The game starts with two main characters, Iris and Edge. Iris is an alchemist and Edge would be best described as more of the insensitive bodyguard. Players start the game with Iris and Edge at the end of a quest inside an "Alterworld". Now what is an Alterworld you ask? Simple, it’s a world where people can go to fight monsters and explore. A portal to an Alterworld can be located anywhere and as you rank up in your guild, new and more lethal Alterworlds are opened up for them. The entire game takes place in one town, the Alterworlds are located throughout town, with the first one being on the outskirts of town, and the second just happens to be behind a bookcase inside a library. When players enter the Alterworlds, they have a limited amount of time before they are automatically kicked out and although this is never really explained fully, most missions can easily be finished within the time limit initially given, especially since the player can pick up time increases while inside. When players leave the Alterworld, they are given points, depending on what transpired. Points are rewarded for such things as, collecting certain items, receiving multiple time increases, defeating enemies certain ways, etc.

Iris and Edge, much like almost all other characters in the game are your basic staple characters. Edge is the overprotective, under sensitive hero and Iris is a naïve, yet easy to anger young girl. There is a character who is EXTREMELY sensitive about her height, and one who is extremely arrogant because he thinks that he is more intelligent than everyone else. This makes character development very predictable. The story surrounding the characters involves a book, which was split into eight pieces. When all of them are gathered, the book has the power to grand the holder any wish. Sounds like an interesting plot point. Unfortunately, in order to continue the plot, players must continue to complete quests from the guild and eventually they will come across a quest that will continue the story. This gives the story a very disjointed feel. When players start the game, they get a small amount of background story involving the book, and that’s it. It takes close to three hours of random questing in order for the story to really start.

The battle system for Atelier Iris 3 is a lot of fun. As Edge and Iris, and eventually a third character, run around the Alterworlds, monsters appear as blobs. There are several different colors such as red, grey, and blue. Red constitutes monsters that are hard to beat comparative to the character’s skill level, Grey are about even, and blue are extremely easy. Something that makes running around in areas with many blue blobs easy is Edge being able to swing his sword. If Edge hits a blue blob with his sword, the monster group is defeated without going into battle and sometimes leaves an item. However, if the sword or Edge hits a grey or red blob a fight starts. The battle system is similar to most RPGs, monsters line up on the left, characters on the right. At the top of the screen on the left is a row of cards, most are face down, the ones that are face up have the icons of the characters and the monsters. This tells players when the monsters’ and characters’ turns are up. On the right side, the skill bar is shown. This is used when characters use skills, and is a pool with up to nine full bars that can be held at once. The bar is filled whenever a character attacks or is attacked and also fills slowly while wandering around the Alterworld. On the bottom of the screen there is a Burst bar. This has a series of bars in it and it fills one bar for every hit that a character makes on an enemy, if a skill was used or otherwise. Once full, Burst mode is activated, and a player’s skill bar is filled to the max automatically. All skills are now much more powerful.

New skills are learned and used a variety of different ways. Some skills can be used just by having an item equipped on a character and others must be learned. For example, Edge gets blade points after fights, and after a certain number of blade points are earned, he learns a new skill. Iris can also make pacts with Mana, when this is done, not only can Iris summon them in battle to help out, but Edge and the third party member can learn new skills, and get new costumes, using the blades point system as well. Since players only get three characters to use, this helps greatly with the monotony of having the same three people in fights almost all the way through the game.

Iris can also utilize the dying art of alchemy. This means players get to wander around collecting what seems like useless stuff throughout the game in order to combine them into powerful items, like armor and weapons. During the creation process, players can substitute ingredients to try and make different items, or give the item being created better attributes. When an item is created, Iris receives experience in her alchemy skill. When Iris levels, she gets bonuses to her attributes, and ideas for new items to be created.

The game looks exceptionally good especially for a 2d game. The backgrounds are well drawn, and colorful. The only problem with this is there are a couple of areas in the game where it is hard to tell where players can and cannot go. There are openings to halls that don’t look like openings, and in a couple of areas it is hard to tell what can be walked behind and what can’t. The music is great, most of the music fits where it is placed and there is more than one song used for battle though the town music can get a little boring, especially since a lot of time is spent there. Probably the best option in the game is the voice acting. Players can choose from either the Japanese or the English tracks for the voices and voices on both sides are pretty well done. Almost all of the voices fit with the characters reasonably well.

Atelier Iris 3 is a good RPG overall and players can spend hours attempting to get everything out of the Alterworlds. This is great fun for a pack rat like me as well as others with similar RPG tastes. The biggest drawbacks of this game are the disjointed story and the generic characters. However, don’t allow this to discourage you especially with the great battle, skill and alchemy systems in the game. If players attempt to try and get as much as they can, many hours will be spent just leveling up and enjoying the battle system. Don’t pass this game up if you are a fan of 2d RPGs of this sort or Nippon Ichi games.