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.
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.