Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Review
Although I’m not the biggest expert on Atelier games, I’ve played a good majority of them and know enough to appreciate the series’ evolution. My journey with the franchise began with the Arland trilogy, known for its time-limit mechanics. While these mechanics added a layer of challenge, they could also be stressful, especially for newcomers who prefer a more relaxed pace or completionists. Over the years, the series gradually moved away from these constraints with the Atelier Ryza series eliminating time limits altogether. By the third entry, Atelier Ryza had begun laying the foundation for an open-world experience. Atelier Firis experimented with open-world design before, but that attempt never fully took off due to questionable design choices. Atelier Yumia however, embraces a fully open-world approach, drawing clear inspiration from popular open-world games.
After completing the tutorial, you’re thrown into said open world and are encouraged to explore at your own pace. Yumia, the protagonist, is an alchemist tasked by a research team with investigating the ruins on the continent of Aladiss. She is aided by other team members, starting with the Duerer siblings. In Yumia’s world, alchemy is viewed with distrust and considered taboo. However, the research team is forced to rely on her expertise as certain areas cannot be explored without an alchemist’s abilities. Yumia joins the expedition not only to assist the research team but also to uncover clues about her mother's passion, and understand why she chose this profession despite its stigma.
The story primarily unfolds through slice-of-life moments, leading up to climactic events at the end of each region’s arc. As the game progresses, additional research team members join Yumia’s journey. Party members also appear on the map allowing you to complete their story quests. While these quests don’t offer tangible rewards, they provide deeper insight into the characters. I like most of Atelier Yumia's cast, though I found Nina to be the least likable of the main party. She plays a major role in the story later on, yet I didn’t connect with her as much as the rest of the team. Another weak point is that the villains are pretty one-note or don't have enough screen time to develop. As the world of Atelier Yumia leans into a much darker and serious atmosphere, it's kind of a shame that we don't get to see too many interactions with the villains of this game. They have interesting backstories, but the lack of interaction with them feels like a missed opportunity to develop these characters.
The world of Atelier Yumia is a seamless and huge open field filled with materials to gather and landmarks to discover. Unlike previous entries, Yumia can use her staff as a rifle to collect ingredients stuck to walls or activate specific landmarks. While she can’t scale walls like protagonists in other open-world games, she can perform a triple jump near a wall, allowing her to overcome greater heights. Some areas contain mana-bound fields that require energy to explore. Energy is used for basic synthesis and serves as a protective resource, preventing fall damage and other hazards. As you progress, energy also powers up Yumia’s bike. While this mechanic sounds limiting, the game provides plenty of energy, ensuring it rarely becomes an issue — except in the third region, where it's filled with mana-dense zones. It gets quite confusing trying to clear them. Each region is densely packed, though the final area is noticeably smaller, feeling more like a traditional final dungeon.
Alchemy remains a core element of the Atelier series, and Yumia introduces several new synthesis mechanics. On the field, you can perform simple synthesis to create bullets for Yumia’s staff, bandages for healing, and other exploration tools. At her atelier, she engages in a more complex alchemy system for crafting recipes. The system is more streamlined compared to past Atelier games but still retains plenty of depth. As always, gathered materials have different qualities and traits, but the new Resonance system plays a crucial role. Certain materials expand a resonance field, enhancing synthesis. When a specific score is reached, additional materials can be added to improve quality. Meeting certain thresholds will also add a slot to an item, which also allows players to customize items further with Trait Crystals.
The primary gameplay loop revolves around finding new items in the field to unlock recipes and gathering the right materials to enhance said recipe. Memory particles can be found by following the end of a direction of light. When recipes are improved, they will have better passive effects from the beginning. This allows players to create a stronger item without the restrictions. While the alchemy system is simpler than past entries in a way, the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming. Thankfully, an auto-synthesize feature lets players automate the process based on preset options.
Another major addition in Atelier Yumia is the base-building system. Given the game’s large open world, Yumia can establish bases at specific locations. This system seems heavily inspired by Genshin Impact’s Serenitea Pot. If you're unfamiliar with this terminology, it's basically a pocket dimension where you're allowed to create and decorate their own space using resources collected on the field. Buildings, furniture, and geological features can be placed freely, with several presets available for those who prefer a simpler approach. There are also different variations available for the base which allows you to build houses and have your own atelier. There are also smaller crafting zones like a campsite which will only let you place a few items. I’m not the most creative when it comes to customization, so I'll just take whatever the preset options available.
Atelier games typically maintain a familiar battle system until a new subseries is introduced, and when Atelier Yumia was first revealed, its combat looked chaotic and difficult to understand. However, in practice it’s simpler than it appears. Each character has cooldown-based skills mapped to the face buttons, with different abilities for close and long-range attacks. Cooldowns are short making combat feel action-heavy. Players can move freely in battle to dodge attacks and the defend button serves as both a block and an evasion tool for perfect dodges.
Despite its promising mechanics, I found Atelier Yumia’s combat to be one of its weaker aspects. Regular encounters often boil down to button mashing as enemies are easily overwhelmed without requiring much strategy. Perfect dodges are also too forgiving as enemy attacks are clearly telegraphed with area-of-effect markers or visual indicators whenever they're about to attack.
The combat shines most in boss battles, which require more deliberate use of the mechanics. Bosses attack frequently, forcing you to time your dodges and break their shields to stun them. However, even these encounters highlight the combat system’s flaws. One major issue is experience scaling. You level up too quickly, making most fights trivial. By the time I finished the first region, I was already at level 40. Additionally, crafted items feel underwhelming unless you put a huge time sink into alchemy. In most battles, you will find that your regular attacks are way more effective than using items. There are some other functions like Friend Action where you perform a duo item in sync, which looks cool, but unless the item used is overpowered, it does nothing of note in combat. While the battle system has potential, it needs better balancing. Boss fights are a highlight, but there are so few of them, that the overall combat experience falls short of being truly engaging.
From a presentation standpoint, this is the best-looking Atelier game to date. When playing on PC and streaming to an OLED device, the game looks stunning, especially in the first two regions. Performance-wise, it ran at a steady frame rate on my mid-range machine, though long play sessions seemed to cause issues with loading screens. On an AMD graphics card (RX 7800 XT), the game would randomly crash when encountering a loading screen after extended play. Luckily, the autosave system activates every time you fast travel, so these crashes didn't bother me too much. Mikhail went into more detail covering the PC port here.
The OLED device I streamed to is the Retroid Pocket 5. If you have a decent local network connection, you can stream to a portable device using apps like Artemis without experiencing too much latency. In fact, it was pretty seamless on my end. I have my PC set to automatically tone down the settings to 1080p, as that’s the maximum resolution of this device. There are also upscaling options, such as Intel XeSS, if you find your device struggling to meet the demands of the game. However, when streaming with a low latency, it felt just like playing natively here. It really captures the feeling of playing the series on the PS Vita where I first started with the series through the Arland games.
Ultimately, Atelier Yumia is a great game with a combat system that leaves a lot to be desired. While the exploration is a highlight, with the game drawing clear inspiration from modern open-world games, those familiar with the open-world genre might not find much innovation here. Despite that, Atelier Yumia is a fantastic starting point for newcomers to the Atelier franchise.