I am going through my replay of the Atelier Ryza trilogy with the DX versions. I already played through and reviewed the first Atelier Ryza DX game, which you should read before you read this one. Here’s hoping I like this game more than the first one. Atelier Ryza 2 takes place three years later than the prior game.
Game Name: Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy DX
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC (Reviewed)
Developer(s): GUST Studios
Publisher(s): Koei Tecmo
Release Date: November 13th, 2025
Price: $39.99
Three years after the events of Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & The Secret Hideout DX, Ryza gets a mission to figure out a mysterious stone. To get help looking into the stone, Ryza travels to the capital, Ashra-am Baird. When she gets there, she enlists the aid of Tao and his apprentice Patricia. The three of them travel to the ruins of an ancient society to figure out the origins and the purpose of this mysterious stone.
Atelier Ryza In The Capital City
The gameplay loop of Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy isn’t nearly as similar to the first one as I was expecting. You can travel around the capital and talk to people, or go to the cafe to find jobs on the bulletin board. These jobs will require you to find materials, items, or defeat certain enemies.
Gathering items is pretty much the same, though; you just unlock things differently. Some recipes you get through recipe morphs, or recipe books, but a big change that Atelier Ryza 2 brings in is the skill tree. Each side quest, or item you successfully synthesize, gives you SP or Skill Points. SP helps you unlock skills, gathering quality upgrades, recipes, or even raising the quality cap and basket size.
Combat is also refined. You still gain AP by doing normal attacks. You also still use skills by using AP. One big difference, though, is that you don’t need to maximize your AP bar to level up your Tactics Level. Each skill you use, or item you use, increases your Tactics Level gauge. When it reaches a certain threshold, it levels up the Tactics Level. One new thing they added was guarding. If you guard at the exact time an attack hits you, you gain AP. Core Count is also not limited to just 10 uses in combat. Outside of combat, it is, but inside combat, you gain core count by attacking and taking turns. You use core count to then use items. It makes it much less intrusive to use items in combat. This fixes practically all my problems I had in combat from the first game. It starts fast, gets faster,r and combat feels more fun and less of a chore.
Dungeons are bigger and grander in Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy. You can jump farther, and later on, you get access to a rope that lets you jump across gaps. A lot of the dungeons are set in ruins and have their own investigation game you get to solve. You will get a light that shines and marks areas in dungeons with blue or yellow lights. These will be clues to help solve the puzzles inside the ruins. As you get more and more clues, you get access to notes and translations to help you find these solutions. When you find a solution, you can use the journal to put them together, and a percentage will be next to the dungeon. You generally will need to solve 50% of the dungeon to progress the main story mission from these ruins.
A Boost To Fidelity
One noticeable improvement from Atelier Ryza 1 to Atelier Ryza 2 is the significant boost in graphics and power. Character models are designed similarly, but the outfits, textures, and monsters get a boost in quality and detail. The animations and effects from battle also look a lot more polished. They put a lot of effort into the particle effects and the colors.
On Steam Deck, Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy DX does look a bit better than the first DX title, but it still has a lot of frame drops. You will be seeing anywhere between 30 – 50 FPS in the game. You could try locking it to 30 FPS, but the quality of the textures, hair, and outfits takes a dramatic hit either way. Especially when you consider the visuals on Nintendo Switch 2. On my PC with an Nvidia RTX 4080 Super, though, I could hit a locked 120 FPS with 1440p at high settings. It looks gorgeous on everything set to max. Plus, it plays smoothly at that framerate.
Atelier Ryza 2 DX
Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & The Secret Hideout DX had a lot of new content with new characters and a bunch of side episodes. Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy has less new content in comparison, but it feels more worthwhile to the package. As Ryza is engaging with the ruins of an ancient civilization, Empel and Lila are searching for an artifact that they tracked to the capital from decades ago. This DX version adds that story and expands upon their role in the game from their point of view. They are also added as playable characters in the game. With a pretty broken ability, Empel becomes a master of spamming powerful items.
I liked the additions to this version a lot. Smaller but more meaningful. These are two characters I felt were needed for this game, especially since they are already in the narrative in the first place. It could have been nice to have more things in the DX version of the game, but I always consider Ryza 2 as the awkward middle child of Ryza 1 and Ryza 3. It is much better to play than 1, but the story and narrative are more of a build-up of things to come, than its own self-contained story. Especially since we get so little about Kurken Island in this entry and the families we loved in the first game. The ruins and adventuring are nice added mechanics to traveling around. It is more of a Ryza adventure that helps us see some of the growth she has developed, as well as the development, especially of Tao. Tao becomes a boss in this entry of the series. Even though there wasn’t a lot added to Ryza 2, there really didn’t need to be anything since it doesn’t have as much content or story as Ryza 3.
Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy
Overall, I loved the upgrades to the gameplay and the combat in Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy. The story and narrative felt like it was more lore-heavy than anything, but it still had lots of great character moments and growth from the main cast of the first game we do get to see. If you are following through on the DX editions of the Atelier Ryza Trilogy, then you are still going to have a great time playing through this entry.
Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy DX is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
Review Disclosure Statement: Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy DX was provided to us by Koei Tecmo for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.
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Summary
Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy DX has smaller but more meaningful updates than the first DX game in the series. It is still less important narratively to the trilogy than either of the other titles, but it is the title in which gameplay became much more fun and engaging.
Pros
- Combat is smooth and fun to play throughout
- Empel and Lila add a nice addition to the title
- Looks great graphically
Cons
- The story isn’t as important
- Fi, though nice as an addition to the team, can become a bit annoying as you explore the ruins.
- Not a lot that makes this a DX title
