Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy

Summer in the city

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout was my introduction to the long-running Atelier series. And while I absolutely loved it, it just didn’t make enough of an impact to run with it and check out the rest of the millions of other games in the series. That’s a big commitment, and things like that scare me.

However, it did leave me thirsty enough for a sequel that has now arrived in the form of Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy. It’s time to hit the cauldron again and stir up some adventure, and also find out if anyone has gained some fashion sense since the last game. Spoiler: they don’t.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout (PC, switch [reviewed], PS4, PS5)
Developer: Gust Co. Ltd.
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Released: January 26, 2021
MSRP: $ 59.99

It has been 3 years since the events of the first Atelier Ryza, and Reisalin “Ryza” Stout’s loot still won’t stop. She’s been practicing her alchemy on her own for the past three years since her friends all dumped her to go to the capital. She has been asked by the local wealthy man to research some beautiful stone, and she’s not sure if her experience is enough to find out, so she decides to travel to town to join her friends.

Atelier Ryza 2 is slightly more direct than its predecessor. Your first fight is just on the road and you have your studio before the prologue is over. Then you are ready to cook some bombs in your apartment.

However, as with the first game, the story is a bit slow. You want adventure so going on an adventure sums up the character’s motivation pretty well. From there things just develop. There are a series of ruins around the capital and they seem like the perfect place to get yourself killed, so it’s time to probe them for their secrets and find out how your flying hamster, Fi, connects to everything.

If you’re new to the series, you’re probably wondering if you should play the first Atelier Ryza to enjoy the second, and the answer is yes, probably. Much of the game involves meeting old friends, and a ton of dialogue is about how much everyone has changed in the intervening years. I’m not saying you can’t figure it out from context, it might not have the same impact.

If you are not familiar, the Atelier games are JRPGs with deep crafting mechanics. Alchemy, they call it, which apparently is the art of throwing specific ingredients into a jar to create a bridge. While that may just sound like an overcomplication of your typical gear system, it actually adds a layer of progression to the game. As you travel, you will gain access to more ingredients that can be used to craft better weapons and equipment. It’s important, because while you can buy stuff in stores, nothing compares to what you prepare in your studio.

I had a problem with the previous game’s progress; it felt like a lot of starting and stopping as you traveled until you hit a wall, then returned to the workshop to upgrade your equipment or make an important item. That hasn’t exactly changed, but I feel like the game’s progression is a bit more complicated. You still go on an adventure and then return to make a nicer shirt, but there is a firmer gap between the two activities, and that seems to work better.

The ruins are not necessarily unlocked in a linear fashion. If you focus on side quests in addition to simply defeating humble wildlife, you’ll find yourself gaining access to new areas without necessarily completing the previous one. This can give you access to new sources of ingredients that will help you improve your alchemy on your adventures. It makes discovering new areas all the more tempting, as you not only further develop the story, but also your skills.

There is a staggering amount of depth in it Atelier Ryza 2, some of it completely disposable. For some reason you can furnish your studio, but I don’t know why you would. You can also edit ingredients and upgrade shops by selling items, but craft supplies lie on the floor and can be found in the butt of each monster. They do offer alternative methods of accessing some items that you wouldn’t otherwise get until later, but whether that’s worth the extra effort is up to you.

The tinkering itself can take some time to understand the little niches in it. Part of this is because it isn’t properly explained. For example, it has multiple terms for healing and for the longest time I thought the only healing item I had access to was grass beans. By the end of the game, they were no longer doing the job, and I had to experiment to find that “healing taste” was analogous. Then I created the most amazing desserts ever conceived by humans and reached the end by regularly feeding donuts from my teammates.

The advantage of this is that you get what you put into it from the alchemy. If you take the time to find the right ingredients, learn the mechanics, and discover new recipes, you can very quickly turn your party into an unstoppable force. However, ignoring them can give you a hard time.

While Atelier Ryza had some trouble grabbing me, I didn’t have the same problem with the sequel. I spent hours cleaning up side quests and stirring my cauldron, sometimes neglecting the critical path. However, this broke down at the end of the game as I got seriously tired of the absolutely pointless dialogue.

Like its predecessor, Atelier Ryza 2 is unstoppably cheerful, which is often a breath of fresh air in an industry full of gloomy protagonists with dark pasts fighting against unequivocal evil. The optimism was something that helped Atelier Ryza stand out in my mind, but this just got me sick of it.

There is so much wasteful dialogue, it’s dizzying. A lot is about Fi and how much everyone loves it and it loves everyone. I don’t need a deeper understanding of why it bumps someone’s head. For every cinematic that actually features a meaningful character or storyline, there are about a dozen more where characters chat about the cafe’s food. Even the roles that end up in the minds of the characters play out for far too long before they yield anything of value. It tends to spin in circles, viewing information that is already clear or has already been provided.

It’s getting maddening. I went from listening carefully to the dialogue to scrolling through it in search of important tidbits. When the lyrics in the last in-game cutscenes couldn’t be skipped anymore, I actually got annoyed because I had to watch every member of the group say how important this fight was to them. Save me.

As much as I can complain about the inescapable vortex of dialogue that ambushes you at every scene transition, I’ll still admit that I liked the actual game a little more than the first when it didn’t speak. Maybe not for narrative reasons, but the progression and mechanics just clicked a lot harder for me this time. I ended up clocking in about 50 hours to get through the game, but I probably could have cut that down if I hadn’t spent so much time refining the most delicious donut. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot less too.

I’m in about the same position as last time: I enjoyed the experience, but I’m not really in a rush to pick up the rest of the series. Anyway, I’m waiting for the next opportunity I get to put on Ryza’s incredibly tight shorts. Given the series’ typical pace, it probably will be in a year or so.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy reviewed by Adzuken