Thank you Koei Tecmo for sending us this game to review!

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy is a direct sequel to 2019's quite enjoyable Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout. This is the first time in the history of the Atelier series that there has been a direct sequel where the same protagonist is carried over between games. Usually, an alchemist teaches their protege, where each successive generation takes the next game. Rorona taught Totori, who taught Meruru in Arland; the Mysterious trilogy is somewhat similar, with Sophie teaching Firis, and a friend of theirs teaching Lydie & Suelle. (Others are different, but each game does have different protagonists, while taking place in a linear timeline.)

As a sequel, it is highly recommended that you play the first game first, as there are quite a few returning characters, as well as several references to what happened there. It's not as bad as some games that come to mind, but I do recommend it if you can. There are several locations and even races of people and creatures that the game assumes you are familiar with. For example, if you don't know what the Underworld is, you might be a bit confused when this game discusses it.

Ryza receives a letter from her friend Tao, who was a part of the team exploring the various ruins, not to mention one of her childhood friends, as told in Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout. He asks Ryza to assist him with exploring some new ruins near the capital, where he's going to school. He has found some clues that he believes are related to alchemy, and she happily accepts. Before she leaves Kurken Island, Bos' father Volker gives her an odd-looking jewel to take with her; he hopes that they are able to figure out what it is on her journey. Imagine her surprise when it turns out to be an egg! A magical creature they call Fi emerges, and that drives much of the story forward.

Everyone is three years older since the events of Ever Darkness, and the changes in some cases are dramatic. Ryza is now a school teacher, and practices her alchemy for the good of her island. She also seems to prefer ripped shorts, and exposes even more skin than before. Tao has grown into quite a man; enough so that a few characters don't even recognize him at first! I must say I like this grown up Tao much better than what he was in Ryza 1. Klaudia has grown up into quite the elegant and stunning young lady, though she's oddly jealous of Ryza making new friends. The other characters are also surprising after all this time. It's been fun reconnecting with and seeing how each of them has grown up in the last three years.

The actual story of Ryza 2 is not as interesting as its predecessor, as you basically just follow Tao around from one set of ruins to the next, but the combat, crafting, level complexity, exploration, and even how they develop the lore is a big step up from before. In each ruin you explore, there is a system where you can unlock memories, which can then be used to piece together puzzles that then explain what happened the many years before in the ruins you're exploring. While not all plot points are necessarily resolved, learning the story of what happened those ages ago through the explorations of Ryza and her friends is quite interesting.

The combat system's refinements are greatly welcomed, as I felt that in the first Ryza, her ability to use skills and items was greatly reduced from the way things should be. Here, when you use skills, you both raise your tactics levels and earn core charge points, which can then be spent on items. And this resets each battle, making item use as common as you want it to be, especially if you get a nice rhythm figured out. And if you spend all of those points, just use skills for a few more rounds of combat, and that power attack (or healing) item can be ready for use once again. Honestly the battle system is just so much better that it's hard to go back.

The other system improvements are not quite as obvious, but still handy. While there are no more world areas than Ryza 1 offered, each one has quite a bit of depth and complexity to it - and unlike before, the way Ryza can jump over obstacles in a more complete way, along with swimming, swinging on ropes, and so on makes the simple act of running around the map so much more enjoyable than in the past. At first it's not obvious, but it doesn't take long before you can really feel the improvements. And not only that, but each map is generally larger and more intricate than before. Rather than simply going from one entrance to the next, there is a lot of verticality this time around, along with various different paths that you have to figure out. I really enjoyed the exploration aspects a whole lot.

To make up for the seemingly lackluster main story, is the new lore system. Whenever Tao and Ryza go to explore a new area, Ryza is able to re-experience the memories or people who lived there in the distant past. For example, throughout each of the places you explore, one of the memories' recurring characters is that of a Frozen Moon Witch. You eventually discover how she got her power, what she had to sacrifice to gain it, as well as what happens after that (I'd rather not spoil it). Suffice it to say, she is one of a few different characters that you learn about who lived many ages ago, and left their mark in the ruins you guys are exploring today.

Technically, each Atelier game gets better and better, and this one is no exception. It looks noticeably better than even Ryza 1, which was a massive improvement over previous games. On my powerful gaming PC, I was able to crank all of the details to max, and it looked great. The only graphical setting that you may choose to disable is depth of field (or DoF in the options). This setting focuses the camera on the primary character of the scene, while blurring everything else. This can look quite impressive in some cases, especially since it tends to obscure technical limitations of the engine (like aliasing). But, by disabling it, you can see so much more of everything - distant characters are just as sharp as close ones, which I usually preferred. I ended up turning off DoF in the end, but not until I spent a fair amount of time with it on - it was honestly difficult to decide for a while.

I also noticed that the game scales up and down reasonably well. It runs and looks great on my super high end desktop, and looks great at 4k. It also looks and runs great on my higher-end gaming laptop, though settings had to be dropped, or framerate sacrificed, if I wanted to play it at 4k. I did notice that the game will run with a framerate well past 60, for fans of high refresh rate displays. On the flipside, it scales down quite nicely to run wonderfully on my portable PC, the GPD Win Max, at 720p on low settings.

Stability was great with two exceptions; once I had the game crash to desktop, though it wasn't a repeatable crash. What was a repeatable glitch was a certain quest called 'Weed Killer'; it would consistently get stuck in an infinite animation loop, where you had to quit the game to play again. Thankfully, I was able to press start to skip the event if I did it quickly enough before it got to the lock trigger. Apparently there are a few other players (but not all) who experience this bug according to the Steam forums; hopefully it gets fixed in a patch soon. Speaking of Steam, I noticed that there is quite a bit of DLC planned, with a pricey season pass available, for a much higher price than the DLC content currently available as of this review. I would expect a lot of optional content coming in the future.

As always, the music is just fantastic; Gust really knows how to make great soundtracks. I would often be caught whistling the theme when she's inside her atelier - and so would my daughter! The voice acting, while in Japanese, is also excellent. The emotions and quirks of each character come through really well despite not understanding the spoken language. For example, Tao doesn't just look more mature than his younger self, but he sounds it!

From an appropriateness standpoint, in some ways, it does well. For example, I didn't note any foul language in my playthrough! That's actually quite remarkable. I also didn't see any blood. There is fantasy violence though, where you and your friends hit various enemies with your weapons, though it's mostly of the 'activate a command through a button press' variety. Enemies are mostly in the fantasy style, with some animal-like creatures, some dragons, and some insect-like enemies.

Magic, or magical effects, are used by enemies and the player through alchemy or various special attacks. As mentioned before, you can create pretty much anything through the process of mixing ingredients in a cauldron. The lore in this game explores the relationship between magic, mana, and alchemy a bit, though many questions are left unanswered. On another note, alcohol is used by a few NPCs, and one is shown as drunk.

The real challenge here is the sexual content - mostly in the form of outfits. One of the new characters is extremely curvy - and very little is left to the imagination, with wide slits in her clothes that show what I assume is her underwear. Several characters have significant cleavage, and breasts ‘jiggle’ while they walk.

What perhaps saddened me the most is that our main character, Ryza, while now an adult, dresses in a far less conservative way than before. She always had short shorts, but now they have a rip on one of the thighs, and the other side is being held together with straps. More of her belly and cleavage is visible as well. There are also times where she might stand in an alluring pose; for example, after battle she will bend down with her hand on her knee in an inviting way, like you might see a model do on a catwalk. While exploring, she will have to crawl through cracks, and the camera moves in such a way that either her tush or her cleavage ends up being right in your face. Smart camera placement could have avoided these things, but I don’t think that was the intention. Having played as many Atelier games as I have, including the prequel to this one, I really felt like they ramped up her sexiness more than is usually the case. It’s not that they never make attractive characters, or even ones with ridiculous outfits; it’s just that the intention here was a bit more obvious.

With all of that said, Ryza’s personality is still quite innocent. Romance is rarely a part of Atelier games at all, and especially for the main character. Sometimes a lesbian relationship might be hinted at in this series, and while certain statements could be interpreted that way here as well, I don’t think there is enough evidence to say that is the case in the Ryza universe up to this point. At the very least, it’s only one-sided, and Ryza hasn’t reciprocated. There is a case where a side character confesses her love for the man she wants to be with; it’s not in any way inappropriate, and is honestly quite adorable!

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy is another high-quality game in the Atelier series that just seems to be getting better and better as time goes on. They took this subseries in a new direction with Ryza, and Ryza 2 continues to improve on what made Ryza so great. While I’m not a fan of the increased sex appeal, as a game it’s still a really enjoyable experience, and a nice feel-good distraction from the otherwise darker days we're living through right now. When the world is as depressing as it can be these days, something to lift our spirits can be just what the doctor ordered - and Ryza's bubbly personality can still help us smile.