The game has free DLC for all the characters that makes all of them look better. It's no longer necessary to mod the game but there are a ton out there (LoversLab). Klaudia had a major glow up and will give off ara ara vibes soon. Ryza's thighs might have got thicker. Lila isn't playable but Serri looks almost as good and I am shocked they have her bare ass showing. Sit down Patricia you aren't ready to compete with these three.

Steam Deck users: This game freezes every once in awhile at loading screens. Never found a solution no matter what Proton I used. Thankfully the game autosaves when you change locations so you never lose much progress (or any) but it is annoying.

This is a significant improvement over the first game. The alchemy system starts slow since you need to unlock everything with skill points. But this is probably one of the easiest systems in any of the games to create 999 items. Every item added increases the value no matter what it is. You might not have any crazy skills to go with them but by mid/end game you can pretty easily make a max item without looking at any guides. The only real issue is you are locked out of certain items until the very end of the game.

The combat is decent but scales poorly. By mid game it was just faster and more effective to have Ryza use items to kill everything on the second turn. You will likely get gear checked on the bosses forcing a weapon upgrade. The majority of the game I just used starting armor/accessories which healed me every turn and I did fine. At the end I did upgrade armor and one accessory on each character and beat the final boss without needing to heal once. Being able to modify your starting item CC and obliterating everything with 3 Omega Craft along with whatever the first special I unlocked was OP.

There is no real story but I found the character events in this game were was better than the first. Although they could have deleted Clifford and just made Bos a playable character.

You can spend a ton of time just playing around with the alchemy system which is what I did. The game was a lot of fun and I would recommend it.

Atelier Ryza 2 takes all the interesting parts about the first game and completely revamps them into a truly interesting and thoughtful system of gathering, crafting, and fighting. The alchemy finally started to mature into a system that lets you freely break anything if you so choose—for example, I was able to beat the final boss within 3 turns because of all the magic bombs I made. The story is significantly more interesting as a whole; I was paying attention the whole way through this time, unlike in Ryza 1.

The combat this time has generally the same core idea behind it as the first game, but is completely reworked to reward actual skill-based play. There's a lot more depth to it this time around than in the first game where you really only have a couple different choices during combat and no real reason to play as characters other than Ryza. Most party members feel really fun to play as during combat (I especially liked Patricia and Clifford).

Playing on the hard difficulty, the game as a whole was generally pretty easy, but some parts do require you to understand enemy attack windups; some enemy attacks are poorly telegraphed or do the Elden Ring style of a 3 hour long windup for an attack that takes probably 2 frames to connect. The fun in this game really comes from collecting and synthesising tons of materials to overprepare for whatever situation you think you'll face. Allowing a party member to hang out on the sidelines ready to swap in for anyone is a really nice change that helps combos stay running while also providing new ways to deal damage or follow action orders.

For some reason, once I got to the late-game areas, enemies always ganged up on Patricia specifically. I don't know if this is just some cosmic coincidence or if the game just hates her and whoever swaps out with her specifically, but enemies almost exclusively targeted her instead of the other characters. This isn't really an issue I have with the game (it actually got me to play as her and other characters a lot more than I would normally), but it *was* strange.

The story is obviously nothing to write home about—you can't really go in expecting Disco Elysium or Grand Theft Auto IV or something like that—but the characters are surprisingly expressive, the voice actors add a lot of energy into their performances, and the writing and structure both see significant improvements from the first game. Unlike the first game, which sees you mostly screwing around until you stumble upon an ancient secret, this game has you actively exploring ruins and trying to solve a mystery yourself. Each character has their own questline spanning the entire game, alongside an assortment of side characters (including Romy, from the first game). This helps a lot with connecting to and understanding the characters of the story. Without it, I doubt I'd have enjoyed the main quest as much. It also adds a lot of content to the game while feeling completely natural instead of bloated—there will always be something to do at any given moment, right up until the end of the game. Certain parts of the game's story (namely the Exploration Logs) could have been used far more than they actually were. Figuring out the witch's history through the memory fragments was actually really cool (I even liked the whole sorting minigame), but I really think they could have used that part more than they actually did.

Other aspects of the game, like side quests or the shop development thing, are underused at best. I found myself frequently ignoring them until I got another thing to do for Zephine or I ran out of inventory space. The game does call you out if you don't do enough side quests, though, which was hilarious when it happened to me.

The pricing is definitely a choice. Do not buy this game at full price. Koei Tecmo is scamming you if you do. Please don't. The DLC prices are also crazy, especially because they're almost 100% worthless. If I had to say, you should probably just buy the base game when it's on sale. The fact that this game costs the same as Dark Souls III is completely ridiculous.

overall 8.5/10 clifford has a nice ass

This is my first game in atelier
everything is really confusing at the beginning and too much cutscene, I almost refund it
but when understand the game system it's really fun and addicting
Super pretty art style and character design
Good Game