YMMV / Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key

• Awesome Moments: Before leaving for the Nemed region, Lent pays his father a visit. He challenges him to a swordfight, and proceeds to inflict a Curb-Stomp Battle upon him.
• Game-Breaker: There were ways to easily obtain gems in the previous Ryza games, but Ryza 3 takes the cake in how early and quickly its infinite gem trick can be performed. The only prerequisite is a material with the "Ultra Purity" Super Trait, and a recipe where that material can be used. This trait increases an item's gem reduction value, but not its duplication cost. This means that some items can be reduced into more gems than it costs to duplicate them. All you have to do is get Ultra Purity onto an item (with its Super Trait slot unlocked), duplicate that item as many times as you can, then reduce all but one of them (you can set one of the item as a favorite to prevent accidentally getting rid of it); rinse and repeat until you can afford what you need. This allows you to duplicate and rebuild items to your heart's content, trivializing alchemy. While Super Traits in general are rare, they're not hard to spot (they come from the yellow glowing gathering points), and are available very early in the game, meaning it's not hard to do this trick within an hour of starting if you know about it.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Just like the previous Atelier Ryza games, this game has been criticized for being extremely easy once you understand how to get good traits and high-quality items. Every Game-Breaker from the previous games is still there, and the Ultra Purity trick, which can be abused extremely early in the game, means that gems are practically infinite from the get-go. This also means that the Secret Key system is mostly pointless (outside of their effects during synthesis, which can be useful): there's no point in giving yourself a temporary buff when the enemies can barely touch a party that's equipped with halfway-decent gear, even on Very Hard difficulty. This stands in stark contrast to the previous game, Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, which was praised by veteran Atelier players for its difficulty, which encouraged players to focus on alchemy to create tools that'll help them overcome challenges.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A frequent criticism of this game is that it retreads a lot of the same ground as Ryza's previous adventures. Aside from the open world format, not much has changed, gameplay-wise: the alchemy, gathering, and combat all feel the same (if not slightly worse, in some respects, like only being able to see the items that can be gathered with your currently-equipped tool at gathering spots). There aren't many major new features, with the biggest one, the Secret Keys, not really having much of an impact on gameplay, only giving minor buffs that can easily be ignored. This is best exemplified in how nearly the entire map from the first Atelier Ryza is recycled with very few changes, including reusing the same music.
• Quicksand Box: In a way. While the markers for the main quest and sidequests are clearly marked on the map, finding specific materials can be tricky. The maps are bigger than ever, and some important materials can only be found in specific areas, meaning that unless you spend a lot of time fully exploring every single region, you'll likely find yourself wondering where the hell you're supposed to find that one ingredient you really need. The worst offender might be the Delphi Rose, which is extremely important both for making the Sorcery Rose (used to create mid-game armor), and for the Rose Perfume (which is needed to progress through Tao's events), but can only be found in one out-of-the-way spot in the mainland, which you'll be given no reason to visit until long after when you need it.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The open world format makes it easy to get distracted from the main story quest due to the abundance of sidequests, and it's easy to get distracted from those sidequests by the random quests that might pop up at any time (which have a chance to give precious SP or permanently boost a party member's stats... isn't that too good to pass up?)