So July had one more gaming surprise for me, as Ghost of Tsushima took less time than I thought to close out and pop that Plat. Therefore, I turned to the only JRPG I had left unplayed – Atelier Ryza.
You can thank fortuitous timing that I finally got around to this one just as the announcement of the second game in the “Secret” arc came down like a proclamation from the heavens. This unfortunately meant that I went into the game knowing two things beforehand. The first, that this game must have at least been an above average instalment in the franchise, given that the general consensus from the JRPG community was that this game battled Trails of Cold Steel III for the title of “best JRPG 2019”, and second, that the characters here must have been lovable enough and have enough “juice” left in them that the next instalment is a direct sequel – Atelier Ryza 2.
The game installed onto my harddrive at a somewhat irrelevant 12GB including a patch which added photo mode and a few other things. During this time I perused the Playstation store for addons and was once again dismayed at the state of humanity. The game’s season pass costs more than I actually paid for the game, and that almost all the other paid DLC are inappropriate dress-up outfits four of the main characters, most of which involve the usual borderline-fetishistic outfits for anime teenage girls. I don’t know if I’m more ashamed of the microtransactions or the outfits. Japan strikes again.
As the game finished installing and loaded up, I forgot about all of the above, albeit momentarily, as the opening movie played. This initial greeting demonstrates brilliantly detailed renderings of characters and environments that almost resemble the actual in-engine models. This is my roundabout way of saying that this is the first game in the Atelier franchise that looks like a PS4 game. It’s about time too, given that the wheezing and groaning my console made during my run at Ghost of Tsushima was nothing if not a telltale sign of age. Why it took this franchise almost seven years isn’t something that can be explained away anymore by the phrase “low budget JRPG.” Despite the upgrade, Atelier Ryza is much nicer on the PS4 than Ghost. The fan doesn’t ramp up to obnoxiously loud, and the graphics can be compared to some early titles in the generation rather than more recent ones. However, it has been a gripe I’ve held onto since playing Atelier Sophie that these games never looked as good as they should for the platforms they were on, and I can say that is no longer the case. The criticism I levied towards the franchise in my Atelier Luala review about character animations, sadly, still holds true. The game is also guilty of some other old Atelier problems including invisible walls, and not being able to jump over world elements that you can definitely jump over. There’s also an element of twitchyness with controls that never feels quite as smooth as they ought to, and the generic NPCs feel like those found in lifeless free-to-play MMOs, rather than real moving and living characters in the world.
So, why did I frontload my review with these criticisms? Mostly, because they are the same issues that have plagued other Atelier games. A lot of what the game does well, and will overall be remembered for, are greatly informed by the flaws in previous instalments of the franchise. I can only speak for those I’ve played but all of the criticism list above – outside of the graphical improvements – also applies to Ateliers Sophie, Firis, Lydie & Suelle, Luala and Nelke. The difference here is that you can actually see what has been altered in other areas, and given the size of the developer, it feels like this game got a bit of love and attention that the others didn’t – or at least, the changes occurred in the right places.
The textures here are just, better. Items in the field are now more realised and gathering nodes have more variety and interactivity. Environments and areas are larger and more filled out. Enemy models and design feel new, even the Puni look like they’ve had a complete overhaul for this game, and the dragons and elemental monsters clearly take inspiration from old games, but are different and more detailed models.
This was certainly an area in need of improvement, given that the PS Vita could run the Sophie-era graphics that persisted right through until Luala. Ryza feels akin to the level of lift that the Pokémon games got as they moved onto the Nintendo Switch, rather than the lift Monster Hunter got when it made the move onto PC/PS4 and Xbox One. The initial improvements are mostly graphical, but as I progressed through the story I started to notice a few other improvements too.
The UI looks mostly the same, and it’s clean and presents the info you need. Although I do think the game should let you zoom in and out on the mini-map compass as some small spindly areas are difficult to make out. The game’s story and quests are now much more streamlined and can be accessed from one location, similar to Luala’s alchemyriddle, and there’s also more prominent side-quests, rather than randomly generated kill or fetch quests posted on a centralised board in town.
You start your adventure as Ryza – a somewhat a-typical Atelier protagonist who lives on a farm with her parents. Ryza has two friends, and literally no skills or ambition other than what could be described as “a desire to see the world” and the ability to shamelessly wear short-shorts that might as well just be underwear. Unlike Firis, a previous protagonist whose “see the world” motives were similar, Ryza actually made me believe she meant it. You immediately get the impression that for most of her life thus far, she has been a troublemaker. A history with the law enforcement on her island is quickly established, and her mother seems to switch constantly between a state of anger and rolling her eyes at her daughter’s behaviour. Her friends also seem to have been reluctant companions on her many adventures, the first of which sees the trio of Ryza, Tao and Lent steal away from their island life to head to the mainland in a small boat.
The world feels like an Atelier world once you get into it, with areas separated by loading screens and that feel of “instancing” that never quite goes away. However the areas feel more interconnected. This certainly doesn’t feel like Sophie or Lydie & Suelle’s point and click world map, and yet it feels more focused than Firis’s attempt at a larger, more open world.
This feels right, the approach here just somehow presents and works better than all those before it. You quickly get fast travel to key locations and have an easy single button press to return to Ryza’s home. There’s no contrived reason for all of these abilities either, which actually helps you get into the story, which begins with a rescue. While out exploring, team Ryza comes across a young girl who is being threatened by a monster. The team defeats said monster, but then comes across a tougher one. It’s here that two strangers appear and use an item to defeat the tougher monster. In the process they inadvertently introduce Ryza to alchemy, and thus begins her journey.
From here, you begin the traditional Atelier experience, proving your worth to a slightly-too-anime teacher who has their own agenda and learning that the best alchemy comes from within. That’s all par for the course. The key difference Ryza makes early on is that it gives Ryza’s friends their own individual goals, which happen to overlap with hers. This small shift in the story setup does wonders for their presentation, as you don’t think of them as accessories to an alchemist as characters in previous games feel, but rather individuals with their own functions and purposes in life. Previous Atelier games often waited until the late game, or after you’d raised your affection level with most characters, before revealing that these companions have hopes and dreams outside of just helping teenage girls collect grass and rocks. Ryza’s game gives you these reasons to care before you’ve even got your Atelier, allowing these characters to grow at the same time Ryza does, rather than having to sit through huge exposition dumps at the end of the story to see Angriff’s dream of opening a school; et al, come to fruition. This sets the stage for deeper and more interesting character interactions later on, and means their questlines are ultimately better because of it.
The key gameplay loop for Ryza herself, is as you’d expect. You go out into the field, collect, smack or whack at certain items, objects and locations and you get a helping of materials with which to concoct magical recipes. The most notable change is that more of these materials are now realised on the maps. There are more types of gathering node than before, and everything that can be gathered has a helpful blue glow to it. There’s also a selection of gathering tools that let you approach gathering in different ways, with fishing rods and bug nets returning, alongside new combination tools.
The synthesis process itself has also had yet another overhaul, and I can’t really say it’s close to any of the Atelier titles I’ve seen previously. This one includes all the usual effects, traits and quality concerns, but introduces the concept of altering recipes to invent new ones. Rather than just handing you books filled to the brim with detailed instructions on how to make item X. The game now adds the ability to “alter” certain recipes to come up with new ones. It’s not particularly complex, and the tree-like branching paths in lieu of the old Tetris-style cauldron interactions make this system much more beginner friendly, while retaining enough of a challenge to prevent experienced players from being able to jump in without learning the new mechanics. Recipes tend to follow certain logic trees, in that altering a recipe for cloth will let you make a different type of cloth. Rather than altering a recipe for a liquid letting you make a different type of spaceship. This helps enforce the lessons Ryza is taught about experimenting and visualising her alchemy. The game prefers to embark upon a “try it yourself and see” approach to gameplay, rather than the usual exposition dump tutorials that the Mysterious arc was guilty of. Even as an experienced player, this is by far my favourite way of games teaching things to me. Give me the framework and let me figure out the rest on my own.
Another system that has been overhauled completely is the combat, which has done away with the turn-based style that the series has used for what does feel like eons. The back of the disk case claims to have “thrilling real-time battles!” but I’ll be honest, that never arrived. Atelier games are mostly about using abilities and items against specific enemies, and that is retained here. The unfortunate caveat is that now there is no thinking time ahead of performing any action. In previous games, the turn-based approach let you decide what was the best course of attack with plenty of time, you could use an item, a skill or another ability depending on which specific game it was, and neither the enemy or your character’s got any closer to a turn if you spent 2 seconds choosing an action or 30. The issue I have with Ryza’s real-time system is that you’re always under pressure to make a choice quickly and that leads to some wrong and rushed decisions. Even with the quick-select menu, you waste valuable time selecting things, often letting an enemy get an extra attack in before you’ve done what you need to do. Should you run out of the “currency” required to use items in battle, you have to hold down square to replenish it by consuming another, all of which drains away at the clock. If ever there was a game crying out for Final Fantasy VII: Remake’s “slow-down” mechanic while you select options in combat – it’s this one.
Often, on normal difficulty you can just smash through enemies using auto attacks – which the party members you aren’t controlling do automatically. It’s just a case of making sure they have average gear equipped and aren’t massively underleveled. If you started the game on hard or higher difficulty, you’re going to have a rough few encounters because your traits, gear and abilities scale about as well as a snail on a skyscraper. This problem goes away to some degree later into the game as you get traits and effects to help you compensate, as well as better and higher-quality gear, but it does mean that there is more benefit to moving up and down the difficulties like a yo-yo than there is picking one and sticking to it.
The actual change to the combat I don’t mind. As I’ve said in previous reviews, Atelier changing their systems with each iteration is better than the Pokémon approach of just rolling out the same thing over and over again with no innovation. This is innovation, but it does feel like the game tried to make this a fully realised action-JRPG with REAL real-time combat (something like Level-5’s Ni No Kuni II or Dark Chronicle). Then at the last minute they got cold feet and put in the old menu system with auto-attacks on a converter belt, because this feels like an unorthodox hybrid of the two.
My main gripe is not the innovation here, rather the execution which banks so heavily on gear and setup. While you can quickly switch between the characters in combat, and in theory micromanage them all, that’s clearly not the way the game was designed to be played. You are meant to switch to the character you want to use the special ability of and let the rest be controlled by the AI. This is fine later in the game when you have lots of control over your gear, stats and traits. You can stack everyone full of items to heal during and after combat. But at the beginning, when you’re lacking for options to prepare out of combat, you are left as a mere passenger when inside it – and most encounters are either won or lost before you even begin them.
The game does have other elements that give off that same “passenger” feel. Synthesis can also be done using the “auto complete” mechanic which gives you a choice to pick either high quality or low quality ingredients and have the game “auto-fill” your grid for synthesis. This is great if you intend to make lots of items like supplements, ingots or cloth that are required for other synthesises and actually serve a purpose. However, these are never the most efficient way to achieve something, and rightfully so. Manual input in synthesis allows you to create better things, so these automated systems are just time-savers. However, when it comes back around to combat that the feeling of being a passenger, as the game automates certain things, can causes problems.
As for characters, I really did like Ryza. To quote some guy from the ‘50s, “she’s got spunk” and her adventurous nature really does help her to feel like one of the more outgoing protagonists in the series. She certainly shakes off a lot of that “help I’m a teenage girl” vibe that you often got from the others, without making her a stereotypical “fearless protagonist”. That scaredy-cat role is now taken up by a combination of bookish-Tao, one of Ryza’s childhood friends, and the sheltered Klaudia who begins the game as a bit of a nervous wreck but eventually grows into her own. Ryza’s other friend, Lent, feels a lot more like older Atelier characters. He could be described as a cross between Julio, Remy, Angriff and Niko. He’s the traditional “Warrior” that JRPGs can’t ever seem to stray too far from, and has the most cliché of all the supporting cast’s backstories. He wants to get more powerful and better at fighting, because… Daddy issues.
Conclusion
Altogether this whacky team forms a compelling unit that certainly have their fair share of ups and downs. While it takes a while to truly get going, and is guilty of some early pacing problems in both the story and combat, what it ends up being is a remarkably fresh-feeling twist on a classic formula. Atelier Ryza feels like an actual step up, compared to the comparative steps sideways that I’ve experienced in the franchise since Atelier Sophie. The game’s major problems all seem to come as a result of attempts to make it simultaneously more accessible for players who want a more relaxed experience with “auto-fill” recipes, and more challenging for veterans who have mastered traditional turn-based Atelier combat.
Even with all these changes, there’s nothing here to particularly dislike. My own prejudices against this combat system feel like unobjective criticism because I’m used to turn-based combat, and I can see that I am heavily biased. Omitting criticism for that aspect of the game, and looking at the rest leaves me in no doubt that this is an excellent instalment in the series and one that bodes well for the future of the franchise. I’m going to pay extra attention going forward at what the games in this series do with their microtransactions and DLC, but if you’re looking for an Atelier experience that is both challenging and fun to play – this is certainly one worth playing.
Fatelighter 