By Chris Jackson
PLATFORM: PC, PS4/5 (REVIEWED), SWITCH | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
The final instalment of the Ryza trilogy – and the 24th game in the overall series – takes place one year after the events of Ryza 2. Now firmly settled in her new home on Kurken Island (which she has already saved from a calamitous end), protagonist Ryza has become known for her mastery of alchemy and, along with her pals, has spent several years researching the dastardly insect-like Philuscha who continue to threaten the peaceful village. Now, mysterious earthquakes are occurring and strange islands are appearing around the land, giving Ryza another opportunity to head out on a new adventure alongside some familiar (if you’ve played the first two games, that is) faces and new friends that she meets along the way.
Ryza 3 gives players eleven playable characters to get to grips with (one of the larger casts in the series), as well as four large areas to explore and gather crafting materials from. Quests will take you all over the map, but you can easily fast travel to any previously-discovered landmark, cutting down the amount of time you need to spend traipsing from one place to another. Gliding through the air, swimming underwater and riding around on one of three animals, you’re constantly opening up new areas for exploration and finding rare materials that will help you to create stronger and more effective weapons and items. There’s plenty of fighting to do as well, of course, with Ryza’s turn-based / real-time hybrid combat.
Many of Ryza 3‘s mechanics will be familiar to players of the previous two games, but a few new additions mean and the game’s refusal to explain how things work mean that that there’s still a bit of a learning curve, and newcomers are likely to find themselves completely flummoxed by just how much is going on. In combat, you’ll be looking out for Action Orders (performing a skill recommended by your party to deal additional damage), building up Action Points to unleash two different types of skills whose uses are dependent on a single meter, blocking attacks, setting up combos, switching between characters (allowing for more options during battles than in previous games), fiddling about with keys that add additional effects to your attacks, and much more. Similarly, the crafting system is still a bit more complicated than it really needs to be with its confusing interface, restrictions on what can or can’t be done, and transferring of “traits” between materials and items.
As is often the case with the Atelier series, Ryza 3 can be a difficult game to get into. This trilogy in particular has become known for its character development (it’s the first in the entire series where the main character has been the central protagonist in all three games), so those who have played the previous two instalments will definitely have an advantage in terms of getting more out of what’s actually happening within the story. It probably isn’t advisable to jump straight into this without playing through the previous two games, but if you’re either looking to round off the trilogy or looking for a bunch of games that you can sink your teeth into, Ryza 3 – and indeed the trilogy as a whole – provides a nicely rewarding experience if you allow time for everything to come together.
