{"id":8505,"date":"2020-09-11T12:13:51","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T12:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=8505"},"modified":"2020-09-24T11:54:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T11:54:32","slug":"atelier-ryza-ever-darkness-the-secret-hideout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/atelier-ryza-ever-darkness-the-secret-hideout\/","title":{"rendered":"Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness &#038; the Secret Hideout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atelier_(video_game_franchise)\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Atelier games<\/a> have been vaguely on my radar since the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atelier_Escha_%26_Logy:_Alchemists_of_the_Dusk_Sky\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Escha &#038; Logy<\/a> Anime was released. More or less at random I decided to start with the most recent one, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atelier_Ryza:_Ever_Darkness_%26_the_Secret_Hideout\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Atelier Ryza<\/a>, without being aware it was the most recent one at the time.<\/p>\n<p>It was a bit of a shock when halfway through I discovered it was released <em>last year<\/em>&#8230; because it definitely doesn&#8217;t look it. Maybe it&#8217;s because it was designed specifically for consoles, or maybe it&#8217;s because the PC version is incredibly half-assed (no mouse support, though to be fair it did recognize my Logitech controller instantly), but whatever the reason it does not feel anything like a modern game (for comparison, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/dragon-quest-xi-echoes-of-an-elusive-age\/\" title=\"DRAGON QUEST XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Dragon Quest XI<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-of-cold-steel-iii\/\" title=\"THE LEGEND OF HEROES: Trails of Cold Steel III\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Cold Steel III<\/a> blow it out of the water on a purely technical level). That doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not fun though.<\/p>\n<p>It is absolutely fun and I ended up spending just under 50 hours beating it (Character Level 50, Alchemy Level 99 with everything crafted). Around 12 of which were spent pre-Tower crafting <a href=\"https:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/sharedfiles\/filedetails\/?id=1908383455\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the best equipment<\/a>&#8230; which resulted in hilariously wrecking the Great Elementals in ~5 seconds (the end boss took ~10 due to the second form). Combat aside, for the most part it&#8217;s a very laid-back slice of life type of game that unsurprisingly focuses on collecting, duplicating, and fabricating items. I even got some <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Recettear:_An_Item_Shop%27s_Tale\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Recettear<\/a> vibes occasionally from the various villager requests. Action-packed it is not and despite their dynamic nature (the only time the action pauses is during a Quick Action; otherwise everyone&#8217;s always attacking over one another) you&#8217;ll likely spend most of your time avoiding battles.<\/p>\n<p>The question now is whether or not to try out some earlier games in the franchise, or just assume this is the current pinnacle mechanics-wise and do something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Atelier games have been vaguely on my radar since the Escha &#038; Logy Anime was released. More or less at random I decided to start with the most recent one, Atelier Ryza, without being aware it was the most recent one at the time. It was a bit of a shock when halfway through I discovered it was released last year&#8230; because it definitely doesn&#8217;t look it. Maybe it&#8217;s because it was designed specifically for consoles, or maybe it&#8217;s because the PC version is incredibly half-assed (no mouse support, though to be fair it did recognize my Logitech controller instantly), but whatever the reason it does not feel anything like a modern game (for comparison, Dragon Quest XI and Cold Steel III blow it out of the water on a purely technical level). That doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not fun though. It is absolutely fun and I ended up spending just under 50 hours beating it (Character Level 50, Alchemy Level 99 with everything crafted). Around 12 of which were spent pre-Tower crafting the best equipment&#8230; which resulted in hilariously wrecking the Great Elementals in ~5 seconds (the end boss took ~10 due to the second form). Combat aside, for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[479,477,28,121,473],"class_list":["post-8505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-video-game-related","tag-atelier","tag-exploration","tag-fantasy","tag-rpg","tag-third-person-perspective"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}