Koei Tecmo and Gust held a livestream for Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout, where they showed off a first look at the game running on the Nintendo Switch, as well as some other bits.
Check out the gameplay below (starts at 17:28 mark):
Apart from the alchemy sessions, we also get a first look at the game’s menus, which features a photograph of Ryza and her friends in lieu of a traditional party screen. (This photograph will change as you go through the game.) Later on, we see some more battle gameplay, featuring Claudia and Tao as the other two party members.
Around the 36 minute mark, the developers show off the previously detailed Gathering Grounds Synthesis system, where you get to create your own ingredient-gathering areas. The key to this feature are Travel Bottles, lantern-like bottles where you add in different ingredients, and depending on what you add and which Bottle you add it to (pertaining to the time of day), you’ll get different areas to explore.
Essentially, it’s creating your own worlds inside the bottles. (Man, alchemy is convenient!) As you create these worlds, you have passwords you can use to go back to those particular worlds, and Gust revealed that several of these Gathering Grounds will be released by them via Password for promotional events.
It was asked on stream by one of the hosts whether might happen upon other people’s worlds while randomly entering four letters or numbers. According to the producer, they tried it out once, and only managed to get one to work after 30 tries, so it’ll probably be somewhat difficult.
Around the 42:19 mark, battles with Lila and Ampel as the party members are shown off, as well as Lila’s Fatal Drive finisher attack.
New features for Atelier Ryza were also shown off in a new short trailer, and they include the ability to remodel the atelier, a farm where you can grow ingredients, and a Memory Map where you can choose to do write ups about areas you’ve been to. Depending on who you choose to write them, the contents of the write up will change. You can also find glowing points on the map which will give clues for the Memory Map, where you can unlock hidden treasure on the map.
Finally, Ryza and her friend’s preorder costumes are shown off beginning at the 1:01:39 mark.
Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout releases for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in Japan on September 26, 2019. The game releases for PS4, Switch, and PC in North America on October 29, 2019 and in Europe on November 1, 2019. Check out the game’s battle features in our previous report here.
