Ahh, the thigh game. Or ass. One of the two, depends on which way Ryza is turned.

She is the reason this is the best selling game in the franchise.

Anyway, Atelier Ryza is the highest selling Atelier game, a series focused on alchemy with frequent shoujo ai undertones. I have played a grand total of three games in the series, Atelier Iris 2, 3, and Mana Khemia. I never touched a PS3 or PS4 era one until Ryza. Why? Because the game’s don’t really offer anything.

The romance is shipping at best, with character endings being “here’s a potential romance you’ll never see” for a vast majority of them. Fanservice was none existent as the series characters were mostly very young girls that were flat as a board. Cute was the focus. The series was about making stuff and advancing the life of the main alchemist and that was it. Which to me, sounds boring. Ryza kinda changed that with the designs of Lila and of course, Ryza.

To start with though, Ryza and Lila’s character designs are the most fanservice the game offers. None of the cgs are close to sexual, and no one even comments on Ryza’s attractiveness(though the camera definitely shows their asses and breast sway basically in every cutscene when it can). The game is entirely focused on their adventure around the island’s surrounding area and the four main’s growing as people as they advance in their chosen field. This is fine, though I’m sure some people were disappointment, especially at the lack of in game costumes. Of note on costumes, the only one that gives you a clear view of Ryza’s backside is her preorder exclusive outfit, which sucks and kinda feels on purpose. Like they decided to hide her rear with the rest to avoid pissing off that crowd. I had to hack a little to get that on her. It was worth it.

On the topic of fanservice, the hot spring. At some point in the game if you visit the volcano Ryza brings up finding a hot spring. Eventually she just decides to make one and once you return to the Atelier, there is a hot spring. Nothing ever happens with it, like a lot of the random structures around the base. This feels so much like cut content it’s kind of amazing and also really disappointing. Not because the scene isn’t there, I can live with that, but that the promise of the scene exists and is broken. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was suppose to be one, but once the makers realized how “popular” Ryza was they cut it to not get into any trouble with some really annoying people. And they left in everything leading up to the scene.

Anyway, gameplay. Ryza uses something like an ATB system without a wait, were moves have weight that decide how often you can act. You can switch between all three active party members at any time. You use skills with AP, which you get for using items, using normal attacks(which count as skills in the damage formula), and fulfilling things other characters want so they can do special moves. At specific amounts you can spend your AP to level up your Tactics, which powers up your skills and attacks. At tactics five you are maxed and can do your finisher. In very few fights will you get to tactics five.

Really though, items make a lot of the above pointless. Items do far more damage then your attacks, and have more variety in elements. You are limited with the core system, where items use up core points and you need to turn an item off to recover those points, but since you almost never need to fight more then one thing at a time running out shouldn’t happen. You also never lose items by using them, so you can throw as many bombs as you want. Without very specific builds, items will likely always overpower skills.

Honestly Ryza is a very easy game. The alchemy and item system make breaking it way to easy to the point where the only time the game is difficult is right at the start when your resources are few. Even the hard dlc area really just comes down to did you make stuff good enough or not. I won’t go into the alchemy system because it would take to long, but do know it’s really easy and you are given a lot of tools to make crafting go smoothly.

One thing I did really like was how passive skills were handled. Each character basically has a couple of missions they want done that give them passives and they all make sense for that character. Like the fighing dude wants to fight things or Ryza wants to do this alchemy thing. It makes just about everything in the game tie back to the characters getting stronger in some way, so even throwaway quests have a point to getting a characters passives.

As for the story, it’s about growing up. Or chasing your dreams I guess? Each of the four younger characters basically has a single thing they want to advance in, and that’s their story. You have an overarching thing with some monsters, but because monsters there isn’t much there. The problem with just about any game where the final villain is just a mindless monster is it’s hard to care. The game does have a villain of sorts, but their stuff is settled about halfway into the game, and they are never really a threat, just a bother. It’s a story I expect from an Atelier game, where it never feels like anything really happened.

So really, this was exactly what I expected from an Atelier game, just with less endings. Easy combat, simple character story, no romance, no fanservice focus, and so on. I do expect the next game in the series to try and copy this ones success with the heroines design, and I expect it to fail. Ryza did well thanks to meme’s basically. Her design wasn’t expected and so it hit the internet hard when it was as sexy as it was. I just don’t think that’ll work a second time, especially if the makers are banking on the sexy design but also trying not to be to sexy that Sony freak out like it feels Ryza was.

So a decent game. If you don’t like the Atelier formula, nothing really to see. Except for Lila and Ryza of course, but the internet is doing a good enough job letting people see them.

PC Save for Atelier Ryza

Has a dlc and no dlc save. The no dlc is at the end of my main playthrough, with everything made, fought, and generally done. Ready for NG+. DLC save is the same but with the dlc content and episodes complete.

Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 5/10

Completion: What it took-

Typically full story mode while making everything and doing any side quests. Then I learned about traits and had to make every usable item 3-4 times to get weapon traits just to have them in the book. Then I learned that it’s bugged anyway and even with the dlc you can’t get them. id id get all the ones you can though.

After finishing the main game, I download every dlc and beat any new content for the photo mode unlocks.