izigame.me

I really wanted to like this game. I really wanted to recommend it. I really did. But I can't, in good conscience, recommend this game to anyone—even Ryza fans or Atelier fans in general—especially not at this price point. I say this as someone who had fun with the first game and really, truly enjoyed the second. I'm not saying this game has no merit (it really does pick up in the final act), but I am saying that it doesn't have nearly enough to be worth the money.

Price
I bought this game for something to the tune of $35 (on sale), with no DLC or deluxe edition or anything. That is a lot of money. If a hundred people bought this game at that price point, the game would probably make enough money to pay off all its development costs. I think this ridiculous price point is true for this entire series (Atelier, not Ryza's trilogy), but at least the other two games are more reasonable. No matter what, this game shouldn't be anything more than maybe 15 bucks. By putting this game out, Koei Tecmo has clearly shown that they do not respect my money or my time.

World
This game can't really be called an open world game. There's so many invisible walls and restrictions in areas you walk in, to the point where some of the explorable locations are literally just a path like in a traditional JRPG (the older Ryza games come to mind). These invisible walls are difficult to predict without just staring at the minimap for most of the game's runtime, which means you won't see anything of the world for the most part. But there isn't much to see, anyway. Areas are barren and have absolutely nothing to do in them. Most of the map isn't even used in-game. There's nothing to the world that made me want to see more of it.
I don't think I ever wanted to play by the developer's rules in this game, except in the final area. There is no reason to explore, because the game will stop you when you really want to. And you probably will REALLY want to, because it's a f*cking open world game.

Gameplay
From the first time I saw synthesis in Ryza 1, I could immediately tell it would be a diamond in the rough. And I was right. It was rough around the edges, but it was engaging and the game really did feel like it was built around synthesis from start to finish. It was improved upon in Ryza 2, but I wouldn't say it was truly mature yet. Ryza 3 pretty much rocks the same thing as Ryza 2, without much change. I think this system still has so much potential, but in order to truly reach that, the game needs to be built around synthesis properly. You should never want to stop synthesising in a game like this, but I definitely did once I reached a winning combo halfway through the game.
The combat itself is pretty much exactly the same button mashy pseudo real-time combat as Ryza 2, except you can't see your turn relative to the enemy's anymore, which is annoying.
What really sucks is that enemies do the Skyrim thing where their HP scales with your party level. Why? It ruins any sense of progression the game had. I don't feel stronger because enemies are constantly damage sponges, no matter what. I might return to an area with equipment that makes me ten times stronger, but the enemies have ten times more HP to compensate, but not ten times the damage, so all I'm doing is whacking at something that can't even fight back for like 4 minutes. The bomb I mentioned earlier thankfully wipes out most monsters, but still.
I think this game would be better as a turn-based game. It doesn't have to be like Baldur's Gate 3 (though I'd prefer that style of turn-based combat), it could just be like a normal JRPG, but that would be better than this.

Quests
Quest design is awful. This came out in 2023—we don't need character quests spread throughout the map in random places with weird criteria anymore. Baldur's Gate 3 came out only a few months after this, and the character quests all progress either with the main story or around the main story, once you get further into the game. They don't all have generic subplots that ultimately don't contribute anything because they want all the important stuff in the main story. If anything Ryza 3's quests are just a bit of extra flavour for the game that inevitably becomes tedious because they're placed exactly where you want to go to collect materials or something. For the most part, they're annoying.
Basic side quests suck too. In Baldur's Gate 3, normal side quests are interconnected with many other side quests and they're all intertwined with the main story in some way, too. The miscellaneous objectives actually feel like objectives, not just crappy fetch quests or something. This game came out in 2023. We don't need this dated design philosophy anymore.

Story
The story's a lot of nonsense, with random monsters showing up out of nowhere, contrived explanations for things that are pretty clearly unrelated, and bossfights that just feel out of place. All the way until the final act of the game, where they enter the Code of the Universe, the last area in the game. This portion of the game is great. Fun to explore, and with an engaging narrative, too. This game could have used a villain, but I think it handled the lack of one well enough in the end (I mean that very specifically).
Additionally, near the end of the game, you get a lot more proper cutscenes with actual custom animations that make these characters seem real and lively. Maybe they used mocap for it, but that's besides the point. Most of the game is presented like a visual novel, with the same 10 or so poses and animations. It feels robotic. But when they open the door to the Code of the Universe on Kark Isles, it uses a proper cutscene, where Ryza and the others move and talk like real people. These models are able to capture a lot of emotion, and you really can produce an impressively acted product with this anime style. They prove it when they do that. Will it be as impressive as Luke Roberts or Gianna Kiehl in Silent Hill 2? No, but it'll get pretty damn close. Every story part of the game should've been like that cutscene, where characters have actual body language and facial expressions that let you know how they feel and what they think just by observing them. I don't want this robotic nonsense anymore, even if it makes it easier to take screenshots.

Graphics and Optimisation
The game looks like sh*t. Even TESIV: Oblivion looks prettier sometimes. Also, it runs like sh*t. I have a pretty good rig, and while the game isn't intensive at all, at 1440p max quality settings it sometimes chugs in a couple areas, like Kurken Port and Windle. I don't even get drops on Baldur's Gate like that, why the hell is this game chugging? You're gonna have to download a mod to patch it, and even then the game won't look good at all. This is just unacceptable. Ryza 2 looked better than this.

Overall, this game seems to have growing pains. I can tell Atelier never really innovated with its games, and Gust studio is struggling to keep up with the modern era because of it. Easiest solution to this problem is to give them more money, a lot more time (one year of development is NOWHERE near enough for this), and stop forcing the games to be a casual series. Let it try to tell a serious (and good) story, or let it be lighthearted just like this one but solely focused on one interesting idea, or whatever. This game struggles to commit to anything (just like bioshock infinite lmao) and really suffers for it. I think people just need to get creative with this series, and it'll really flourish. Maybe Hideo Kojima can make one or something. I dunno.
P.S.
Clifford, his dump truck ass, and his child-bearing hips are no longer in this game aside from a cameo at the end and for that alone I have to leave a negative review