This review contains spoilers
Atelier Ryza is the best place to start the fabled Atelier series of RPGs. Having tried to play the other most commonly touted entrance place, Atelier Rorona, and failing at least three times, this entry has more to offer in terms of gameplay, story, and polish than Rorona does.
Ryza, at its core, is a gathering/crafting game with some combat and story tacked on as a fun diversion. You play as an aspiring alchemist who is quickly wrapped up in a coming-of-age story with your three best friends and a colorful cast of supporting characters. The story is cutesy, simple, and uncomplicated. The combat is a strange hybrid of heyday FF and the Trails series, with the player needing to manage a tension gauge, ATB bars, and item uses. While this system initially showed promise, around the 20 hour mark, it was clear that all combat would be for Ryza was a series of stat checks. There is no incentive to spend your action points on anything but increasing your tension gauge unless you are using an interrupt action to stun a boss- if you’re having to use AP any other way, you’re likely behind the stat check curve and are going to lose anyways. Only being able to realistically juggle one character is frustrating; it would have been nice if every time a player character’s turn rolled around in the order, the flow of time would stop for the player to manually input that character’s attack. Not being able to easily or directly control NPC party members has always been a gripe of mine ever since playing Persona 3.
Regardless, the core loop of exploring new places to get new crafting materials to make new items and improve your weapons, armor, and accessories is rock-solid and crafting broken consumable items is a blast. If Ryza either scaled combat difficulty to the player’s level or gave the player a level indicator for a region, there’d be less frustration. Overall, Ryza is a good way to zone out and enjoy some anime-flavored filler, and that’s enough to warrant a solid middle B in my book. After hitting a wall vs. the second to last boss, I just watched a supercut of Takanashi Kiara play through the rest of the game and got just as much fun as I would have grinding the game out for myself. The best part of my playthrough was definitely going infinite in the crafting and mass-producing 999 quality items.
Ryza, at its core, is a gathering/crafting game with some combat and story tacked on as a fun diversion. You play as an aspiring alchemist who is quickly wrapped up in a coming-of-age story with your three best friends and a colorful cast of supporting characters. The story is cutesy, simple, and uncomplicated. The combat is a strange hybrid of heyday FF and the Trails series, with the player needing to manage a tension gauge, ATB bars, and item uses. While this system initially showed promise, around the 20 hour mark, it was clear that all combat would be for Ryza was a series of stat checks. There is no incentive to spend your action points on anything but increasing your tension gauge unless you are using an interrupt action to stun a boss- if you’re having to use AP any other way, you’re likely behind the stat check curve and are going to lose anyways. Only being able to realistically juggle one character is frustrating; it would have been nice if every time a player character’s turn rolled around in the order, the flow of time would stop for the player to manually input that character’s attack. Not being able to easily or directly control NPC party members has always been a gripe of mine ever since playing Persona 3.
Regardless, the core loop of exploring new places to get new crafting materials to make new items and improve your weapons, armor, and accessories is rock-solid and crafting broken consumable items is a blast. If Ryza either scaled combat difficulty to the player’s level or gave the player a level indicator for a region, there’d be less frustration. Overall, Ryza is a good way to zone out and enjoy some anime-flavored filler, and that’s enough to warrant a solid middle B in my book. After hitting a wall vs. the second to last boss, I just watched a supercut of Takanashi Kiara play through the rest of the game and got just as much fun as I would have grinding the game out for myself. The best part of my playthrough was definitely going infinite in the crafting and mass-producing 999 quality items.