Estimated Reading Time: 8~10 minutes
The
end of the trilogy is upon us. From the Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout
to the Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy, join back up with Ryza, Tao, Lent,
Bos and Klaudia as they welcome the Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key.
Trilogies, like sequels, always have a raised bar to
meet. Is the story as good as the previous entry? How directly do the prior
events affect the latest and do they make sense? Are you following the same
characters and cast? Or are they cameos? How do the gameplay systems relate?
How do the visuals present themselves? Lots of questions and I'm happy to say
that other than one quirk in the camera work, Atelier Ryza 3 is a great way to
end this trilogy.
Starting back up on the island that they call home, Atelier Ryza 3 sees a return to where it all started while offering so much more. After the events of Atelier Ryza 2, Ryza, our titular protagonist, has returned home to her rustic farmlike island of Kurken Island off the coast to the mainland. Starting off with an attack by monsters, it doesn’t take long to get back into the swing of things as other islands have mysteriously appeared close by and no one knows why. Adding to the sense of urgency in the matter is that these islands are causing earthquakes to Kurken Island and like always, it’s possible that only alchemy will save the day.
Jumping right back into the thick of things I thought
was a great way to start off this adventure as for returning fans, you already
know the cast, you already know the location, and what you want to really know
is what’s going on. Gameplay is as smooth as it’s ever been with you being able
to move Ryza around each location by walking, running, jumping, climbing,
crawling or swimming through the various obstacles as they present themselves.
As you move around these environments, you can gather resources with your
hands, staff, hammer, scythe, axe or fishing rod if you’ve already learnt the
recipes to make them and have the materials on hand.
As with the other entries into both this trilogy and
the series as a whole, alchemy plays both minor and major roles. Minor and
major? Wouldn’t one immediately cancel out the other? Not particularly as
sometimes you can get away with doing the absolute bare minimum. Simply need an
item or a new piece of equipment to progress? You make it if you have the
ingredients on hand and then simply continue on your journey. For anyone that’s
played any of the Atelier series though, you already know what this means. You
aren’t going to be making it very far as that trademark difficulty curve will
inevitably show up and make you cry whether you’re ready for it or not. I wish
I could say I was kidding…
This is perhaps one of the things that I really
enjoyed compared to some of the other entries in the series. Atelier Ryza 3
allows you to explore the world fairly early on even to the point of giving you
just about the entire set of locations from the original before going into the
newer areas. Do you have to? No. But having these spaces allows for a fairly
decent collection of materials early on as well as a way to level up your party
before they head onto new lands and tougher foes.
If this approach were to have one issue, it would be
the same as any of the more open world experiences. Anything “pressing”, like
the fate of Kurken Island, doesn’t feel as important as it should be while
you’re out and about picking flowers, breaking rocks and collecting bugs. If
you can get past that point though? Atelier Ryza 3 paces itself rather well and
I would even say encourages this side exploration as plenty of side quests can
be found as well as plenty of party based cutscenes that expand the character’s
relationships with each other.
As you’re exploring, you’ll also come across “random”
quests given to you either by NPCs or from your own party members. While less
important towards the overall adventure and each character’s journey, the
rewards can be the difference between having to grind out some money and
experience or getting it the quick and easy way. By completing random quests!
These quests can range from defeating a pack of monsters that have appeared to
handing in various materials of different grades for rewards. What’s really
cool about these though, is that the random quests given by your own party can
raise that party member’s actual stats outside of leveling and acquiring new
gear. So very much worth doing.
Like its predecessors however, the title plays a role
in the adventure and the Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key is no
exception! Ranging from modifications in alchemy and equipping characters for
better stats to exploring the vast reaches available, keys can now be made.
Following into one of the various elemental categories, story based locked
doors or color coded exploration barriers can be unlocked by using alchemic
keys. It took a while for this feature to really kick into high gear, but once
it did, it made me have to rethink a variety of ways that I was approaching…
well everything.
Keys can be made in one of two ways. The first, is
that the party must find a vein of power on the map that is happily and
conveniently placed by quick travel points. From there, you can make up to a
certain amount of keys before having to return to your Atelier to “rest”, don’t
actually have to use the rest function but you do have to head back. The second
way to make keys can be done in battle against enemies once the tactics gauge
is high enough, more on its return shortly. Once that’s done however, how you
use them is up to you but I do wish that it had been mentioned that you can
store other keys off to the side in order to more appropriately fill up your
active “key chain”.
What’s neat about this is that whoever you are not in
control of will be acting independently between one of two states, passive or
aggressive. Passive will help you to accumulate AP to do more special attacks
yourself and to answer your allies call to perform physical or magical attacks
for some rather neat follow ups. Aggressive will have your allies use that AP
themselves to perform those abilities which can often leave you without any to
do special moves yourself, however, this is where things got to be a lot of fun.
With all of the alchemy being done, odds are that
you’re going to make a few interesting items. Curatives, bombs, ice bombs,
lightning bombs, explosives in general that can either target one or more
enemies in battle. Where Atelier Ryza 3 truly shines in this respect is that
item usage is now a “free for all” in which ALL characters can independently
accumulate craft points (CP) to use whenever you want them to. So while I
originally have a decent spread of healing and damage items on Ryza, I eventually
went full attack power while giving Klaudia the healing gear and Lent a mix of
the two.
While these three eventually formed my main party, I
was also careful to ensure that both Tao and Bos were just as well equipped as
it’s super easy to swap characters in and out of a party of five. You will have
more characters than that available over time, new to the series and returning
alike, but those have to be set up before battle. This makes things a lot of
fun as everyone in your party levels up, and if you need to catch some of your
other characters up? They can be swapped into those reserve spaces allowing you
to still rock the battlefield without having to worry about your characters
themselves getting rocked. You are being rocked though its back to the Atelier
with a penalty of losing a portion of your accumulated items while out
exploring.
Interestingly enough as a near final note, unlike the
rest of the trilogy, you can make new Ateliers in the different locations which
can end up serving different purposes. The main purpose is obviously to perform
alchemy, rest up and save your game, but the other factors are really neat. In
addition to the core functions, you can choose whether your Ateliers boost
effects for exploration, the quality and trait modifiers of items you gather,
or the amount of SP gained while also increasing the likelihood of merchants
visiting your Ateliers. And once you’ve potentially outlived the usefulness of
certain exploration effects like seeing items on the map, you can redesign them
into another type!
If I had one actual issue with Atelier Ryza 3, it
would be in some of the camera work. I think the best way to describe it at
times would be a hybrid between the Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. The
camera isn’t steady, it moves all over the place and a few times even gave me
motion sickness in the heavier storied portions of the adventure. I also found
the camera to be too close in battle, often not letting me know that there was
more than the enemy that I was focusing on as you also often cannot see your
two partners because they are just out of sight depending on their own
movements. This would be the only reason to not be sitting between 8.5 and 9 /
10.
All of this said though, the storytelling continues to
provide a fun adventure and I’m really happy to have finally had a full trilogy
where you get to travel with the same principle cast. Seeing the characters
grow over the course of time, 3 years between Atelier Ryza and Atelier Ryza 2,
and then 1 year between Atelier Ryza 2 and Atelier Ryza 3, was fun as it allows
you to better enjoy the banter especially when they are talking about the past
and how much or how little has changed over the years.
Summary
Overall, this final chapter in the trilogy was worth
the wait and I look forward to seeing what comes next. Between the various
gameplay elements and the fun to tag along the story, Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist
of the End & the Secret Key has once again set a new bar on the series.
