Atelier Ryza 2

After having waited far too long since my initial playthrough of Atelier Ryza back in 2023 to dive into its sequel, I finally found myself going back at it and playing through the entire game. More than anticipated I realized I was falling more and more in love with it and truly enjoyed the experience a ton.

Obviously its whole unique alchemy system on which the game is fundamentally based around, gathering, synthesizing items and finding out about all the wonders of alchemy continues to be a bunch of fun given to all the possibilities that open themselves up combined with how strong you can make yourself, which is something I always appreciate in RPGs like this since there's always something immensley satisfying about becoming pretty much overpowered through the right strategy and having this variety of options in the first place.

All the more though I found myself captivated by the lighthearted tone with all the great character moments of which this game is filled with to the brim. Even more than the first Ryza entry already did, it shines a strong focus on these and knows how to make the little moments memorable and all the more joyful. Seeing Ryza and the other characters grown up a bit from how the point they were prior has sucha  emotional touch to it while going on another adventure with them in the proccess only reinforces the feelings for them as we see their bonds grow even closer.

Notable were constantly the conversations between Klaudia and Ryza which couldn't have been much more adorable and always let to my heart beating faster as they brought their close relationship to display. Honestly, there were some incredibly cute moments, just alone one event scene in which they talked about the letters Klaudia wrote to Ryza and how she kept all of them as she treasures each one of these letters a ton. Their relationship as such clearly ended up becoming my favorite and I could've never brought myself to remove Klaudia from my party as soon as she joined.

If not already for this, its lively soundtrack sparked constant excitement while exploring all the various areas made for a pleasant time. There's of course a somewhat noticeable contrast with a character like Tao in the way he was depicted in the prior game and this sequel, likely given to this game having a different writer and although I could see criticism for this, given the time that passed both in game and between my playthroughs, I personally never minded this and feel like the directions went fine for what this title is going for. 

In my roughly 40 hours I learned once more why the Atelier series is so special with a fairly unique standpoint in the JRPG genre and couldn't be more glad to have finally gotten around to Ryza 2 after it was long overdue, though by chance it might've come just in the right time since it was exactly what I needed at this point in time.

Ghonf