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

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout was a runaway success, leading to the first time Gust, the developers of the Atelier series, to keep the same protagonist for an entire trilogy. Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy was a very good sequel, and ended with Ryza returning from the capital to her home town of Kurken Island. This game, Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key, ties up many of the mysteries left unsolved in the previous games, and is a very suitable send-off for Ryza and her wonderful friends.

As the final entry in a trilogy, it is highly recommended that you play the first and second games 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 characters, 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, or what gates are, you might be a bit confused when this game discusses it. There are also several references to Ryza's time in the capitol city, though I would say there are generally more callbacks to Ryza's first adventure than her second. Nevertheless, about three quarters of all playable characters are returning, and several emotional moments rely on the player understanding their backgrounds.

Atelier games have generally been a Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG) series that has many of the trappings of more common RPGs like towns, battles, experience and levels while taking a much more slice-of-life approach to the world and characters. Atelier games also have a heavy emphasis on crafting, where our main protagonist is an alchemist. Alchemists are someone with special skills who can create new items seemingly out of nowhere, using a process called alchemy. Multiple ingredients are put together while following recipes to make new items. Since Ryza is a well-established master alchemist by this third game, not as much time is spent on her personal development but instead on learning more about the world and its history given the strange events they find themselves dealing with.

One year after the events of Atelier Ryza 2, a couple of Ryza's childhood friends, Tao and Boz, come back home for the summer, as they were away at the capitol city's university (where Ryza 2 took place). During this time, out of nowhere new islands appeared in the nearby harbor. Ryza and her friends reach out to their other former companions Lent and Klaudia, who are quickly reunited. They then explore these new islands and find a giant mysterious door, and Ryza hears a voice in her head instructing her to open it and reach the 'Code of the Universe'. How to do so, and what they all discover drives much of the narrative of Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key.

Like most modern games in this series, Atelier Ryza is a JRPG where you play in a fully 3D-rendered world, and you (as Ryza) walk around talking to people, discovering landmarks, opening treasure chests, and gathering ingredients. With crafting being so critical to not just the story but success in general, you will likely be gathering quite a bit. It helps that the container that you keep your gathered stuff in between outings is absolutely massive - but it is sadly not infinite. Once I filled it up completely about 80% into the game, gathering became a chore rather than a joy, since each time you return to an atelier, you have to toss whatever number of items overflows that container. You can sell items, convert them to gems, or just toss them if you wish. Once that box is full, you really should do so preemptively to prevent it from filling again, or gathering will remain unpleasant.

Early on, it may seem like combat is really easy, and that crafting is not that important. However, all enemies scale to your experience level. So, eventually, if you stick with starting weapons and armor, you're going to suffer. And unlike other games in the series, upgraded attack items and weapons are very rarely found if at all. On the other hand, if you do craft too much, you will make the game trivial. Since I've played a lot of these games, I crafted a fair amount, and at around a quarter into the story, I quickly powered through the skill tree. This unlocked a ton of recipes and made my weapons, armor, and made items much more powerful.

The skill tree is one of several ways that you can take this game at your own pace. Since Ryza is already an experience alchemist, it wouldn't be reasonable to make her relearn everything, so they lock most of what she has been able to do before behind skills in the tree. These require skill points (SP) to unlock. Some are inexpensive, but many cost quite a lot of SP. One method I discovered to generate SP quickly is that you can use red neutralizers to craft red neutralizers. Once you unlock item duplication and rebuilding, you can really accelerate SP gain in combination with crafting red neutralizers. Doing both of these together, I had maxed out my skill tree around 25% of my way into the game. I then crafted some handy bombs using my new-found powers, making them as powerful as I could.

After doing this, I loaded up Ryza and her friends with some of those bombs. Each one did around five to ten thousand damage... which would one or two-shot enemies for most of the game. Near the end I refreshed all of my stuff, making end-game items and equipment. I quickly found myself hitting for between fifty and three hundred thousand damage, each. Even the final boss was just a couple of hits. So, be aware that you can make this game trivial with some clever crafting. Ingredients are limited to certain areas, so you can't make end-game items right away, but you can do quite a bit, as long as you explore.

How much you can do really depends on what you prioritize when playing, especially early on. For me, I focused on exploration first, as I would scout out and find all landmarks in each area right away. I also made sure to gather anything listed as new, while also grabbing anything that I wanted or needed more of. As it happens, this game seems to encourage that play style, because once a landmark is discovered, you can fast-travel to it at any time. The game also seems to catalog what you can gather where, as long as you've done it once.

Another aspect of the game is the key system. I feel like most players can almost ignore this, except that parts of the story does require it. One thing I discovered about keys is that sometimes recipes are actually hidden behind key caches. These mini treasures of sorts often have worthless stuff inside, but the more rare of a key used to open it, the better the stuff inside. Once you are able to craft rare and super rare keys, it becomes much easier to find stuff like secret hidden recipes inside. But for most of the game, when making keys like that was not easy, I mostly ignored them.

Speaking of treasures, almost all treasure chests have little to nothing of value inside. Usually they are just crafting ingredients. On rare occasion they are rare or even unique, but 99% of the time they have nothing special inside. It's a shame, since in previous games you might find good stuff in a chest. It was an odd design decision.

There are actually quite a lot of semi-random elements in this game that I feel pads it, but doesn't necessarily make it better. For some things, I understand why it's there, but it still doesn't feel natural. For example, there are random quests that can happen while you walk around pretty much anywhere - in a town or outside, any time there is an NPC sprite there might be a random quest. These quests usually offer rewards of items, SP, or sometimes even more rare rewards. They can often be worth doing in the moment, and will likely be a large source of early SP gains since crafting is difficult without a lot of ingredients. But after a while of playing, you tend to ignore them, just like the many hundreds (thousands?) of monsters littering the map as you explore. Early on, I fought most enemies. But I quickly found myself overleveled and just stopped fighting most monsters around halfway into the game. Even still, I reached the maximum level of 100 near the end.

While the first area has a ton to explore, it feels kind of empty since there isn't a lot you actually do there. Many of the areas from Ryza 1 are there to be looked at, but there is no ability or reason to go inside, other than to collect any ingredients that might be there. There are some quests that might take you there, so it's still worth exploring everywhere at least once, but the motivation has to be yours, not the game. It feels oddly empty when there is no reason to go other than your own curiosity.

Thankfully, there are multiple regions, and so they game world map is quite extensive. It's certainly the largest Ryza game, and has to be in the running for the largest Atelier game in general. You also get to meet more new party members in the new areas, making them take on a more personal stake. It does kind of drag on at times, but I never felt like I wanted to quit playing or anything. Each of the Ryza trilogy was always longer than the last, and Ryza 3 is definitely the longest. I put in right around one hundred hours into this one.

Despite this, I would say that overall Atelier Ryza 3 is still a fun game that is worth playing, especially for fans of the earlier Ryza entries. There are a ton of callbacks and some nice character interactions to keep you going, and crafting is smoother and slicker than ever. I love how all of the interfaces have been made smoother and flashier, while still being quick and easy to use. The material loop system is as easy to use and abuse as it always was, and I had no trouble making brokenly overpowered items with maxed out quality levels.

The music and Japanese voice acting is excellent, as it has always been. I feel like Ryza took the series to new heights with music though, as it has excellent scoring and a moving soundtrack overall. The first time I heard the Secret Hideout theme again I couldn't help but whistle it loud enough to disturb other members of my family. It's so, so good.

In case it's not obvious by now, Ryza 3 is technically a massive step up over all previous ones. It's the first almost open world Atelier game, where you can just walk from one corner of the map to the other without a single transition or loading screen. While a lot of art assets are reused (in seemingly every Atelier game), it's clear a ton of engine work went into Ryza 3, and getting over to unreachable areas can sometimes require creative maneuvering and navigation. While Ryza 2 did introduce a bit more to exploration like swinging and swimming, this one takes it to the next level. Everywhere on the map can be gotten to, and the map itself is also a massive upgrade, since you can zoom in to see more detail, and terrain is more than just an outline of where you can go, but a colorful representation of the world itself. Thankfully, on PC there are a decent number of options to make sure that you can play this game on many computers of various capabilities.

For example, it runs great on my desktop (or laptop) gaming PCs that are high end at 4K resolution. But on the Steam Deck, it plays perfectly if you change the graphical settings to medium for 30 frames per second (fps) or low if you like a higher frame rate. I played much of the game on desktop Linux via Proton, and it ran wonderfully. The Ryza series isn't super-detailed by modern standards, but it looked just fine, and the art style carries it a long way. If the game was too demanding, that would also mean higher system requirements, so it's a fair trade.

From an appropriateness standpoint, I feel like this one is a bit cleaner than some, though it's certainly not perfect. When it comes to foul language, minor curse words are used, like 'd*mn' and 'p*ssed', though very rarely. 'Age of God' is an important term used to relate to an era of time, and I believe 'God' might be used a small number of times outside of that. I don't recall seeing any blood.

There is fantasy violence, where you and your friends hit various enemies with your weapons, though it's mostly of the 'activate a command though a button press' variety. Enemies are mostly in the fantasy variety, 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, which is how alchemy is expressed in this game. The lore in this game explores the relationship and history of alchemy and the kinds of powers it can grant. All of the alchemists present in the game are kind and honest.

There is some sexual content, though I feel it is not as bad as previous entries, with one notable exception. Well, perhaps it's not an exception as much as it is a return of an earlier character, Lila, that wears insanely impractical outfits that exposes a lot of skin in strange places. Other than that, most characters dress modestly, or at least reasonably. Ryza's outside is more modest than it was in Ryza 2. There is a hot springs scene where swimsuits are visible, and once you beat the game, if you saw that scene, the characters can wear it as an outfit. Like in the previous game if Ryza crawls through a small opening, the camera pans so you can see her crawling rather than where she is going, presumably to show off her pose.

I will say that while some Atelier games have teased a lesbian relationship in the past, it seems that Ryza has mostly avoided that. I believe a female friend may have feelings for her, but she hasn't reciprocated, or it's just vague enough that the viewer could understand it either way. Other characters do confess love (in a normal romantic context), and it's very charming and tasteful.

Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key is a very good if imperfect conclusion to the excellent Atelier Ryza series. If you are curious about the Atelier series, the Ryza trilogy is an excellent starting point, since it's also one of the best. Ryza 3 isn't perfect; the pacing could be better, there is a lot of padding, and not every mechanic is well-explained. But despite all of that, I would say it's still worth playing, and I would encourage anyone who already loved playing Atelier Ryza 1 & 2 to pick this one up. If you haven't, then start with the first game and see if you enjoy it. If so, plan for the rest. If not, then at least you have it a shot! Highly Recommended for Atelier Ryza fans.