Atelier Ryza - A coming-of-age JRPG that focuses on building relationships before saving the world.

Atelier Ryza is a game made by its crafting systems and supporting characters - not just its combat.

Secret hideouts, friendships and relationships

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout is the latest in the Altelier Ryza series, a tale that dates back to the 1990's. The game is a Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG) that alters from the standard mold of this genre by concentrating more on friendships and relationship growth, rather than a massive bad guy or world-ending threat.

Looking for new experiences by sneaking off the mainland.

The main character in this adventure is Reisalin Stout or Ryza. Ryza is a teenager who has spent her entire life on her small island home and yearns for broader experiences. She pressures her friends to sneak onto the mainland of their world and find adventure. While there, she meets with another group of travelers that teaches her the ways of alchemy (or potion-making). She discovers her talent for this art.

This game is different from your standard RPG, which are all relatively formulaic: An evil force is conquering the world, and it is up to you and your friends to stop it. While this game does have good guys and bad guys, it is centered mainly around friendships, relationship building, and watching Ryza grow as a person. This is a refreshing change of pace.

Mood setting Audio!

JRPG games are known for their colorful creations and over-the-top audio. This game is no exception. However, the cut scenes are modernized, and the graphics are sharp and the colors delightful. The music is also fantastic. It varies from town to town and battle to battle. In a JRPG, the goal of the music and sound effects are to enhance the mood, which's adds to the depth of the story. The music here succeeds wildly.

Unique and creative

Perhaps the unique part of this atypical JRPG is the emphasis on alchemy, which essentially turns one of this game's core mechanics into a crafting system. Alchemy allows you to create weapons, armor, potions, food and more, then use those items in combat. As a result, the game emphasizes smart crafting, recipe collection, and using all of these items together.

Create potions, armor, and food for use in your battle.

Additionally, the game's systems work well together. You are continually pushing forward to unlock the next potion or see what's next in the story. The mark of a good game is that it leaves you wanting more, and Atelier Ryza has this in Spades.

One of the more common complaints about this game is its flow. While its alchemy and crafting systems are both unique and interesting, they can massively break up the game's pace by forcing you to run around and collect ingredients to be able to get what you need to advance the story. The game also misses some standard features, like quest guidance and automatically telling you what to do next. This is okay for more advanced players but may leave less experienced ones confused.

The game's combat is familiar to JRPG fans, but it shifts away from its traditional turn-based approach to an Active Time Battle system. This switch is difficult for Atelier Ryza fans.

You will not get bored!

The game is available for Switch, PS4, and Steam, and it retails for $60. Most RPGs are not known for their replayability in the sense that you want to relive the adventure. However, a good game will have you wanting to replay it to discover all of the content that you missed. And there's good news here: While the main story can take 25 hours to beat, competitive players will find almost twice as much content. In other words: You will not get bored playing Atelier Ryza.

TL/DR

Atelier Ryza takes a standard JRPG system and flips it on its head by incorporating relationships and crafting, rather than epic good vs. evil battles