Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy DX

tl;dr score: 9/10 for the most part, 7/10 for some parts, but overall an 8.5/10. Very highly recommend. Ryza 2 was such a massive improvement over the first game, and this carries over into the DX version. The combat, in particular, is so much smoother with the way that you can chain your abilities, and chain those to meter dump. Making your skills build up your Tactics Lvl instead of sharing a resource with it (and thus feeling like you "can't") along with consistent pacing on when allies call out for orders means that you can toggle between aggressive and passive styles on your allies when you either want to build T-Lvl or let the meter build up a bit in anticipation of an order or skill usage burst. Additionally, and a HUGE thing I liked about this game more than the first, is that you can set a 4th party member as a support, and swap them in/out of a character slot ... and do it mid-combo. So if an enemy is about to be stunned, and you built (let's just say Tao) to do bonus damage to stunned enemies, you can bank up a bit of AP, start a combo with Ryza and then at the end of the combo swap her out for Tao and he'll continue the combo. Or in the early game you can just ..…

Honestly Im pretty mixed with this game. Im not a veteran atelier player but still I played sophie1,2 firis lydie ryza1,2 now and this game specifically is extremely cut scene heavy. Every time I try to focus on synthesis the game keeps pouring endless cutscenes which the majority isnt even relavent to the story either. I think this alone made me really feel fed up with the game. The game was fine, music is good but again, way too much cutscenes. And then I think this was inevitable but because unlike other atelier games, this game is Ryza 123. So naturally the story is linked with the previous Ryza games. Which for me was a down side. Yes I was happy that I could see more ryza from the future entrees but the game heading towards similar story, like the philschua and underworld again and again, makes the game feel kinda lame and boring. Not to mention the games synthesis is much condensed and easier but they also removed all the interesting bombs, heals, buffs items too. Honestly I would give it a meh review but its not too bad so thumbs up i guess.

Bini w makin cakep

Still cute wholesome characters. Still the best alchemy system in gaming. I kinda like the first game a little more, but this one is also good. Especially for those who enjoy collecting (though I prefer collecting creatures in JRPGs).

7/10

its good but not as good as the first im not really fond of the ruins investigation gameplay, the gameplay is a slog and out of all the ruins only 2 i find visually interesting. also this game has too much cutscenes, there should be an option to turn it off when you want to focus on cooking, wanted to buy something just to get blasted with 3 consecutives cutscenes from romy, klaudia, and serri. I love the cutscenes, but they just have to be at my consent its still a good sequel though, the biggest improvement is definitely the exploration and the gathering system and the game itself is incredibly gorgeous, so 7/10