Review: ATELIER RYZA 2 is a Polished and Improved Sequel
Koei Tecmo and GUST recently released Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy. This is a direct sequel to Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout. Koei Tecmo has been gracious enough to give me a review copy on the Nintendo Switch and I thought I’d finally share my thoughts. You can play Atelier Ryza 2 on Switch, PC, PS4, and PS5 now.
Three years have passed since Ryza’s secret grand adventure on Kurken Island. Ryza, the only member of her group to remain on the island, receives a letter from her friend telling her about ruins that may be related to alchemy, along with a mysterious request involving a glowing stone. This inspires her to leave the island and venture out to the royal capital, Ashra-am Baird. However, Ryza is unaware that this will lead to the beginning of an imaginative new adventure involving a pursuit of the mysteries of the ruins surrounding the royal capital and a meeting with a strange creature that will change her life.
I am enjoying Atelier Ryza 2 a lot more than the first game. There’s already a stronger idea of where the story is going and almost everything feels a lot more polished. The story sees Ryza going to the capital to visit her good friend Tao who’s been studying there for q couple of years. Bos is also around and while his attitude is a little better than in the previous game, he’s still rather annoying to me. Ryza then decides to help Tao investigate the nearby ruins. Oh, and you also end up hatching a creature named Fi from an egg that Bos’ father had. One thing I learned from the last game is that the story will most likely start out rather slow, but it will pick up eventually.
A real quick touch on graphics. Overall, they look pretty good, although some of the textures look fairly low-resolution, even in docked mode. I don’t think any of the graphics are anything to write home about, but most of them aren’t anything to complain about either.
Going back to things feeling polished, let’s talk about exploration. I feel so much freer in Atelier Ryza 2. You can jump and fall off of ledges instead of dealing with invisible walls, you can swim, you can climb walls of vines, you can even jump up ledges! I know that it’s not accurate, but after the first game, the level of exploration felt akin to Breath of the Wild. Please, note that the exploration is not of the same caliber. It is vastly improved, but it is not as open. Another thing that I appreciated was that when you went to gather materials, it would show you what you could get. In addition, when you go to change harvesting tools, it will show what you could get from each tool. This is a very nice change. If you haven’t collected a particular material from it yet, it will show a question mark.
Let’s talk about synthesis. Atelier Ryza 2 introduces a skill tree system where you can unlock some core recipes like the Bomb and Mixing Oil. However, the skill tree also lets you level up your gathering skills to get more materials, higher quality materials, and the ability to morph recipes. This last one is key and helps you unlock the system from the first game where you unlock new recipes by manipulating the materials in the Material Loop. I actually really like this new skill tree system and how it works with synthesizing. Also, I think that the aesthetic, layout, and UI have all just seen general improvements.
Finally, the combat is so much better. In Atelier Ryza 2, combat feels much livelier and closer to real-time combat even though you still have to wait your turn. Enemies are spread out and changing targets causes you to actually move around the battlefield which really helps. I also like how you don’t have to press a button to upgrade your tactics level. It just happens automatically as you meet the right criteria. I also feel like you gain AP a lot faster which really helps to streamline things. The only complaint I have is that it seems to take forever for me to get CC to be able to use any items. Other than that, this new battle system is absolutely amazing.
Atelier Ryza 2 is a big step up from its predecessor. It feels much more polished and I appreciate the quicker start to the story. It’s not perfect, but it is a fun game to help pass the time.
