An Alchemist’s Journey

As the Atelier series is one I’ve been playing since the PS2 generation, it’s been a pleasure to see the series grow and improve over time.

With the release of Atelier Ryza 1, this niche little series found a new level of notoriety thanks to a revamp to its traditional turn-based combat to a more active one and of course the eye-catching design of the main character, Reisalin Stout(Ryza).

Atelier Ryza 3 marks the end of the trilogy and given how influential of a figure Ryza has become for the franchise as whole, there was a lot to live up to.

New and old friends join Ryza on her final journey.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PC, PS, NSW
Played on PC: i7 9700K, RTX 3080, 32GBs RAM
Price I’d Pay: $59.99
Played: 60~ hours
Length: 35~ hours
Steam Deck: Unsupported, able to boot but performance is too poor to be playable.

Following the events of Atelier Ryza 2, Ryza and her friends have gone their separate ways until one day a mysterious archipelago suddenly rises up from the ocean near Kurken island, threatening to destabilize the system that’s keeping her hometown afloat. With the assistance of her close friends, she sets out to unravel the mystery of the archipelago which they name, “Kark Isles.”

The main themes of “memories” and “the end of a journey” were presented well throughout the experience as the cast revisited old locations and reminisced about the children that they once were and mused about the adults that they’ve now become. Many story elements and characters from the previous entries were revisited as well to my delight and some of the best story moments came from finally being able to piece together the truth that was hidden away all this time.

Despite the overall relaxing and fun adventure, there was a bittersweetness to knowing that it would be Ryza’s final adventure and the story beats played well into that self-aware fact and as the credits rolled, a feeling of melancholy washed over me- letting me know that this was a journey well worth undertaking.

If I had any complaints about the story it would be that there are some moments where they comment about how far they’ve traveled or how long they’ve been away from a place but given I was just fast traveling everywhere, it wouldn’t really fit in the context of how I was actually playing the game. A classic case of ludonarrative dissonance in service of quality of life so I won’t hold it against the game too harshly. The other thing is that there are too many repeated voice lines that are triggered when revisiting the same areas with the same party members which became a bit grating, especially given the long playtime.

The combat is fast paced and the animation work is solid.

The hybrid active turn based combat makes a return once more and feels faster than ever with the ability to increase the tactics-level even more quickly and encouraging the use of character swaps mid-battle to keep combos going. Unleashing a barrage of regular attacks to build up a store of AP to chain together a series of powerful skills was a good way to clear out enemies. Once I was able to synthesize some solid attack items, I was able to one shot most enemy groups immediately after the start of combat.

To keep things interesting, I turned up the difficulty to the maximum allowed on the first playthrough and tried playing as different characters which kept the combat feeling fresh and interesting until I finally hit that critical mass of power where nothing could kill me even if I went AFK for hours at a time.

Just as important to the combat was of course the act of synthesizing items/equipment through alchemy and as is always the case in Atelier games, crafting powerful items and equipment meant a lot more to my actual power level than the levels of my characters. Carefully selecting the ingredients of best quality and choosing the right combination of traits to pass along to the final item meant a difference between a bomb that would deal 50 damage or the same type of bomb with different traits/quality dealing 5000.

Due to how incredibly important synthesis was to the strength of my characters,I spent hours min-maxing different types of items and once I was able to make something truly powerful and went out into the world to test it out, seeing my hard work pay off with overwhelming force was an absolute delight and as satisfying as ever.

If you build it-

You can blow shit up!

Given how important synthesis was, it also meant that collecting the ingredients that would be used was just as important. Thanks to that fact, the various environments on offer to explore was a treasure trove and finding a new ingredient meant opening up a new possibility for a new item that could be created or a different trait that could be passed on to something else.

Out of all the Atelier games thus far, Ryza 3 felt like it had the biggest world to explore and while not quite open-world, many of the areas were large and always filled with secrets to find. Unlocking zip-lines and creating various adventure tools to make traversing the world quicker as the story progressed was also a nice touch and great information on what items could be gathered with what tool meant I wasn’t wasting too much time trying to look for one specific ingredient.

The biggest new mechanic introduced in Ryza 3 is the creation/use of Keys that can provide beneficial effects in combat, synthesis and adventure depending on the traits rolled on the key itself. Unfortunately, due to the nature of how these keys were made along with the random nature of the traits, I found it to be largely useless until about 3/4th of the way through the game when I was able to make powerful Pristine Keys. It’s a nice concept, I just wish that it was useful from earlier on in the game instead of it being mostly an end-game thing.

Despite the overworld being fun to explore, seeing the same kinds of enemies with color palette swaps everywhere took a bit out of the wonder of exploring new areas and as this is a problem the series has had basically from its inception, I hope they will put an effort in designing more varied enemy types that fit the environments for future entries. Lastly, there’s no english dub option once more and it’s been quite a while since we’ve lost this option and given the Atelier series is currently at its peak popularity, I would like to see it return sooner than later.

Traversing the world was fun thanks to a generous fast-traveling system and a variety of movement options.

Despite the permanence of typical Atelier quirks, Atelier Ryza 3 is a wonderful conclusion to the trilogy featuring some of the best the series has to offer. While this marks the end of Ryza’s journey as the heroine, her influence to this unique and charming franchise will be felt long after the credits have rolled.

Fun Tidbit: I really don’t know why Ryza has become so popular as a character. There must be a hint here somewhere!?

I kid, Ryza is a wonderfully lovable character even without her various assets.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.