ATELIER RYZA: EVER DARKNESS & THE SECRET HIDEOUT Takes a Long Time to Get to the Story (I Assume)
Koei Tecmo was nice enough to send me a copy of Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout for Nintendo Switch. I’ve been playing this game for a while and I have some thoughts. I promise I won’t spoil too much for you as I talk about what I like and dislike about this game.
The game focuses on a girl named Ryza and her friends who live in a village on an island. Ryza is a girl who is sick of living the boring life on the island and wants to go out and have adventures. Her friend Lent is the strong guy who wants to get stronger and explore a tower and her friend Tao constantly says he wants to not adventure and instead learn from books he can’t read until he starts learning the forgotten language. Ryza eventually becomes an alchemist and is able to build items as the game progresses. That’s the general gist of the game.
Let’s start with things I did not like and then we’ll end on a high note. The number one problem I had with the game was that it never tells you how to save your game. I assumed that it autosaved because it never told me about save points or anything and I could not find an option in the menu to save. This cost me probably 2-ish hours of gameplay after I thought the game had saved and I quit it. To learn to save you have to go to the guide and it’s the very first thing in there (If you go to the Diary in your room, you can save). That was very frustrating to me. They provide a tutorial for everything except saving!?
Another problem I have with the game is that I’m over four hours in and I still feel like I haven’t hit the story of it yet. I constantly feel like I’m about to stumble upon the big story, but for now I feel like the game is just get this and gather that. Granted, at around the 3-hour mark (granted I skipped a lot of cut-scenes on my now second playthrough after losing data) things started picking up and the world opens up more. This gives a sense of a bigger world which is fantastic, but I’m still waiting for some semblance of a story.
My third complaint is combat. It’s a mix of turn-based and real-time which is really cool, but that also means that most of the time I’m busy watching whose turn it is based on the guide on the side of my screen instead of watching the combat in the middle of my screen. It’s a little hard for me to keep track of turns as well as what is happening to my characters.
Fourth, I was disappointed when I equipped Noble’s Clothes to my characters and their appearances didn’t change. Weapons change appearance when I change those, so why didn’t the clothes? I also don’t like that there’s no way on the road to check recipes for items that you want to make. You have to go back to your room or atelier in order to check recipes.
Those are some pretty big complaints that I’ve thrown at the game, but what did I like? Well, for starters, it’s a beautiful looking game. I love the style of art. It reminds me a lot of anime like Cardcaptor Sakura. Also, there’s something about the game that reminds me of other great games like Kingdom Hearts. Maybe it’s that you go around in a trio and you start on an island before the world opens up, but there’s something that is reminiscent of games that lead into great adventures.
Another thing that I love about this game is when you build your secret hideout, the world opens up more as I talked about earlier. At the very beginning, the game feels boring and repetitive. However, you get your hideout, the world opens up more, and it suddenly feels like you can do so much more.
In addition, the characters are fun. Sometimes, the main cast feels a bit one-dimensional, but Lent and Tao especially have some interesting depth to them when allowed. Tao starts out as the dorky kid from school, but I’ve already seen some growth in his character. I just wish he would complain less about always going on adventures with us.
Overall, Atelier Ryza is still promising, but I don’t know how much longer I can be even kinda interested without a main story actually taking form. The beautiful art, interesting (albeit busy) combat, and crafting help keep you engaged for the first few hours at least.
