3/5 ★ – Boulderman24's review of Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout.

I was in a phase of wanting to try a bunch of JRPGs, and found a review that spoke very highly of this one, so I tried it. Some pros, this game is pretty from afar, your character Ryza’s model is well done and the town is done in a nice style. I actually thought it had a somewhat interesting story, and the ending and explanation of what had been going on is pretty unique. The crafting is what this game is all about, and though I didn’t understand it fully, it was fun to tinker around with and gradually begin to understand. Collecting items around the world is sort of fun, and there are some good sound effects in this game when you pick up stuff or complete alchemy. Now the cons. The combat is dull, and the monsters have little variation. Some of them look pretty poor, like a dragon who was supposed to be a big boss but looked like it was made of paper on a string. The game is unpolished in certain ways, such as when you leave a certain area and reach the threshold, your character and everything around here suddenly freezes up while the next area loads. The crafting and alchemy is hard to understand well, and because this game is not super well known it was hard to find any guides properly explaining it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this game is bad, but it is definitely only one to go for if you’ve exhausted all the more polished high quality games of the same genre.