Review in Progress: Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key

destructoid.com:

It’s time for my fourth annual review of one of Koei Tecmo’s Atelier games, and I’ve fallen a bit behind. I passed the 20-hour mark in Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key, which has proven insufficient for conjuring a final opinion.

Atelier Ryza 3 (I’m never going to remember the subtitle, so why pretend?) is a mix of old standards and new experiments. It is so strange. It wears an outfit comprised of various poorly fitting garments, and I am fighting with myself to discover whether I think that’s an overall good or bad thing.

The main change for Atelier Ryza 3 is that its world is magnitudes bigger than anything else in the series. In the beginning, you’re in the same area where Atelier Ryza takes place. Pretty much everything from the first game is represented – copied wholesale – with one major difference: there are no loading screens. The whole area is presented as one big continuous area. It’s still made up of nodes and pathways, but there’s no stoppage in between.

The story involves the sudden appearance of a group of islands that are quickly referred to as the “Kark Isles.” I’m guessing this name sounds sinister to the Japanese ear, but as an anglophone, it is more like the sound someone makes when a Junebug flies down their windpipe at high velocity. In the weirdly realistic twist for an Atelier plot, the sudden appearance of islands has had devastating consequences for the marine environment. Since Reiselin “Ryza” Stout is the only competent person on Kurken Island, she is asked to investigate.

But that’s only the beginning. Not long after you first start poking around the Kark Isles, Ryza and her squad get sidetracked by a plot that is only tangentially related to the main issue. So, they