Recently Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key released and it was my first time playing through any of the games in the series, though I had bought some and just never played them. However, before that game even released, Koei Tecmo and studio Gust announced that very first game in the series was getting remade for modern platforms. They gave me some hands on time with the game and I have some thoughts.

As the original game released in 1997 and back then I was a one console gamer and that wasn’t PlayStation, I never had the chance to play it. So coming into this, I was getting everything new and boy is there at lot to be given. Perhaps the most distinguishing element between this title and the recent Atelier Ryza 3, apart from the visuals, is the time management aspect, every action you do here takes time to complete. This is something the original release did as well, which is why one of the new additions for this game is to basically remove it. Now I could have played that way, I had the choice, but I opted for the timed experience and it was something.

Before I get into that, the basic setup of the game is that you play as Marie, a budding alchemist who seemingly has issues in class and is constantly getting ranked last in the placings. Her teacher gives her a new test, over the course of 5 years, develop something that is amazing and she will finally get to pass and become a full alchemist. This assignment helps keep the story moving forward, but also provides the reason for the schedule and that is perhaps the aspect I struggled with the most in my 2.5 hours with the game. While around town, time does not progress so you can visit the inn, the weapon shop and the Academy. The inn is where you'll obtain quests, the weapon shop is where you'll upgrade your armor and gear and then The Academy Is where you'll obtain alchemy supplies as well as selling extra materials you've obtained. The only way that time progresses in town is when you have gone into your house, that moves the clock forward a day.

Time management is probably the most crucial thing that you have to think about. I learned fairly early on that each recipe that you want to create takes time. Each location you want to travel to takes time and even obtaining items in those locales takes time. Then normally time wouldn't be a factor in a game like this except when you're combining those elements with the quests. Some of the quests would have me venture to the forest next to the town to obtain some herbs, it's one day out two days back because every time you return to town you go straight to your house. Some quests however would send me off to the mountains which would have me spending six days to walk there and then seven days to come back. If the quest required me to pick up six items that's another six days and all quests have a time limit. Being able to determine what quest you can pick up, where you can go and if you'll have time to actually create items once you're back, before the timer runs out it's a balancing act for sure. At one point I had a grand idea that I would just venture out of town without a quest and just farm materials as many as I could carry, but time still marches on that way as well.

The other thing that I had issues with especially in the first like half an hour of the game is there were so many tutorials, like a tutorial for sleeping, a tutorial for saving, a tutorial for when you go outside and a tutorial for when you come back inside. Then there's the sheer number of people you meet, you have friends, you have people you can hire to come with you on quest, the innkeeper, the innkeeper 's wife and the various town folks, there is so much to learn and the game doesn't hold back. What was funny though was after about an hour I really started getting into the groove of things, I knew where I needed to go in order to get the materials I needed (thankfully the map tells you that as well) and even working out exactly how often I would need to pick a fight with enemies. Once I was in that groove and I was plowing through and I was having fun with the game and that's really what I loved about my time with it. From the outset the game was throwing so much at me that I was sure I wasn't gonna like what I was playing, it'd be like getting a compendium of the first two books in the Lord of the Rings series within 10 minutes so you could start reading the third book. But eventually everything started to make sense right, there was a lot that I didn't really dive into, weapon upgrades and such, but I even understood how that was gonna work.

Of course, this was a preview build, the game is still two months away from release and there were bound to be some issues, there was one really particular one that irked me though. One of the materials I needed in order to synthesize a request only drops from the slime enemy, I had three from a previous encounter with them, I just needed one more. When I traveled into the region, taking two days to do so, there was not a single slime there, the game just failed to load any in. So I went back to town, wasting another three days, then turned right around and went back to the woods and wasting even more time and the game had loaded them in. The problem was I then couldn't interact with them until they moved and they only moved after I ran past them. Now of course this is likely just a bug in the build or at least I hope that's what it is but it was a black mark against my time with the game.

Now I haven't even delved into the alchemy aspect here, if you want to create something you need to have the materials, you need to have the magic to do so and you can't be too fatigued. So, spending 3/4 of your time running around collecting materials or fighting enemies and then trying to synthesize things will likely result in failure. Something that I liked about Atelier Ryza 3 was the inclusion of the auto option for synthesizing, but here it is even easier, you select what you wanted to make, the number you wanted to make and if you have the ingredients off you went. Of course, fatigue and magic power would determine your success rate and the brewing time on each recipe would be different. Basic healing herbs might only take one day per item so brewing 5 takes 5 days, but then you had items that would take five days per item and if somebody wanted six of them.

I could go further in on many aspects of the game, like I haven’t touched on the hiring of folks or the friends that Marie has and that is mostly due to the limits on time. When I got the offer to preview the game, it was pretty soon after finishing the latest original release and I thought how different could it be. Turns out, at least so far, it is very different and I am enjoying this more than the modern release. There is of course a lot more game to see and I will have to wait for that, but as it stands now, I can’t wait for school to be back in session.

The game will be released on July 13th for Switch, PC and both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.