synthesis is fairly similar to your skills, but instead of taking up charges they use elements.
Similar to the original Atelier Iris, the sequel features a large amount of synthesizing. Other than the mana synthesis, which I already mentioned, the game features weapon synthesizing that only Felt can perform. In concern to item synthesizing, as I said earlier, Viese is the only individual of the group who will be able to use this type of alchemy. With all these types of synthesizing, altogether the game allows for a whole lot of item creation, but chances are most gamers won’t completely uncover all the items because it isn’t exactly necessary.
Graphically, Atelier Iris 2 fairs a bit better than the previous installment. In the sequel, the environments and towns are much nicer looking, and so are each of the character sprites. The game also features some great-looking anime-styled cutscenes.
As far as the sound department goes, Atelier Iris 2 features some nice new tunes and even brings back some from the previous game. For the most part, the game’s voice acting is strong, but there are also some individuals who don’t fare as well as others. However, most of the main characters’ voice actors do a nice job and, combined with the game’s humor, it is even better.
Overall, Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny is a fun role-playing game that fans of the original should welcome with open arms. The game has seen some changes from the original, many of which are for the better, making Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny a worthy successor and an overall better game!
Final Verdict: 78%
