After the massive downgrade compared to the rest of the series in Ryza, the sequel finally decided to add back things that were a stable in the series with a way better battle system than the first one.

I'm not satisfied with how they handled the writing of the old characters and I despise the inclusion of Fi. Where it basically took the spotlight of character events at times. The new characters were pretty awesome, left a way better impressions than the one in the first game.

I still have issues with the mechanics and things that bloat the game by a bit. (Researching dragging the game out) But overall I enjoyed the game.

Atrapado en un bucle jugable que no me deja escapar ni un segundo.

Pros:
- No para de soltarse a la cara nuevas cosas que hacer en todo momento.
- El sistema de combate tiene más miga de lo que parece en un principio, pudiendo volverse realmente complejo en dificultades más altas.
- La alquimia está cada vez más perfeccionada, llegando a un punto de profundidad que puede incluso abrumar.

Contras:
- A nivel técnico sigue rascando bastante, con modelados y animaciones que rayan entre PS3 y PS2.
- La variedad de enemigos es muy muy pequeña, repitiéndose constantemente cambiando sus colores.
- Los templos exigen demasiado backtracking con el único propósito de alargar artificialmente el juego.

A wonderful improvement upon the first game in the trilogy. Movement and Exploration have been improved a lot, you can climb, crouch, squeeze, swing, swim and dive, and even have a mount to get around faster. The environments evolved alongside the movement, god this game is pretty.

The Combat is barely recognisable, lots has changed and while it may be confusing at first, after a few battles you'll never want to go back to the old CC system. Itemslinging becomes the new Meta, around the finale Ryza feels like a walking nuke. Battles are dynamic, fast paced, and busy, meaning you don't just wait your turn, you always have something to do, something to manage.

Alchemy is just as fun, if not more than in the first game, thanks to some new mechanics like Evo-links and the skill tree system.

In terms of new characters, lots of new fun faces. Since everyone's in the Capital now, Ryza meets new faces left and right, like the Café worker Zephine or a fellow Farmer's Daughter Cassandra. Their little arcs of "what do i want from life and how do i achieve self-fulfilment in my work" is quite cute to wittness. the three new party members are also very fun to use and have around, Patty is adorable, Serri is elegant and tragic, Clifford thinks he's so cool (he is, okay? nobody tell him otherwise) I was a little saddened that i couldn't play as Lila once more since she was a main stay in my Party during the first game, but my new core of Lent, Ryza, Klaudia with a rotating support from Serri and the others worked wonders too.'

Storywise the game has a lot to offer, multiple ruins to investigate, though after a while the exploration might feel repetetive, since you kinda do the same thing over and over again, so it's smart to do side quests and character driven side stories between main adventures, even if you don't need better gear.

I only really have two complaints about the game and those are A) the sheer amount of dialogue cutscenes to drive the side-plots forward can oftentimes interrupt the player in the middle of an intense Alchemy session. B) the final boss was laughably easy, though, maybe, i was just overprepared, since my Ryza almost took it down herself. The secret boss though.. oh it had me grind a lot, try a bunch until i found a strategy that worked, similarly to the Queen from Ryza 1.
Overall, great game, pretty world, fun characters, good music, addicting gameplay loop, big fun.

Still a good game, but somehow nowhere near as captivating as the first Ryza? The gameplay loop is as solid as ever and Patty was a great addition to the cast. But compared to the Arland saga, for example, it felt like the characters had no hugely significant growth between games. The story and feel-good dialogue felt even more excessively optimistic than any other Atelier offering I've played thus far to the point of being distracting or shallow, and although there was a particularly fascinating story hidden in there through the information scraps most of it was ignored in favour of Fi.

I went in expecting this to just be kinda ok like the first game was but I ended up enjoying this as much as I did the Mysterious games probably more than that

Like the first game it still did have some gameplay things that bugged me but it improved upon so many things the first Ryza game didn't do very well helping it feel as fun as the Atelier games I love with some really great new features liek character events unlocking through progression rather than the annoying friend point system from previous games

As much as I did enjoy this though the items not being nearly as useful as in previous games INCLUDING the first Ryza game makes them feel pretty redundant if you just get good gear, I rarely ever switched around my items and got through the whole game just fine so hopefully this is something they fix in the next game in the series to make it a bit more challenging

As for the characters the new characters were all GREAT and the returning characters(most of which I found sort of bland in the first game with a few exceptions) got developed a lot more and with the new development I enjoyed them a LOT more

That's all I really have to say about this game and I'm VERY glad I played it

Tardé en engancharme. El juego tardó mucho en cautivarrme como lo hizo el primero. Quizá porque se tarda "un poco" en recuperar todas las opciones de creación y de mejora de objetos que tenías en el 1, pero desde luego que las mecánicas de combate pronto suplen lo que le falta a la alquimia al inicio.

Por supuesto, hacia el final del juego eso da lo mismo, pues estás más del 70% del juego recogiendo materiales y sintetizando en el atelier, pero el combate, cuando se pone interesante contra los bosses opcionales y los bosses finales de acto, realmente te pone contra la pared y te pide optimizar el ATB y el equipamiento de la party. Ya en el endgame, incluso los mobs normales te exigen tener un gear bien preparado.

El juego es fácil de romper si sabes lo que estás haciendo. El sistema del mercado y de desarrollar la tienda es lo más ortopédico que he visto nunca, pero realmente te permite acceder a items supertochos muchísimo antes de lo que deberías según la historia. Con algo de ingenio (y ayuda de una wiki) te puedes montar un arma que te durará hasta el final del juego cuando llevas aproximadamente aún el 50% del mismo.

Lo peor del juego es sin duda el maldito Fi. Es un bicho estúpido y únicamente destinado a ser hecho peluche. Todo lo interesantes que podían ser los compañeros de Ryza se lo quita Fi cada vez que aparece.

Y como nota negativa también está la brújula de exploración. Lo que al principio es un gimmick interesante que amplía el lore de tal manera que así no es todo exposición intrusiva de las ruinas por las que viajas, acaba siendo un proceso tedioso, que sólo sirve para progresar en la historia en ciertos puntos.

Solid game overall. The alchemy system is very streamlined which is good for beginners, but imo not as satisfying as the one in e.g. Sophie 2 for players with a bit more experience. The ability to transform items into gems is smart, but I found myself needing more than I could reasonably create, which was slightly annoying. Some of the new mechanics also felt unnecessary: I never got much out of upgrading Romy's shop, and the ability to dig up materials while on the beast's back actively detracts from the need to make the proper tools to find high level stuff. Upgrading equipment at Denis' also feels a little redundant with Item Rebuild (which costs gems too). I was also very disappointed to find this game has its own version of an ability tree, and find this far inferior to the recipe books of Sophie, which feel like they reward you organically for engaging with the alchemy. Overall, I didn't find this entry to be the best at encouraging the player to invest themselves in the alchemy system. I still had fun with it, however; at the end of the day, it's still an Atelier game, and the pleasure of the base gameplay loop is still very much there in Ryza 2. It's also a very cute game, with a cute story that isn't exactly a masterpiece but gets the job done (especially for a game where I wouldn't want the story to give me too much of a sense of urgency anyway), largely thanks to its lead being one of the ultimate video game cuties. Looking forward to Ryza 3!

Gameplay: Great, 1 is better
Music: Same as 1, Ok
Replayable? I don't want to, but has New Game +
Streamed? Yes

Extra Notes? I'll give it this, first JRPG i maxed out to Level 100 without trying to and was fun in gameplay all around, except for 1 part i got stuck (the necesarry upgrade of tools). Also story VERY inconsecuential.

Ryza 1 was a biggest piece of dogshit produced by Gust.
This one is a big glow up: battle system is great, character writing exists and managed to fix all my negative perception for every character, new characters are cool and likeable, UI and QoL improvements.

Unfortunately good things end here:
alchemy is still the worst in the series (i'd take mysterious tetris over this torture), but you don't ever lose quality so making 999 quality items is effortless. Still going through 7 loops to make an item sucks big time. Like you miss one ingredient and have to go get it and then spend another 5 minutes for loops and repeat. Fuck recipe morph, all my homies hate recipe morph.

Giant maps without warp points, selling early game shoes as DLC is a crime.

Dungeon exploration is worst shit ever: do 5 weird arbitrary tasks for half a dungeon, then go back to the beginning to collect 15+ clues per map (There are 3 per dungeon!!!)
BTW monster placements are awful: there are 5+ monsters near every gathering point, the game forces you to jump off the cliff one time and the other to go back to atelier so you miss the fucking clue and have to spend 5 minutes running through monster infested corridors. SMT has less monsters per square meter then this right here.
After that comes MANDATORY time wasting clue matching minigame with 30 clues. This shit makes the game a fucking dungeon crawler and breaks the gameplay loop: spend 3 hours doing stupid dungeon shit, then go back and watch 2 hours of cutscenes.
It's like persona 5, but worse, since there is no friendship system and time passage you can get 10+ events in a row, go to sleep and get another 10 events.