#ryza 3 would have to be a perfect game in every way to make this subseries even match mysterious

[eigwayne]

So I'm enjoying Atelier Ryza 2 mostly, but this is the first time I have played an Atelier game and wished I had a time limit. There's just... a little too much. Of everything.

The fields are all a little too big to be fun. Each ruin has too many fragments to read and decipher. You have to visit them too many times. Romy's shop just takes too many levels to max out. There's too many items and too many different ways to make and upgrade them. You end up with a chain of synthesis that is too long to parse without taking notes. I take notes on my Atelier games all the time, so it's not like taking notes is the problem. But there's so much going on that it doesn't feel lie it's worth the effort to even bother, like if I did take notes, I still wouldn't make it to where I want to be.

Even this critique is too long for me. It's just getting tedious. And it's not like I can skip any of these steps, because the next boss is stupid hard and I need the equipment upgrades. So much for beating Ryza 2 this weekend.

If the game had had a time limit, half of this extra time-sucking fat that's ticking me off wouldn't have been in the game. And that's why I wish there was a time limit.