Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Review
The latest game in the Atelier series feels massive and makes exploration rewarding.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. Credit: Gust / Koei Tecmo
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is the latest game in the long-running Atelier series from Gust and Koei Tecmo. The series, which focuses on heroes who use alchemy on their adventures, has been going strong since 1997, with games coming out nearly every year. I can’t compare Atelier Yumia with previous entries in the series since this is my first time playing an Atelier game, but I’m having a great time with the game so far.
The game follows Yumia Liessfeldt, a young alchemist and part of the research team investigating the cataclysm that destroyed the continent of Aladiss. Alchemy has been banned partly because of the disaster, but Yumia has special permission to use her talents because they’re crucial to the mission's success. She’s determined to discover how alchemy was involved and show her colleagues that alchemy is a force for good in the right hands.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. Credit: Gust / Koei Tecmo
So far, the game’s storytelling isn’t particularly engaging. The characters are endearing but their dialogue isn’t very good or often feels superfluous. It takes too long to reach a point where you make interesting discoveries about the backstory of the disaster that destroyed Aladiss.
The game's world feels massive, and exploration is a joy. Hidden secrets are around every corner, and I felt compelled to comb every inch I could reach. Like the latest games in the Zelda series, the world here has verticality to its design, which adds depth to exploration. Yumia can triple wall jump from the beginning of the game, making it easy to get carried away trying to reach areas that perhaps aren’t meant to be reachable at the start. Eventually, you get a motorcycle that lets you travel more quickly, though fast travel points are distributed generously. For me, discovering the game’s world was by far the most enjoyable part of the game.
Atelier Yumia features a menu-driven real-time combat system. You control a single character at a time from your six-member party, from which only three members—considered the front row—can participate in a fight. You can switch characters freely, though I couldn’t discern a difference between them in the time I’ve spent with the game so far. All of them have four melee and four long-range attacks that you can assign to the face buttons of the controller, and all can equip four alchemical weapons set to the same buttons that you can toggle with a shoulder button. While you manage your attacks, you must also move around the combat area to avoid enemy attacks, which have their ranges highlighted on the ground, or time your dodges. The game’s battle tutorials paint combat as strategic, but in practice, I found myself button-mashing during battles. I did just fine as long as I switched to alchemical weapons after stunning enemies and dodged correctly when needed. Even halfway into the game, fighting hasn’t gotten any more challenging.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. Credit: Gust / Koei Tecmo
A key part of the Atelier series is alchemy. Yumia collects ingredients and recipes on her adventure and uses them to synthesize new items and weapons. The system is complex, as it considers the quality of ingredients and will change the effects of items and their quality depending on how you slot the ingredients into the recipe. I quickly lost my patience with this as I was more interested in exploring. Thankfully, the game includes an option that automatically assigns ingredients based on getting maximum quality or effects from your recipe. Even when I used this feature all the time, the alchemy was still tedious because of all the animations in between accessing each menu you use. Creating items simply takes too long, even when you can skip some—not all—of the animations.
As you explore new regions, you can construct bases to rest or house your diverse alchemical tools. The base building offers complete freedom; you acquire new furniture, walls, floors, roofs, and more as you progress, and you can build however you like. Additionally, you can learn new structure types like warehouses and greenhouses. I usually begin building with one of the game’s included presets and then customize my base later. Considering the need to establish numerous bases, I found presets to be a valuable starting point.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. Credit: Gust / Koei Tecmo
The game’s anime-style graphics are decent. The lead characters are well-designed and stand out, but background NPCs and monsters are fairly unremarkable and often generic. Though the visual style is slightly bland, the environments are diverse and interesting. I wish the developers had pushed just a little more here, as the game's world had the potential to be truly dazzling. The game could have used higher fidelity graphics and lighting or a more distinct style that doesn’t require next-gen visuals.
I would guess that I’m around halfway through the game. So far, I’m having a great time. As this game is large, I didn't want to delay getting some thoughts together about my experience and impressions. Atelier Yumia will be available in a few days, on March 20, 2025, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a meaty exploration experience in their ARPGs.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land will be available on PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One / Series X|S. A demo is available now, with progress that will carry over to the full game.
Overall Score (so far): 7/10
Played on: PS5
