Alchemist of the End and the Secret Key

The most important thing to know about the Atelier series is that they are not typical games at all. This is a very Japanese title, even for a Japanese player. Atelier Ryza is one of those legends that would not have reached the West not so many years ago. But thanks to globalization, it’s becoming more and more common for titles that cater to Japanese audiences to reach us, even though we still have a long way to go. And that brings us to the first major shortcoming of Atelier Ryza 3, Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key: it is not translated into Spanish. The game is coming to Europe voices in japanese and lyrics in englisha bit of a problem for Shakespearean lovers, but this will cause serious trouble for those who don’t know either.

Atelier Ryza 3, like the rest of the franchise, is a Niche game, albeit a broad one. The games explore the concept of alchemy as the dynamic engine of their entire universe. We are a skilled alchemist and we solve all the problems of the island archipelago we live on thanks to alchemy and a clean stick. It’s primarily a JRPG with turn-based combat, exploration, and collections; and between all this we must follow the thread of history.

Full of alchemy, it’s time to learn

If you like the concept of crafting your own weapons, armor, and resources of all kinds, this is your game. You have a story of more than 30 hours ahead of you, more than half of which you will spend stirring the pot. The creation (or synthesis) of objects in our workshop is the basis of the game and if we manage to get the hang of it quickly it will make the game an absolute walk. The materials will in most cases be lying around or found on our way after defeating the monsters. Once you arrive at our atelier, it’s time to review the recipes you’ve received and try your luck.

He Alchemy System It is complex, the opportunities for improvement are many and will be added as the game progresses. We must read very slowly all the instructions that characterize us to figure out what we are doing. Fortunately, the system is complex, but also intuitive. After the first tutorial, the game puts at our disposal an auto-synthesis button, which is the best ally for those who didn’t come to this world to read tutorials.

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Atelier Ryza 3 Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key puts at our disposal a huge variety of customization options, we can choose the most suitable objects depending on our way of fighting. Statistical improvements, combat consumables, and new weapons and armor are some of its possibilities. If you take a lot of time to understand this mechanic, the game will make a lot more sense and not just another JPG.

Battle on the island of Kurken

As in the case of alchemy, the combat tutorials wrapped in huge sheets of text don’t help our interest. Combat in Atelier Ryza 3 is complex, it seems at first. We have one normal attack, one normal combo attack, three special attacks, two skill attacks, three team combination attacks… That’s too much information. The Atelier saga has so many games that it adds mechanics that worked in previous installments and creates new ones. The result is the Horror Vacui, which will be thrown into a turn-based battle that in most cases we can overcome by pressing the button. We can even have a parry option that will not affect our enemies but will prevent us from taking damage. In case of improper execution of the block, we receive damage, but less.

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The third part of Atelier Ryza is not at all a complicated game in its combat difficulty, in fact it does not pretend to be. Something that is appreciated in a random battle video game but can become very boring in the end. Although the statement that it is a random combat video game is not entirely true. The fights don’t appear suddenly, instead the enemies roam freely through the open world. The problem is that the enemy density is quite high and they usually tend to rush at the player. We have to run and zigzag between them if we don’t want the 30 hours of play to turn into 100.

additionally Enemies are pretty repetitive between zones and finds the same enemy, slightly altered in appearance and elemental powers. As we progress in the game we will encounter new enemies and some of them exclusive to certain areas, but mostly they are the same 6 or 7 types that are replicated over and over again. There are some notoriously stronger enemies scattered around the map (marked on the map) and mini bosses with which we will have more challenging fights.

Exploration and farming, the real jewel in the crown

One thing is for sure, Atelier Ryza 3, Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key is beautiful, very beautiful. The aesthetics of the fantasy world are infused with the graphics cel shading of characters and enemies create a very distinctive and pleasant environment to visit. Its search and resource gathering mechanisms make exploration organic and fun. The items to collect populate the map to a large extent, but are integrated into the general landscape, allowing us to a real and immersive sensation.

The skills and exploration mechanics have been improved compared to previous installments. Ryza moves around the map, jumps, swims, and climbs (in certain locations). The corridor stages are interspersed with open-world areas, making it strange at times that the same fences we can jump over in one area are not in others. Despite the curiosity of knowing what other alchemy components, events, and zones make it fun, it lacks some more modern mechanics like those seen in Breath of the Wild.

However, it was in the exploration phases that we encountered the greatest technical problems. Textures sometimes “bow” or suffer as a result poppin, and we don’t find in every corner that attention to detail that we’ve seen in other similar video games. Throughout history, the passage of time is real and the different phases of the day leave their mark on the environment. In this way we will live four hours: sunrise, day, sunset and night. These clock changes produce very drastic lighting changes and, let’s be frank, ugly, depending on which areas of the stage. The light at dawn can blind us completely when we switch zones, but not intentionally.

The best thing about the game so far has been its exploration, despite its problems, the multitude of surprises and secondary missions that we can find on the map make it very attractive. We don’t want to reveal its secrets to you, but as the story progresses we will find more and more original mechanics that the game puts at our disposal, such as: B. riding on the backs of certain animals or handling zip lines. In addition, for lovers of landscapes, Atelier Ryza has a photo mode

Atelier did not invent fire or alchemy

Atelier Ryza 3 Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key is definitely a good experience, but by no means exceptional. The game tries to add new improvements to reach new audiences, but they can’t completely change it. The Atelier saga continues to emphasize alchemy mechanics, which have also been greatly improved and still feel original, which is its main goal. The Key System is the new addition to the saga, keys that apply to its three pillars: combat, exploration and alchemy, but which saturates a system with too many mechanics.

In terms of its plot, it is good but not unforgettable. The story once again seems to be what we’ve seen and read about in so many other video games, although its protagonist’s charisma breaks it up with ease. It’s a classic anime plot whose adaptation, unsurprisingly, has already been announced. On the other hand, the rest of the characters feel a little empty in their construction, but they speed up and entertain the fight, since we can combine five characters in our band, but we will be able to choose between 11, the largest number in the saga so far. Although we’ll continually learn more about these characters through flashbacks and secondaries, they also speak to us as we explore. Some dialogues, which were funny at first, remained boring and became unbearable in the end as they are often repetitive.

We played Atelier Ryza 3 on a Nintendo Switch, both in portable and desktop modes, and we have to say that in this case the portable version suffered major flaws compared to the big screen. Lighting problems have escalated and camera shake on the small screen can easily make you dizzy. We didn’t experience any performance issues other than a drop in frame rate when the lighting went haywire and sync slipped mid-movie sequences. The only way we could fix the second bug was by making the voices louder in the menu, it wasn’t even fixed by exiting the game.