I went into this game pretty skeptical about it. I like crafting in games but honestly it can be really hit or miss, sometimes it just doesn't feel worth doing vs just obtaining items normally. I decided to play Ryza since it was new and all my friends liked it, and I was pretty damn satisfied.
The combat is fun. The alchemy is incredibly addicting with a fun grid system that requires planning every piece you use to get the perfect system, though some mechanics are a tad poorly explained. The characters are cute and charming, and the story is just the right length (it took me about 35 hours to beat, though about 10 of those hours were just minmaxing my crafting). I liked the sidequests that really fleshed out the village characters and gave them all their cute little stories, to the point I even continued playing the admittedly quite barren post game to finish up the rest of the sidequests I missed.
The game relies a little bit too frequently on color swaps for my taste, especially with post game bosses, and I don't feel like it has enough enemies to feel spread out like Dragon Quest does, but honestly wasn't a big deal, combat isn't the focus of this game.
I decided after this to play either Atelier Rorona or Ryza 2, most likely Ryza 2 since I wanna see where the story goes, but older Atelier games interest me with the time limit since I love good time management in games!
also haha thighs
4.5 Barrels/5
The combat is fun. The alchemy is incredibly addicting with a fun grid system that requires planning every piece you use to get the perfect system, though some mechanics are a tad poorly explained. The characters are cute and charming, and the story is just the right length (it took me about 35 hours to beat, though about 10 of those hours were just minmaxing my crafting). I liked the sidequests that really fleshed out the village characters and gave them all their cute little stories, to the point I even continued playing the admittedly quite barren post game to finish up the rest of the sidequests I missed.
The game relies a little bit too frequently on color swaps for my taste, especially with post game bosses, and I don't feel like it has enough enemies to feel spread out like Dragon Quest does, but honestly wasn't a big deal, combat isn't the focus of this game.
I decided after this to play either Atelier Rorona or Ryza 2, most likely Ryza 2 since I wanna see where the story goes, but older Atelier games interest me with the time limit since I love good time management in games!
also haha thighs
4.5 Barrels/5