Lost legends and the secret fairy

Summer in the city

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout it was my introduction to the old Atelier Series. And although I definitely liked it, it didn’t leave enough impact for me to run with it and check out the rest of the millions of other games in the series. It’s a big commitment and that kind of thing terrifies me.

However, it left me thirsty enough for a sequel that has now arrived in the form of Atelier Ryza 2: Lost legends and the secret fairy. It’s time to hit the cauldron again and provoke a little adventure and also find out if anyone has gained any fashion sense since the last game. Spoiler: they haven’t.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout (PC, Switch [reviewed], PS4, PS5)
Developer: Gust Co. Ltd.
Editor: Koei Tecmo
Released: January 26, 2021
MSRP: $ 59.99

It has been 3 years since the events of the first Atelier Ryza, and Reisalin’s “Ryza” Stout booty has yet to give up. She has spent the past three years practicing her alchemy on her own since her friends left her to go to the capital. She was invited by a wealthy local guy to investigate a beautiful stone, and she wasn’t sure if her experience was enough to find out, so she decided to stay in the city to join her friends.

Atelier Ryza 2 it is a little more immediate than its predecessor. Your first battle is coming and you already have your studio before the prologue ends. Then you are ready to start cooking some bombs in your apartment.

As in the first game, however, the narrative is a little slow. You want adventure, so you go on an adventure summarizes the character’s motivation very well. Things just develop from there. There are a number of ruins around the capital, and they seem like the perfect place to kill yourself, so it’s time to probe its secrets and find out how your pet flying hamster, Fi, connects to everything.

If you’re new to the series, you’re probably wondering if you need to play the first one Atelier Ryza to take advantage of the second, and the answer is: yes, probably. Much of the game involves encounters with old friends, and a ton of dialogue addresses how much everyone has changed in the years that have passed. I’m not saying that you wouldn’t be able to find out by context, it just might not have the same impact.

If you are not familiar, the Atelier the games are JRPGs with detailed elaboration mechanics. Alchemy, as they call it, which is apparently the art of throwing specific ingredients into a pot to create a bridge. While this may sound like an overcomplication of your typical equipment system, it does add a progression layer to the game. As you travel, you gain access to more ingredients that can be used to make better weapons and equipment. It is important because, although you can buy things in stores, nothing compares to what you prepare in your studio.

I had a problem with the progression of the previous game; it seemed that there were many starts and stops during the journey until you hit a wall and then return to the studio to improve your equipment or make an important item. That hasn’t exactly changed, but I feel that the game’s progression is a little more engaging. You still go on adventures and then come back to make a more beautiful shirt, but there is a firmer division between the two activities, and that seems to work better.

The ruins are not necessarily unlocked in a linear fashion. If you focus on side missions alongside simply hitting unpretentious wildlife, you may find that you gain access to new areas without necessarily having to complete the previous one. This can give you access to new sources of ingredients that allow you to enhance your alchemy along with your adventures. This makes discovering new areas even more tempting, as you not only progress in the narrative, but also in your skills.

There is a dizzying amount of depth to Atelier Ryza 2, some of them completely disposable. For some reason, you can decorate your studio, but I don’t know why you would. You can also grow ingredients and upgrade stores by selling items, but craft supplies are scattered on the floor and can be found on each monster’s ass. They provide alternative methods for you to access some items that you would not otherwise obtain until later, but it is up to you if it is worth the extra effort.

The crafting itself can take a little time for you to grab your little niches. Part of this is because it is not well explained. There are several healing terms, for example, and for a long time, I thought the only healing item I had access to was beans. Towards the end of the game, they were no longer doing the job, and I had to experiment to find that the “curative flavor” was analogous. Then I created the most amazing desserts ever invented by man and came to an end by frequently feeding my teammates donuts.

The benefit of this is that you get what you put into alchemy from alchemy. If you take the time to find the right ingredients, learn the mechanics and discover new recipes, you can turn your party into an unstoppable force very quickly. If you ignore them, however, you may find yourself fighting.

While Atelier Ryza I had some difficulty holding on, I didn’t have exactly the same problem with the sequence. I spent hours cleaning up side missions and fiddling with my cauldron, sometimes neglecting the critical path. This broke at the end of the game, however, because I seriously got tired of their utterly futile dialogue.

Like its predecessor, Atelier Ryza 2 it is irrepressibly joyful, which tends to be a breath of fresh air in an industry full of dark protagonists with dark pasts fighting unmistakable evil. Optimism was something that helped Atelier Ryza it was evident in my mind, but here I just got absolutely sick of it.

There is so much useless dialogue, it is stunning. A lot of that revolves around Fi and how much everyone loves her and she loves everyone. I don’t need any deeper insight into why it hits someone’s head. For each scene that actually includes a significant character or narrative development, there are about another dozen in which the characters chatter about coffee food. Even the parts that go into the characters’ heads are timid for a long time before delivering anything of value. It tends to circulate in circles, examining information that is already obvious or has already been provided.

This is maddening. I went from listening carefully to the dialogue to leafing through it in search of important information. When the text in the final scenes of the game became impossible to skip, I was irritated because I had to watch each member of the group say how important this fight was for them. Save me.

As much as I may complain about the inescapable vortex of dialogue that ambushes you with each scene transition, I still admit that I enjoyed the real game a little more than the first when he wasn’t talking. Perhaps not for narrative reasons, but the progression and mechanics fit much more solidly for me this time. I ended up gaining about 50 hours to finish the game, but I probably could have reduced that if I hadn’t spent so much time refining the tastiest donut. However, he probably would also have liked it a lot less.

I’m kind of in the same position as last time: I enjoyed the experience, but I’m not exactly in a hurry to go out and catch the rest of the series. If anything, I’ll wait until the next opportunity I get to slip into Ryza’s incredibly tight shorts. Given the typical pace of the series, this is likely to happen in about a year.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost legends and the secret fairy reviewed by Adzuken