Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy

Summer in the city

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout was my introduction in the long run Workshop series. And while I really enjoyed it, it didn’t leave enough of an impact for me to run around with and experience the rest of the millions of other games in the series. It’s a big commitment and that sort of thing terrifies me.

However, it left me pretty thirsty for a sequel that has now arrived in the form of Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy. It’s time to go back to the cauldron and spark some adventure and find out if anyone has acquired any fashion sense since the last game. Spoiler: they didn’t.

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

It has been 3 years since the events of the first Ryza Workshop, and Reisalin “Ryza” Stout’s loot still won’t stop. She has spent the last three years practicing her chemistry on her own since her friends all abandoned her to travel to the capital. The wealthy local asked her to investigate a pretty stone, and she’s not sure her experience is enough to figure it out, so she decides to head to town to join her friends.

Ryza 2 Workshop is a little more immediate than its predecessor. Your first battle is just down the road and you have your workshop before the prologue ends. Then you are ready to start cooking bombs in your apartment.

Like the first game, however, the narrative is a bit slow. You want adventure, then you go on an adventure sums up the character’s motivation pretty well. Things sort of develop from there. There is a series of ruins around the capital, and they seem like the perfect place to get killed, so it’s time to explore them for their secrets and understand how your flying hamster, Fi, connects to everything.

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

If you are not familiar, the Workshop The games are JRPGs with detailed crafting mechanics. Alchemy, they call it, which is apparently the art of throwing specific ingredients into a pot to create a bridge. While this may seem like an over-complication of your typical gear system, it actually adds a layer of progression to the game. As you travel, you have access to more ingredients that can be used to craft better weapons and better equipment. This is important because while you can buy things in stores, nothing compares to what you prepare in your workshop.

I had a problem with the progression of the previous game; it was like there were a lot of starts and stops as you travel until you hit a wall and then head back to the workshop to upgrade your gear or craft a key item. It hasn’t exactly changed, but I think the progression of the game is a bit more complex. You always go on an adventure and then come back to make a prettier shirt, but there is a firmer gap between the two activities, and it seems to work better.

Ruins don’t necessarily unlock in a linear fashion. If you focus on side quests while just defeating unassuming wildlife, you might find that you have access to new areas without necessarily needing to complete the previous one. This can give you access to new sources of ingredients that allow you to improve your chemistry along with your adventure. This makes discovering new areas all the more tempting as you are not just advancing the storytelling but also your skills.

There is a dizzying depth to Ryza 2 Workshop, some completely disposable. For some reason you can decorate your workshop, but I’m not sure why you would. You can also farm ingredients and upgrade stores by selling items, but crafting supplies litter the ground and can be found in the buttocks of every monster. They provide alternate methods for you to get access to certain things that you wouldn’t otherwise get until later, but if it’s worth it, it’s up to you.

The craft itself may take you a little while to grasp the small niches of it. This is partly because it is not well explained. It has several terms for healing, for example, and for a very long time I thought the only healing item I had access to was grass beans. Towards the end of the game they weren’t doing the job anymore, and I had to experiment to find that the “healing taste” was analogous. Subsequently, I created the most amazing desserts ever imagined by man and reached the end by frequently stuffing my teammates’ donuts.

The advantage of this is that you take out of the alchemy what you put in it. If you take your time finding the right ingredients, learning the mechanics, and discovering new recipes, you can turn your party into an unstoppable force very quickly. If you ignore them, however, you could find yourself in trouble.

While Ryza Workshop had a hard time grasping myself, I didn’t have quite the same problem with the sequel. I spent hours completing side quests and stirring my cauldron, sometimes neglecting the critical path. It fell apart towards the end of the game, however, because I was seriously tired of his absolutely stupid dialogue.

Like its predecessor, Ryza 2 Workshop is irrepressible, which tends to be a breath of fresh air in an industry full of dark protagonists with dark pasts battling unambiguous evil. Optimism helped Ryza Workshop pop out of my mind, but here I have become absolutely sick to death.

There are so many unnecessary dialogues, it’s dizzying. A lot of it revolves around Fi and how much everyone loves her and she loves everyone. I don’t need to understand any better why this makes someone’s head bulge. For every cutscene that actually includes a meaningful character or narrative development, there are about a dozen where the characters are chatting about the food in the cafe. Even the parts that go into the characters’ heads play too long before they deliver anything of value. He tends to go around in circles, going through information that is already obvious or already provided.

It becomes infuriating. I went from listening intently to the dialogue to browsing it for important information. When the text of the game’s final cutscenes became impossible to skip, I actually got bored because I had to watch each 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 with every scene transition, I still admit that I enjoyed the game a little more than the first when it wasn’t speaking. Maybe not for narrative reasons, but the progression and mechanics clicked a lot more solidly for me this time around. I ended up finishing the game around 50 hours, but I probably could have cut that down if I hadn’t spent so much time refining the tastiest donut. However, I probably would have also appreciated a lot less.

I’m kind of in the same position as last time around: I enjoyed the experience, but I’m in no real rush to go out and pick up the rest of the series. If anything, I’ll wait for the next opportunity to slip into Ryza’s insanely tight shorts. Considering the show’s typical pace, it’ll likely be in another year or so.

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

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