• Persona 4 (PS2) - bonus CD soundtrack included in every copy; Persona 4 Visual Data, full color, 100 page 7''x10'' art book included in pre-orders
• Luminous Arc 2 (DS) - bonus CD soundtrack included in every copy; Luminous Art book, full color, 7''x10'' featuring characters from the entire series included in pre-orders
• Eternal Poison (PS2) - bonus CD soundtrack included in every copy; Librum Vespera full color, 5''x8'' art book included in pre-orders

This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

Left Behind Games just informed us that they have launched a new demo for their upcoming PC real time strategy title, Left Behind: Eternal Forces. The demo contains four-missions. You can download the file below: 

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This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

It’s not very often that a successful RPG series that doesn’t involve the word “Square” releases stateside. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana is one such game, developed by Gust and brought to the US via Nippon Ichi under the NIS America moniker. Eternal Mana shares a lot of characteristics with Nippon Ichi’s other titles, and features a light-hearted, comedic atmosphere combined with nostalgic, turn-based gameplay and 2D graphics. It offers gamers a pleasant, cozy experience that those who grew up playing the early Final Fantasy games will enjoy, however more hardcore, modern RPGers may find the game’s easy-going persona repetitive, dull, and shallow.



Eternal Mana begins typically enough, with the game’s hero, Klein, exploring new lands to locate more mana, magical spirit creatures that aid alchemists, a dying breed, in their adventurous pursuits for fame and glory. Klein receives guidance from his first mana – Popo, mana of the wood – and eventually is joined by other mana who are eager to put their skills to the test for the first alchemist they’ve seen in years. Additionally, Klein meets other characters who are just as excited at the opportunity to discover treasure, travel to new towns, and show their merit in battle as the mana are. Together this rather large group becomes embroiled in the quest to stop a madman from destroying the world. It’s quintessential, but functional.

After the first fifteen minutes it becomes abundantly clear that Eternal Mana’s draw factors revolve around Klein’s alchemic talents and the gamer’s ability to synthesize items, and mana plays an especially large part in almost everything the player does. Each mana is cast into a type – Silwest is the mana of air, Plua of darkness, Uru of fire, and so on. Each type corresponds to a particular set of elements. For example, Uru works with fire, light, and power elements while Plua works with dark, spirit, and evil elements. By collecting elements, either from bashing items with Klein’s cane or extracting them from items, players can use the power of mana to create special mana items, like healing and mana jars, to help the party. The easiest way to do this is by keeping in mind the element cost for each mana type you choose to craft a mana item; you’ll be more cost-efficient when using Nymph, the water mana, to create healing jars (which cost two water elements each) than you would Silwest, the air mana, because Silwest’s water element cost is 2.5:1 element while Nymph’s is a mere 1:1. Logically, this makes sense: you’ll get better results from a water mana making a water-based item than you would a fire mana. Though it may sound complex, the bulk of the gameplay involves manipulating mana, crafting mana items, using mana items during battle, and discovering elements to feed the mana’s resources.

Since you’re going to be using your mana a lot, prepare to spend some time keeping them happy. Each mana has a love and energy meter that’ll determine how well it performs for you. Working a mana to death (and this includes any action that involves a mana, like healing Lita) will cause its health to deteriorate, and unhealthy mana aren’t happy. Furthermore, a mana that hates your guts is going to have a lower item-creation success rate compared to a mana that’s your best friend and endeavors to even create you item surpluses. You can’t walk around with 99 healing jars in Eternal Mana – you can only carry so many, and any additional jars created function as bonuses. These bonuses come in very handy during boss fights, because once you’re out of healing jars (or any other mana item), you’ve got to create-and-use them one at a time instead of managing who gets what effect via Klein’s skills and inventory. The point is that you’re going to want to keep your mana happy and rested, and the best way to do that is to lavish them with presents. From the mana menu you can view a mana’s gift list and start giving; this is an extremely effective way to make use of regular items you don’t want/need, like nuts, pumpkins, string, and other boring things not worth selling.

Mana have other helpful uses, too. You can equip each character with his own protective mana spirit, enhancing that character’s attributes, and each mana has a special ability that Klein can manipulate to reach a goal: Plua calls monsters to the party (great for leveling-up sessions); Uru produces destructive blasts (good for blowing up obstacles); Diemia is a terrific step-ladder (so you can access those hard-to-reach places); and Silwest protects Klein’s party with a barrier (excellent coverage for lava-walking). The mana trick you’ll use the most, however, is also the simplest – Popo’s element extraction is what keeps the game going. With it, Klein can reduce almost anything to its elemental properties; smash rocks, bushes, pumpkins, flowers, mushrooms, bombs, crystals, and practically any other item on the field to stock-up on elements.

Elements and mana also come in handy when players want to smith. Collecting mana stones (raw mana, or stones shaped like giant chocolate kisses) and then bringing them to a forge enables players to crystallize the stones, mix the crystals to form attribute combinations, and then combine the attributes to a character’s weapon via crystal attachment, and you can bet that there’s a mana involved nearly every step of the way. If you’re not into smithing, though, you can always head to the local weapon shop and pick up a new sword or crossbow. It’s a little too costly at first, but eventually you’ll realize that it’s costly because it’s an unnecessary luxury; players will go just as far with their original weapons as the guy who obsesses over the latest and greatest colored stick. Trust me – you’re going to spend that money somewhere else, like in synthesizing.

Synthesizing is a fun and addictive minigame that features a variety of stores and goods. You can bake bread, make magical items, cook with a master chef, or just enjoy crafting at the bar in Kavoc, your base-town. Each synthesizing store is rated by the townspeople according to what little treats you’re able to create; townspeople even comment on the quality of these items by submitting reviews. Lots of great reviews for an item increases that store’s popularity, plus you get to keep the item, too. Synthesizing also produces the +1 variants, and it’s interesting to see what stuff pops up. Taken together with mana items, there are literally hundreds of things for players to craft, meaning there are also hundreds of things for players to collect TO craft, as you have to produce (or buy) your own ingredients.

When you’ve had enough of mana and synthesizing you’ll want to venture into actual gameplay, and this is where Eternal Mana differentiates itself from the rest of the modern RPG crowd. The game’s visuals are entirely in 2D, featuring little colorful environments, nice spell effects, and anime-sprites with standard anime storyboards for cutscene dialogues. There are some platform aspects involved, as Klein has to jump and otherwise maneuver his way through an area. The mana field abilities suffice to freshen things up some, but the real focus is on battling.

Battles in Eternal Mana come in three varieties: random encounters (excluding towns); boss fights (expect wipeouts); and static fights (when Klein’s party approaches a regular character for battle). The battle setup is immediately recognizable by Final Fantasy veterans; you have bad guys on the left of the screen, and three good guys on the right. Actions are turn-based according to a character’s (or enemy’s) speed statistic (no ATB here), and players have the typical options: attack, defend, item, run away, or change (switch in another character mid-fight). Some of the less common options include mana synthesis, mana item, and skills. Most skills have a mana requirement, so using them often depletes a character’s mana bar; fortunately defending replenishes it a little. Winning battles earns the team experience points whether every member was actively involved in the fight or not, and full bars (leveling up) earn skill points that are stocked into skill bars so that skills, too, can advance with characters. Gust certainly wasn’t lazy when it came to complexity.

Eternal Mana’s soundtrack is reminiscent to the genre’s earlier days and features those loveable, looped midi files used extensively in the 1990s. Sound effects are sufficient (when it comes down to it, it doesn’t take much to get a “swoosh” or a “boom” or a “slice” right), and the musical selection is peppy or soothing.



There’s more to an RPG than just synthesizing/crafting aspects, and that’s where Eternal Mana goes astray.

My biggest complaint is with the travelling and the number of times you’re forced to revisit old areas. There are teleportation markings in a few spots, but the majority of your traveling is going to be done the old-fashioned way – walking. This is made worse due to the side-quests, which conveniently have you running all over the world map just to hit a place you left eight levels ago. In fact, you’ll do a lot of side-questing for absolutely no reason at all, except to visit an area and then wait for a character to have a flash-back or make some annoying statement or pick up on something completely arbitrary. And when you do revisit those old areas, the enemies there are going to be significantly weaker now that you’re eight levels ahead, making battles pointless, as you don’t even earn a reasonable amount of experience from them. Here’s hoping Eternal Mana 2 features vehicles and less backtracking, because nothing is more aggravating than realizing you took a wrong turn and have to traverse the entire map.

Battling is a touch unbalanced. In areas you’ve seen five times before, the enemies are pathetically weak (why even have the random encounters?) When you reach a new area, however, even the most weakling of monsters, a puni (a colored jelly ball), can finish you off until you level a few times or defeat a boss. And while we’re on the topic of fighting, it feels like every enemy you meet is a differently colored variant of the original – I have no idea how many differently colored puni I’ve slaughtered. This was perhaps done to coordinate monsters with elements so the player can spot an element s/he needs and know to have Klein kill that particular monster. However, it feels cheap, boring, and repetitive, and this doesn’t help the bland atmosphere players experience while navigating the world map, which is bland because it’s brown, green, and covered in fog.

The game’s presentation loses points due to its voiceacting, which is off the mark some. There are areas when voiceovers (and even visuals) “catch” for half a second, and it’s frequent just enough to be noticeable. To cut down on the voiceacting if it becomes an annoyance, merely adjust the voice option to “off” from the menu, although this won’t spare you the battle voiceovers. “Time to kick butt”, “it’s Norn’s turn”, and “die!” can only be endured so many times before aggravation kicks in.

During battles, characters can be pushed back on the placement grid due to enemy attacks, like gust. My problem with this is that if you’re having Klein use a healing jar for group healing (i.e., curaga) then the members have to be lined up correctly (i.e., horizontally) or someone misses the effect, and there’s no move-up option. You can defend, which pushes you back, but it’s much easier (and safer) to move Klein up one spot than wait to move the other two characters back.

There’s no real substance to any of the characters, making Eternal Mana rather shallow and flat. Each character has a static representation that, while cute, doesn’t serve for depth or peak a player’s interest. One of the characters is actually in serious trouble, but it’s almost a moot point with the rest of the team. You’d think the threat of losing one of your main members would prompt some interesting conversation, but it doesn’t. It almost feels like you’re dealing with childlike rag dolls – they’re cute, but there’s nothing to them.

Due to the 2D environments, it’s sometimes difficult to judge proper depth for your jumps. This becomes tougher in areas that require a lot of platform jumping, like valiant path, where you can be burned by lava, though there are abilities earned later on that help to alleviate this mess.



Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana has a marginal amount of good qualities, namely the complexity of its systems and the cozy, comedic, light-hearted atmosphere it presents. Unfortunately complex systems and a light atmosphere can’t replace the features it needs to be a solid RPG. Tweaking an enemy’s color palette doesn’t produce an all-new enemy type, and graphic/audio catches cheapen the gameplay experience. The mind-numbing backtracking and lack of any character depth really deters a gamer from finishing Klein’s journey, and even synthesizing gets repetitive when that’s all you do. I enjoy Atelier Iris, but I’d enjoy it more without the exhausting travel and mediocrity.

Synthesizing, smithing, and mana-management is fun. Battling is ok.

Bland world map, but cute 2D sprites and environments. Nice spell effects.

Nostalgic and soothing score, but voiceovers and audio "catches" need improving.

It’s got just enough interest to keep you playing, and synthesizing is addictive.

You’ll enjoy crafting items and toying with mana. The battle system won't draw you in.