Gust’s long-running Atelier series has progressed at breakneck speed over the past few years. Its various recent appearances on the Switch in particular show the Japanese developer’s firm determination to step up its JRPG franchise and make a concerted effort to take on the big guns. In Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key, it seems to have reached a new peak, serving up the best Atelier adventure yet and a game that fans and newcomers to the series should be delighted with.
Basically, the Atelier series has dropped its main protagonist for every entry in this 27-year-old franchise. However, Ryza — whether due to popularity or as part of an overall plan — manages her third outing in a trilogy where she grows from an innocent child who stumbled into the world of magic to a famous and sought-after alchemist. introduced at the beginning of this last chapter. By giving Ryza time to grow and develop over such a long arc and allowing her friends to follow her and grow alongside her, Gust was able to imbue the narrative with an emotional depth never seen before in the series, and they really dug into this aspect here.
There are plenty of surprises, returning characters and cameos for fans to enjoy, plenty of introspection, and scenes where we see the little kids from Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout directly compared to the young adults they’ve become, we’ once again they were even treated to sepia shots of them together visiting locations from previous adventures. It’s a nice touch and makes for a game that fans will instantly feel at home with. The old team is back and they’re ready for a new adventure — an adventure that’s all the more poignant because we know it will be Ryza’s last as the main protagonist.
Taking place just one year after the events of its predecessor, Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy, Atelier Ryza 3 begins with Ryza, Lenta, Bos, Tao and the rest of the crew returning to action as a mysterious group of islands, the Kark Islands, emerge from the sea in near their house. Ryza recently found herself forced to create a strange key while working in her studio, and it seems that key is connected to a magical door at the center of these islands. And so begins another summer of great adventures, mysteries and friendships. There’s another fine story here with the usual relaxed mix of elements that focuses on friendship, learning, discovery and personal growth as much as any threat arising from the new islands our heroes set out to explore.
We won’t spoil a second of the game’s roughly 40-hour campaign, leaving it up to you to discover its surprises in your own time, but needless to say, it’s without a doubt the best Atelier story to date, backed by a slew of significant mechanical improvements that introduced into the core gameplay. The changes introduced in Ryza 3 deliver more exciting exploration, deeper item creation, the best combat in the series yet, and a world that’s bigger and more diverse than anything else in the franchise. Not only has every aspect of the core gameplay loop been improved here, but Gust has also made it more accessible than ever, with auto-synthesis and all sorts of useful aids for players who’d rather stay in the background or don’t want to get stuck creating items that can be incredibly deep if you go to town with it.
The biggest change this time around centers around the game’s titular secret key, which gives you a new gameplay mechanic that revolves around creating a key, allowing you to absorb powers and elements from enemies during battle, as well as from your surroundings during your adventure. Once you’ve created your keys, you can distribute them in a variety of ways; using them in battle gives you temporary bursts of attacking power infused with every buff possible, or short windows where you can forget about your AP gauge and just attack opponents non-stop. You’ll also deploy them to open barriers across the landscape, grab treasure, and open up more opportunities for experimentation, giving you more synthesis options, higher item levels, and a greater number of effects and enhancements to add to the multitude of weapons, tools, armor, and so on you’ll craft and equip.
Keys are a particularly great addition from a collector’s point of view. While fighting an enemy, you can choose to jump into the menu and create a key by pulling different traits from your current enemy, and these traits vary depending on who you’re fighting. It makes you want to get out there and find rare baddies and bigger beasts to fill your key collection with better buffs. You can also draw key energy from new locations at certain intervals, which helps players engage more on multiple levels. If you want the best collection of keys, you need to do some research to earn them.
As for combat, those who don’t want to learn all the intricacies of SP, CC, Action Orders, and Order counts can bypass much of the depth of combat. You can control just one character during scraps and let the AI handle the rest of your party, switch between support mode and aggressive mode to quickly get what you need from your teammates, easily escape from battles or avoid encounters entirely as you’d focus on collecting and creating series signatures if that’s more your bag. The Atelier games have always been pretty laid-back experiences and Ryza’s third outing manages to keep that vibe while also giving players who want combat and action much more to write home about.
Combat is the one aspect of this series that has seen the most consistent improvement over the past few entries. It used to take a back seat to research and crafting, and was an element of the game we didn’t always particularly enjoy, but during Ryza’s tenure it’s grown into a truly captivating affair, full of unlockable moves, fancy skills and a flow that makes it makes it attractive. Switching freely between characters, attacking with attacks when your AP meter is full, timing your defenses to deflect and damage enemies, and putting together great combos that allow you to pull off multiple specials before chaining a move onto another character, there’s certainly a lot going on. to keep you busy during every encounter here, and the new wrench mechanic fits perfectly into the mix.
There’s a constant stream of new skills to apply as you rank up your party members, tons of new offensive items to use as Ryza’s skill tree evolves, and you can spend an absolute ton of time researching and crafting, crafting more powerful bombs, better health items, and stronger armor and weapons. Yes, synthesis is a bigger time sink here than ever before, but, as we mentioned, if you’re not caught up in learning the intricacies of item crafting, you can let the game take you over, get comfortable, and let it lift you high- appreciate consumables while you continue to explore the vast world.
While that world isn’t strictly fully open, it’s another very positive step forward for the series, giving players four large and varied areas to explore. Once you’re in a region, you can traverse the length and breadth of it without further loading the screen, making for a more seamless experience as you go to collect the endless array of ingredients and elements that Ryza can use to craft in her atelier. As you explore, you’ll find fast travel spots scattered throughout the landscape that you can jump from one to another using the map — and you’ll have to jump around a lot as you’re called back and forth on various story-critical missions, as well as many side missions that appear as you roam the wilderness.
Mounts also return, giving you a number of fast and fun ways to get around – who doesn’t love riding on the back of a dolphin to cross bodies of water? There’s more verticality, Ryza can swim, climb, slide and zipline through environments, lots of treasure chests hidden around to discover, a wide array of enemies to fight, and plenty of magical locations to tick off your hit list. For a series that previously felt a bit barebones, with worlds far from the standard of most AAA JRPGs, this is the closest Atelier has come to rivaling the best in the genre. Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key is still unmistakably an AA game, but this time around there’s a lot more to enjoy as a finer balance has been struck between exploration, combat and crafting.
On the more negative side, there are a few issues that detract from the fun at times. First off, potential players should note that there is no longer an English dub, so if you’re not happy with the subtitles, then you’re out of luck. As for the subtitles, the ones that appear as characters talk in battle and while exploring are too small to read comfortably and we could do with an option to increase this size as we are missing a lot of text as a result. We also had issues with the mission descriptions during our time with the game, sometimes it was hard to know exactly what to do next. It’s not a huge problem, but further streamlining the way information is conveyed to the player wouldn’t be out of place.
In terms of performance, while Atelier Ryza 3 looks great and plays very nicely in both docked and handheld mode, there are some occasions where you’ll notice the odd stutter here and there as you move through environments, and occasionally we had to wait a few moments while creating items because the game caught up with what we were doing. Overall, things are going well here, but there are a few kinks that we hope to address.
Aside from these little things, Gust served up arguably the best Atelier entry to date. Atelier Ryza 3 is a sprawling adventure full of fun exploration, old friends, new faces, flexible and fast-paced combat, a huge game world, and item synthesis that’s more addictive than ever before. There’s a fantastic gameplay loop in the trifecta of exploration, crafting and combat, giving players plenty to engage with at any given time. If you’re a longtime fan, you’ll love how the final part of this story plays out and, while we’d advise new players to spend time with the first and second Ryza games to get the most out of it, the game does a good job of bringing you up to date if you want to jump right into the mix.
