Atelier Ryza? More like Atelier Boring.
You know how there are multiple types of Atelier games:
adventure type (Totori, Firis), cozy games with one town or a mix of both.
This game is the first in the series to introduce innovative "shit" type as I call it.
What makes atelier towns charming? Yes, the people.
There are legit 6 characters in the entire game (not joking, you see them all in first 15 minutes). All the people in town are generic NPCs with little to no importance.
These shitty NPCs have quests, for some godforsaken reason when you take the quest they have to tell you their entire life story and make 20 lines long exchanges, it could be the same as in older games, just display quest window or 1 dialogue line " i need X item". Even better solution would be to have a well designed charming character to handle quests. But I guess the entire budget went to 5 normal character designs and the 6th with giant boobs for no fucking reason.
There is no friendship system, different character endings, and no new companions. (holy shit it's worse then Lulua)
OK let's move on from charming town talk, there surely are other aspects that are better, right? RIGHT??!!

5 characters aside from Ryza are generic in the worst ways:
- a small nerd that gets to piss his pants in every cutscene he is the only important character in the game (if all others weren't there nothing would change), because of his nerdy expositions he does all the time.
- a big chad character (literally nothing to say about him I guess he has dad issues, whatever...)
-a girl that wants to play a flute, the culmination of her arc is that she did in fact played the flute (peak writing)
-girl with big boobs (she is important in one single cutscene to drop the twist about underworld)
-a mentor alchemist (when he joins at the end of the game he becomes the same character as the nerd, but I guess he is an alchemist so it changes something?

OK surely the gameplay loop is good? gust will never fuck up the gameplay loop in atelier game, right?

the synthesis - oh god, spending time on it as agonizing, the recipe morph is shit, it makes navigating menus a nightmare. It doesn't help that after adding a single ingredient you have to spend 3 seconds on "level up" animation and watch Ryza clap or some shit.
This game also introduced new exclusive to "shit" type gameplay mechanics: bloodborne chalice, item rebuild (which defeats the entire purpose of synthesys), forging thing from Dusk but worse and some other useless shit.

The next paragraph is prologue and story runt.
Running around with awful speed for 3 hours and watching cutscenes before unlocking world map. I dropped the game 3 times at this point. Does it get better after teleportation is unlocked? No. Press start - do what is says like: rest for 1-3 days, go to X, go to X, go to X, make item with X quality.
This "handholdy" approach to the story ruins the pace.
The game tries to be "story-rich" and it doesn't work with atelier writing. It creates a giant bloat of useless dialogue that has no purpose, like nerd saying he is scared, chad being confident with Ryza and ignoring him. At some point you climb the tower and nerd reads some backstory lore notes every floor, it's hilarious how bad it was.
BTW there are no story hooks, for example in Sophie you want to know more about the mysterious book, in Ayesha if you fail her sister fucking dies, in Firis if she fails she'll be sent home. Yes, hooks like these. Even fucking Lulua wanted to open the door the entire game. There a shitty boring plot is constantly happening, everything is super scripted, no cool characters visiting atelier (back to character issue)

Ok let's talk combat. It's stupid, if you don't hit the enemy, you spend entire minute to lvl up tactics level, then another minute to build AP and turn on aggressive mode.
You control one character at a time and can use items on any character. I dislike it, it's slow, you do the same thing over and over. My verdict: Lulua combat was better (It did get worse)

In the end it's insulting to me as big Gust fan that this game got 2 fucking sequels and big youtubers recommend people to start atelier from this game. New people will drop the game after 3 hours of walking and say that the entire series is shit. It also gets a fucking anime.
The guy that wrote this game only worked on Ryza. (second game might be better without him but for some fucking reason he came back for third)
The guy who directed it worked on Blue Archive. Is this game also shit?

If you got to this point, thank you for bearing with me, haha. My condolences if you played Ryza too. Otherwise I recommend spending your time for better games.

About a month after the game came out, i finally finished Atelier Ryza. I had a very fun time with the game. I wouldn't call it the best Atelier but it's certinaly up there.

First off, the game just looks really good. It's one of the things that instantly caught my eye when they first showed off this game. Atelier has never looked so good. I was a bit wary of the combat system at first, since it was taking a Final Fantasy ATB approach but i grew to enjoy it, and this is coming from someone who doesn't like Final Fantasy's ATB. It's fast-paced but you have enough freedom. Attacks also don't have to be queud, which is good. Alchemy is also really good and i really hope they keep this method for future. At the very least, we'll be getting it for the rest of the Secret Trilogy (tentative title, no trilogy has actually be confirmed but Atelier usually runs for trilogies, with Ryza being the start of a new one). Music's a delight (Hidden Cove theme is my favorite area theme in the game). And the characters are great too.

A bit of the downsides, this Atelier has a bit more of an important plot which itself is fine but it just takes a while to get going. I'm not a huge fan of the game's Core Charge mechanic. Basically, unlike the traditional finite use of items, items are infinite use but you can only use them so many times until you return to the atelier. Really hope they just go back to traditional item use. I also wish there were a few more character events. The events themselves are fine, i just wish there was more. Speaking of wanting more, i wish there were more battle themes. The ones that are there are good but there ain't a whole lot. But these last two points are more nitpicky than actual criticism.

Overall, it's a great game. It hasn't beaten my favorite Atelier game, Atelier Lulua, but it came really close. It really just came down to the number of character events. Quality over quantity but when the quality is equal, then quantity matters.

I like this game but, GOD was it slow. Being very slow-paced is kind of a standard for the Atelier series so, it doesn't feel fair to criticize it as that is quite literally the point but, sometimes it just fucking DRAGGED. This is coming from a really patient person. Otherwise, I found the gameplay and crafting really fun. I would really love to see a light-hearted game like this with its real-time turn-based gameplay in a more interestingly paced game. Staring at Ryza's immaculate ass for hours was also nice.

Nueva Trilogía, y con ella un enorme y extraño cambio de paradigma.
Al contrario que con los anteriores, que abarcan una cantidad de tiempo de unos años, Ryza evoca el concepto de una aventura de unos amigos en el verano y, si bien no me gusta que se deje de lado el concepto anterior, me parece que cumple con creces este nuevo planteamiento.

Soy muy tonto con el concepto de "aventuras de verano", me evocan a tiempos mejores cuando veraneaba en Huelva y, viendo el percal, voy a llorar con el final de Ryza 3 por lo que significa, who knows.

Si bien el cast en general no me ha vuelto loco, Ryza me parece encantadora y entiendo como tanta gente se ha podido encariñar con ella, además de que Empel y, sorprendentemente Bos, han sido añadidos interesantes a la formula.

Hablando de formulas, si bien a mi cerebro de chorlito le cuesta entender el sistema nuevo, su concepto de aprender formulas nuevas me parece una idea muy orgánica y un contrapunto muy interesante a todo el tema de los libros de títulos como Sophie o Lulua.

En fin, juego comfy y bonito, son todos muy lindos y quiero ponerme cuanto antes con el 2. Ignoremos todo el tema de las piernas de Ryza y el marketing, por favor, no me manchéis la saga.

My first Atelier game and very good first entry to the series I had a blast with this game!.

I really enjoyed most about this game from the story to the characters and gameplay loop. A story about a bunch of teenagers finding what they enjoy and how to evolve their craft was just a blast to playthrough and witness. The cast is very loveable and as the story progress you just see yourself wanting to know more and more and just wishing for the best for everyone they are written in a way to make you really care for everyone and how they evolve. The overall story is fine for the most part it didn't blow me away but I found it enjoyable and I liked the twists it threw at you.

The gameplay loop is honestly what surprised me the most because I always knew about it but never thought I would really enjoy it. Lord behold I was very addicted to the whole loop of gathering and creating items it was so much fun to do and make new recipes as you unlock them.


Overall I enjoyed my time a lot with this game and I cannot wait to get into the next installment soon enough !

I enjoyed the 60+ hours that I spent with the game, although I will say that for those who have never played an Atelier game before this might not be your best starting point. This game assumes that you should know a lot. Just a quick reddit search can show numerous posts of players past and present asking how to accomplish certain things, such as how to upgrade the hideout. In terms of tutorials, the game gives the bare minimum and even sometimes nothing at all. When you work past these frustrations, and trust me you will get frustrated with how frequently it does this, what lies beyond is solid. The story far exceeded my expectations and the art is gorgeous. It could've used another couple of songs as the soundtrack reached the point of repetition quite early for me. Overall, it's a great craftfest jrpg that is flawed. If this doesn't turn you off then I definitely recommend it.

A very meh video game, it honestly didn't feel like an Atelier game at times outside of the gathering and synthesis

It felt much more story focused and the character events not being accessible the same way they are in previous events was a really odd choice but definitely much better than just not having any like Firis

I didn't really like the battle system either compared to the much better battle systems of previous games but I got used to it after a while and while, I really hope that ATB doesn't become the norm for the series

It had a ton of other things gameplay wise that really held it down, it felt like Gust were playing it way too safe with this one

EDIT: I finished my playthrough, and gosh, the 4 stars is well deserved. The game's ending ended up touching me, although, for personal reasons. The game was fun and it didn't overstay its welcome length-wise. It makes me want to get the sequel.

A few days ago, I was thinking of giving it 3 stars. Not bad at all but nothing really great. The other day I just emitted a small squeal of delight and just happiness.

Like "Aww! That was so cute!" And the feeling stuck enough to earn it a 4 star. The characters were pretty generic and felt bland at the beginning, but honestly, they grew on me. You really see how they grow through the story. Even some characters with um, questionable designs ended up being really likable.

Gameplay is fun and is everything I love in an Atelier game! I look forward to keeping on playing but I'm in no hurry to finish. I want to vibe with the game and the cast for a while ^^

Solid game. Really exciting combat for an Atelier game and the synthesis is still lit. Wish items were more useful in battle or at least you could use them more often before running out of CC. Strong on the main story character stuff. Weak on the non-main story character stuff - it feels like it was cut out to be sold as DLC later or something? Because there's one ending and no time limit there isn't really much incentive to replay unless you want the battle challenge. But for a single playthrough experience I think this was pretty good and still holds up now.