Atelier Ryza 3 suffers from a lot of the known problems with sequels, but it is at the end of the day still a Ryza game. I would easily rate this as the weakest of the Ryza trilogy, as while it has more of everything, it feels a lot more bloated and aimless than the previous two entries.
There are more areas that are even larger than the past two games that are very expansive in scope, however that doesn't necessarily make them better. Whereas in Ryza 1 and 2, it was common to be searching through every single nook and cranny of a new zone to find new ingredients, ingredient variety is extremely limited in these giant landscapes in 3. You will be exploring all of the Kurken Islands from the first game, and nearly all of the areas will give nearly identical ingredients apart from three locations, and this is repeated in the other new regions added into this game where the visuals for these locations are very nice and even the hidden treasures are placed well, but it feels like they have very little purpose other than to fill space. Treasures are also significantly weaker and I felt like there was no point in getting them very early on, making treasure hunting pointless.
The new gameplay addition of keys are quite confusing and only serve to be a weaker more complicated version of essences, which only even become worthwhile once you reach the end game and can craft higher rarity keys. In combat, they are often too gamebreaking that I didn't even bother with them, which is also a problem with the game's balancing where I found the end game content was far too easy even when playing the game on hard mode. The beginning of the game with hard mode feels like a long trek as battles take too long, but there is some challenge, only for that to be blown apart once you start unlocking higher quality material gathering tools. The only new addition to a gathering tool is the water and land beasts which feel so much like side content and unnecessary for most of the game that I barely even feel the need to bring them up at all. With the only final thing to mention being super traits which some items you gather may have and that are stronger than regular traits. Though, as I said before, even with regular traits your tools will get too strong once you get to the midway point making the rest of the game too easy.
There are also too many party members in this game, while I do enjoy Dian and Kala (With Federica being my least favorite party member in the entire series by a large margin...), I found the bloated cast had too much screen time to share amongst them and took up too much of every scene. Often times it was like characters were fighting to stay relevant especially in the last third of the game. With so many character events feeling a lot weaker and less filled with character than the last two games. I did enjoy some aspects such as Lent, Tao and Bos's stories, but many other character events felt significantly lacking as the characters had to share so much of them with the rest of the party.
The story itself from this is also bloated, and even more nonsensical than the last two games. Ryza games are known for their lighthearted stories that don't take themselves too seriously but this went beyond that. Ryza often would go on weird side adventures despite the giant risks that are presented to her at the start of the story, as though she herself forgot all about these problems as she chased a new shiny red ball, made really terrible given how little the Cleria region ultimately had to do with the actual plot. All themes about being an 'honest alchemist' were watered down into Ryza good, old alchemists bad, with absolutely nothing set up to suggest that Ryza's absolute recklessness and wanton uses of alchemy in this game are not resembling how overly ambitious the old alchemists were in the past. Ryza could create a nuclear bomb, and Empel would still say she is an honest alchemist because she did it the 'right way', and not the 'wrong way' like the old alchemists did. Its like we had forgotten entirely that the old alchemists even did any good things at all and were completely irredeemable from the very beginning. Furthermore, the plotline involving them feels so haphazardly strung together that I was wondering where the plot was going for most of the run time. With a ridiculously long and drawn out final third to this game that makes use of obscene amounts of backtracking and pointless time wasting to meander about filling up screen time when all the mcguffins could have just been given and mixed together way earlier on to cut down the tedium. Ending in an absolutely baffling way that had Ryza magically solving all the problems in a very unsatisfying way. The only redeeming part being that the actual ending motivations for the party are a lot better than Ryza 2, where it felt like Ryza found herself stuck in a rut. Now in Ryza 3 in the ending, it finally seems like she and the others found their way and will be moving on to bright futures ahead of them. Even setting up a sequel to this setting for a future Atelier game with Ryza as a mentor.
I'm honestly conflicted, I did enjoy the game mostly due to it being a relaxing collection grinding game like the past two which I really like with very in depth alchemy mechanics. However, this game suffers from too many bloated and tied in mechanics that feel like the development team did not know what they were doing. It was an aimless sequel where they knew the ending, but had no idea what to do for everything in between and were trying to make it feel bigger than the last two games. I do have to give the game credit for not gaybaiting given that was a concern going in, and I did like getting to see where all these characters I liked grew and moved forward. Still, in the end, this game just makes me want to return back to Ryza 2. Ryza 3 gets 3/5 stars.
There are more areas that are even larger than the past two games that are very expansive in scope, however that doesn't necessarily make them better. Whereas in Ryza 1 and 2, it was common to be searching through every single nook and cranny of a new zone to find new ingredients, ingredient variety is extremely limited in these giant landscapes in 3. You will be exploring all of the Kurken Islands from the first game, and nearly all of the areas will give nearly identical ingredients apart from three locations, and this is repeated in the other new regions added into this game where the visuals for these locations are very nice and even the hidden treasures are placed well, but it feels like they have very little purpose other than to fill space. Treasures are also significantly weaker and I felt like there was no point in getting them very early on, making treasure hunting pointless.
The new gameplay addition of keys are quite confusing and only serve to be a weaker more complicated version of essences, which only even become worthwhile once you reach the end game and can craft higher rarity keys. In combat, they are often too gamebreaking that I didn't even bother with them, which is also a problem with the game's balancing where I found the end game content was far too easy even when playing the game on hard mode. The beginning of the game with hard mode feels like a long trek as battles take too long, but there is some challenge, only for that to be blown apart once you start unlocking higher quality material gathering tools. The only new addition to a gathering tool is the water and land beasts which feel so much like side content and unnecessary for most of the game that I barely even feel the need to bring them up at all. With the only final thing to mention being super traits which some items you gather may have and that are stronger than regular traits. Though, as I said before, even with regular traits your tools will get too strong once you get to the midway point making the rest of the game too easy.
There are also too many party members in this game, while I do enjoy Dian and Kala (With Federica being my least favorite party member in the entire series by a large margin...), I found the bloated cast had too much screen time to share amongst them and took up too much of every scene. Often times it was like characters were fighting to stay relevant especially in the last third of the game. With so many character events feeling a lot weaker and less filled with character than the last two games. I did enjoy some aspects such as Lent, Tao and Bos's stories, but many other character events felt significantly lacking as the characters had to share so much of them with the rest of the party.
The story itself from this is also bloated, and even more nonsensical than the last two games. Ryza games are known for their lighthearted stories that don't take themselves too seriously but this went beyond that. Ryza often would go on weird side adventures despite the giant risks that are presented to her at the start of the story, as though she herself forgot all about these problems as she chased a new shiny red ball, made really terrible given how little the Cleria region ultimately had to do with the actual plot. All themes about being an 'honest alchemist' were watered down into Ryza good, old alchemists bad, with absolutely nothing set up to suggest that Ryza's absolute recklessness and wanton uses of alchemy in this game are not resembling how overly ambitious the old alchemists were in the past. Ryza could create a nuclear bomb, and Empel would still say she is an honest alchemist because she did it the 'right way', and not the 'wrong way' like the old alchemists did. Its like we had forgotten entirely that the old alchemists even did any good things at all and were completely irredeemable from the very beginning. Furthermore, the plotline involving them feels so haphazardly strung together that I was wondering where the plot was going for most of the run time. With a ridiculously long and drawn out final third to this game that makes use of obscene amounts of backtracking and pointless time wasting to meander about filling up screen time when all the mcguffins could have just been given and mixed together way earlier on to cut down the tedium. Ending in an absolutely baffling way that had Ryza magically solving all the problems in a very unsatisfying way. The only redeeming part being that the actual ending motivations for the party are a lot better than Ryza 2, where it felt like Ryza found herself stuck in a rut. Now in Ryza 3 in the ending, it finally seems like she and the others found their way and will be moving on to bright futures ahead of them. Even setting up a sequel to this setting for a future Atelier game with Ryza as a mentor.
I'm honestly conflicted, I did enjoy the game mostly due to it being a relaxing collection grinding game like the past two which I really like with very in depth alchemy mechanics. However, this game suffers from too many bloated and tied in mechanics that feel like the development team did not know what they were doing. It was an aimless sequel where they knew the ending, but had no idea what to do for everything in between and were trying to make it feel bigger than the last two games. I do have to give the game credit for not gaybaiting given that was a concern going in, and I did like getting to see where all these characters I liked grew and moved forward. Still, in the end, this game just makes me want to return back to Ryza 2. Ryza 3 gets 3/5 stars.
FranKle
1 year ago