Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Reviews

I think that the bad reviews are a little unwarranted. It's Breath of the Wild meets anime Barbies and survival crafting + base building. I like it.

I bought this game after enjoying the demo. After progressing in the open world, the game has become unpleasant to play. The optimization of this game is quite poor. I've tried playing on Steam Deck and my PC and both run terribly at normal settings. I have held out on writing a review hoping that the developer will update the game with improved optimization, but its not happened. It's a shame that I played just too long to get a refund when I first bought it...

This was the first Atelier game I've ever played. Got me interested in the series! The characters/story is fun. Combat can be repetitive, but I enjoyed it. Good mix of button masher/strategy in there.

I think they've continued the trend of making worse alchemy systems. I didn't even really want to do any alchemy anymore by the end of the game and started just letting the game auto select material for anything that wasn't equipment.

( full review with screenshots: https://www.gaming-parrot.com/post/atelier-yumia-review-cutting-corners ) This is a neutral review, but I went with recommend because there are plenty of negative reviews already. The most important thing to say about Atelier Yumia is that if you're not already familiar with these games, this is categorically not where you should start. Although each new trilogy in the franchise shakes things up in its own way, basically every other game has provided an exceptionally deep crafting system that drives everything else in the game: you explore to find resources to craft items that let you win harder fights and progress to new areas, which gives you new resources to start all over again. Yumia departs from this by focusing on a Ubisoft-esque open world and replacing its combat and crafting systems with what is effectively mindless button mashing. It eventually coalesces into something that is just about worthwhile, but new players should look to basically any other game in the franchise instead. Yumia's poor reviews from experienced players mostly come down to three things: the combat and crafting have been thoroughly dumbed down, the open world is dull, and the game is ugly. I'll come to each of these, but let's start with the combat and crafting. Previous Atelier games typically had crafting systems that were like little puzzle games thanks to limits on how many items you could mix in and requiring specific resources or traits to unlock the strongest effects. Yumia ditches all of that in favor of requiring at most one or two exact items in each recipe and mostly allowing you to put anything (or nothing) in each of three to four nodes per layer. There are little stars scattered around the recipe graph that grant increasing benefits if you can reach them, and better ingredients generally provide more coverage to reach stars, as well as boosting a resonance counter to get even more effects. There's probably a version of this idea that could work with tuning, but what we're giving basically amounts to sorting by resonance area and putting the best ingredient you're willing to spend in each slot. Ingredients do have passive bonuses that make them better to include in certain recipes, but there's no way to sort by these effects and filtering for them after each step is incredibly tedious, so most players won't bother. Worst of all, the puzzle elements are almost completely gone since unlocking the deeper layers of the recipe is controlled entirely by spending magic open world dust rather than by what you've put into the recipe. You can just about see what they were going for if you squint at the crafting system, but combat is just baffling. It's probably supposed to be an evolution of the rhythmic approach to Ryza's combat, but there's so much happening on screen at once and so little explanation of what any of your attacks do that you may as well just mash random buttons until you win. You're supposed to move between the inner and outer ranges and use dodges to evade enemy attacks, but in practice attacks either don't do enough damage to be worth dodging or the attack range covers the entire battlefield anyway, so realistically most battles are slapfights to see whose HP runs out first. Luckily, you level up faster in this game than in almost any other JRPG ever made and all problems can be solved with more stats, so while the battles are utterly mindless, they at least aren't overly frustrating. In the event you run into trouble, you either grind for 5 minutes to get 10 levels or you autocraft some high quality equipment that wipes the floor with all enemies. As for the open world, it's more of a mixed bag. There's no denying that most of the activities available are generic and unrewarding, but they do at least take place in some striking locales. I get the impression that an earlier iteration of Yumia may have had a more survival game bent because of the camp building system that lets you make bases for healing and crafting in each area of the map. There are a ton of customization and functional items to use in these camps, but there's also zero reason to actually use any of it because you can always just fast travel back to your main camp and then again to return to a tower or camp near where you were. The good news is that while the open world is tedious and unrewarding, you can completely ignore it unless you're desperate to chase trophies. Plenty of side quests make you interact with the open world systems, but none of them impact the main story, and focusing just on the main quests gives you something much closer to the flow of a typical Atelier game. I stopped worrying about open world activities completely near the end of Act 2 and enjoyed the game much more from then on. The final common complaint is that the game is ugly, which I think mostly comes from a combination of the fog effects in Act 1 and people playing on Deck or lower spec systems. Yumia certainly isn't going to win any awards for technical graphics, but later areas have some striking designs and impressive vistas. The first area is much more generic, however, and the fog effect just doesn't land. If you're on Deck or something that maxes out with similar settings, meanwhile, the game is just a blurry mess in every area. Although it hasn't gotten as much focus as the other changes, Yumia's story is arguably as much of a departure from previous Atelier games as anything else. Most games in this series don't have real villains so much as impending environmental or biological crises that the party needs to stop. Yumia has an enemy faction and recurring boss fights against them, by contrast, which both serves to provide extra character motivation and make it feel more like a typical JRPG. The story also returns to the darker tones of the Dusk trilogy (Ayesha/Escha & Logy/Shallie) in having a world in environmental crisis and a dimmer view of alchemy. This isn't gritty by any means, nor even as dark as recent Tales of games, but it's a big shift in tone from the happy atmosphere of the Ryza trilogy. The result is a decently entertaining story that's held back by a somewhat weak cast of characters.

This game called out to me to be played before everything in my backlog on release day, and I decided to finally play an Atelier game for the first time. It was the right decision. Atelier Yumia plays, looks, and sounds great, and has a story that achieves depth without being convoluted. There was a learning curve to using synthesis effectively, and after several iterations, I finally made broken gear to steamroll enemies in the last region, which was satisfying. Perfect performance at 1440p highest settings with a 6700XT and 11600K. The overall experience is refreshingly authentic, with likable, beautiful characters, crisp and fast-paced combat and exploration, and a sense of thoughtful design throughout. I highly recommend this and eagerly await the next entry.

As someone who has played 14 previous Atelier games, I can understand why some people have mixed feelings about this one. There is less alchemy creation in this than any of the others. There are no time limits, alchemy quality doesn't seem too important, there is no alchemy rank and there is no currency. It's a chill game, with a heavy emphasis on exploration and regional development. In my opinion it's a refreshing change to the series formula, most of the previous games are the same. Learn alchemy, make stuff on time and turn in request after request. If you want difficult time-restrictive challenging games, look for earlier atelier games (I'm looking at you Arland saga).

I really wanted to like this game. Yumia has an excellent design, the setting is cool, and the tone reminds me of the Dusk trilogy. However, the alchemy has taken an absolute nosedive. The vast majority of nodes have no specific requirement, so ingredients only really matter for unlocking recipes aside from having 1-4 ingredients that you use to fill every available slot. The trait system is an add-on that's done after alchemy, so the challenge of taking a trait through various stages to get to the desired result is gone. If you want a relatively easy JRPG with an open world, this isn't bad. But fans of the series will mostly just find disappointment.

I really wanted to love Atelier Yumia but I can't. They keep dumbing down the alchemy system with each new series and I can't fool myself into liking this anymore. The characters are probably the strongest part of Yumia but it still wasn't enough to save it.There was so much I wanted to love about Yumia from building my bases to exploring but every time I go to craft an item I'm just left sad and unfulfilled. This is no longer the complex alchemy crafting system I fell in love with.

Atelier Yumia is fun game honestly! I've played every single atelier, including the Japanese exclusives, and I can see the different approaches they went for in this new title that also seems to be inviting players from other playerbase outside of the series niche aspects. Those who really enjoy an action packed Jrpg, with a dark tone story line and a stereotypical, but well familiarised and loved character troupes will have a good time to say the least. After playing a bit of the same formula for so long in the past games, I did enjoy the change coming from Yumia. I'm a person who is really open to different things and I think the changes from Yumia were welcoming in my opinion! I can see it's not for everyone, as a good portion of the Atelier Series is more of a "Comfort, Slice of life, farming style" genre. Yumia tones that down, and applies more of a story and combat focused image. The one thing I don't see people talking enough of however, is the amount of effort put into the cut-scenes and animations of the characters, whether it be in battle, exploration, Yumia's captivating dances, and more. Animations and facial expressions have always been something the Devs have struggled with in their past titles, and playing Yumia made realise just how much they've improved. The animations and models are absolutely outstanding. The scenery and landscapes are stunning, and I always catch myself opening up photo mode just to take a few group pictures to use as a wallpaper, or banner somewhere. Shout out to GUST and the Atelier Yumia Development team for their hard work! They've outdone themselves! It makes me smile to see their growth! That being said, I'd say the simplest way to look at it is, If you are someone who appreciates: - Action Combat - Serious Story (With a few comforting, wholesome camping moments with the characters on the side) - Exploring an open world and ruins - Amazing Voice acting - Beautiful Graphics - Amazing upbeat battle OST, followed by relaxing overworld OST - Funny interactions and banter between the cast - Crafting overpowered gear to feel like a god, because you're someone who loves steamrolling in JPRGS, - Playing dress up with the characters in outfits Or even a few of those on the list, I would say this game is worth your time and money, especially with the additional collaboration DLCs! (The Tekken Collab being the best one!) If nothing on that list catches your interest, then perhaps the game just is not for you, which is understandable! It is an amazing game, but not for everyone.