Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land on PS5
After finishing the Ryza trilogy and taking a quick jaunt back to Atelier Sophie, the series is finally onto its next big storyline. The benefit of such a long-running franchise such as Atelier (almost 28 years) is that each game can easily iterate on what has come before. However, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land feels like a massive step forward. I don’t know if the rest of this new trilogy will only focus on her, such as with Ryza, but this first game by Gust and Koei Tecmo has laid some phenomenal groundwork.
As this is a wholly new world, players are introduced to Aladiss, an empire that was destroyed by Alchemy centuries ago. The republic of Eustella wants to explore it finally, but the catastrophe that destroyed it also blanketed every region in thick mana. The biggest problem is that normal humans can’t withstand these high concentrations of mana, but they have found someone who can. Enter Yumia Liessfeldt, a fledgling Alchemist who can deal with the mana and fix it for others to pass.
There’s a slight problem with her participation, though. In most Atelier games, Alchemy is either well-known and beloved, or suddenly, an alchemist will pop up when no one knows what it is. Yumia has the misfortune of living in a world where Alchemy is reviled and considered taboo, making her a pariah amongst the rest of the Research Team she joins.
As most of the Research Team is either afraid or distrustful of her, she is paired with two siblings, Isla and Viktor von Duerer. Isla immediately warms to Yumia, but her brother is straitlaced and worried about what an alchemist might be capable of if allowed free rein. With that in mind, the trio set out into the mana for Yumia to prove herself and her benefit to the entire Research Team.
As with most Atelier games, you’re likely expecting the overall theme being personal resilience in the face of adversity as well as friendship being key to life. I do think there’s something quite unique to Yumia because she isn’t seen as some big hero from the start due to the pervailing opinion of Alchemy, so you get a feel for the character immediately.
On the whole, I think this is a rather standard Atelier story and falters a little when using aspects of Alchemy that returning players will already know it is capable of. However, the ragtag group that forms around Yumia gives the story heart and kept my interest through the whole ride. The game even allows for small side quests to get to know the characters which I thought was an excellent touch.
Visually, Aladiss is absolutely stunning. As you’re traversing a whole empire, you’re following elevation changes and multiple biomes. This means you can easily be looking down on vibrant valleys or seeing distant mountains. As Atelier Yumia incorporates a day-night cycle (that does matter for resource collection), you’re likely to see some pretty sights under very different lighting.
To get to the meat of this title, and my favorite aspect, Atelier Yumia sets itself apart from the previous games by being completely open-world. I had been playing for maybe an hour, and the whole time, I already wished every Atelier was like this. The four total regions came together as a massive landmass to explore, which feel more jam-packed with synthesis ingredients than maybe any other game in the series.
Most ingredients come from hand foraging or defeating monsters for their specific drops. However, Yumia’s staff weapon doubles as a rifle to shoot down any ingredients you might not easily reach. Instead of some overly involved mechanic, learning new recipes is all about finding new ingredients designated by a question mark on a tag that pops up when you approach them. Every region has new flowers and whatnot to collect, opening up new things to synthesise.
There is a slight barrier to making these new things, though. You must pay to unlock learned recipes with special Particles found in the vast regions. They aren’t entirely random, as blue lines can lead you to them. Any spot you can collect them can be recollected after a certain time, or you can get them from defeated enemies. While it typically costs only a handful of Particles to unlock a recipe, all can be leveled up to a maximum of 10 to confer extra effects or more potent base boosts.
I liked this recipe discovery mechanic much better than how it worked in most previous games. It made finding a new flower or type of rock even more exciting in Atelier Yumia, and I’d go out of my way to search for chests in ruins just in case there was a rare material in them. I wouldn’t have minded a way to know how many possible ingredients there were in a region, as I am sure I missed plenty, but that leads me to the other thing I really liked about the game.
Synthesis is perhaps the simplest it has ever been, though there is still plenty of depth if you dive into it. Otherwise, you choose one of the available synthesis cores, attach the related item type, and then you can create your item. There are additional nodes to apply stronger effects or higher quality, but they aren’t completely necessary. The game also has a nifty auto-synthesis mechanic. I used it most when I couldn’t be bothered to detail out a one-off item I would just give away for a quest.
This is also one of the only games in the entire series without a set Atelier. You start with one, but it’s barebones and pretty terrible, even if it is forever the one tied to the quick access button on the map. Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land has a building system where once you have liberated a Building Area, you can craft your own place or use pre-fabricated buildings if you have the material. This allows you to set up multiple Ateliers in each region or other important buildings, such as warehouses or greenhouses, for ingredients.
Atelier Yumia leaves figuring out almost everything in the game up to the player. With recipes, unless you have found all listed ingredients, you will have no idea what an item actually does. I spent the entire playthrough not having a consumable to revive my downed party members because I hadn’t fished enough to find the other half of the revive item. It didn’t matter until the final boss (and its annoying three forms), but I had to veer off after my third loss to figure out which thing did the trick.
Traversal is the only place where the game understands you need a helping hand. The map is a bit messy and hard to follow. By pressing R3, the game gives you a golden trail to follow to the tracked objective. This was a godsend, and I can’t imagine playing the game without it. The other highlight is that while Yumia lacks a general double jump, she does get one when you are pressed against a wall/cliff face. It even becomes a triple jump with a very useful mantle. I’m hesitant to want to make every game into Breath of the Wild, but I think any future entry should incorporate an actual climbing mechanic.
As Yumia is a game of breaking the Atelier series’ norms, combat also comes into play. For the first time, all battles are action-focused. While you don’t have any free movement like a Tales game, you can strafe around the enemy to avoid attacks. The actual fighting is somewhat similar to what Gust did with FAIRY TAIL 2 in that you have attacks tied to one of the face buttons. However, this game has charges for each instead of just mashing buttons until you can use a heavier attack.
All characters in Atelier Yumia have two sets of attacks based on location. There is an inner ring that puts you right up in front of the enemy or an outer ring that lets you sit back and potentially miss all of an enemy’s attack if they don’t have anything wide-reaching. There are three characters in play at any given time, though you can very easily switch to any reserve characters by holding R2 and switching to what the game calls the back row.
There isn’t much nuance to combat, and you’re still just mashing the buttons until they run out of uses and then waiting for the cooldown, but the attacks are flashy enough to be entertaining. There are also different types of fights. A split fight means your party might be scattered, all fighting one of the enemies, but a rumble means you fight three at once, and they share a combined health bar.
There are two XP increases in the skill tree, which makes it almost too easy to hit the 100-level cap. I skipped a lot of fighting and then jumped about 25 levels within 10 minutes by grinding enemies in an area in the last region. Sadly, there wasn’t any sort of extra levelling mechanic like in the first Atelier Sophie. This made it kind of a bummer because, while I wasn’t going out of my way to fight enemies, it made them more of a pointless obstacle rather than worth fighting.
I appreciated the skill tree as it wasn’t bloated, and there was only one, not one per character. It is broken into Combat, Exploration, and Synthesis. Combat handles things like higher chances for enemies to drop rare rewards and increased support item slots. Exploration increases the quality of foraged ingredients and also the quantity found at once. Synthesis is suited to help increase max recipe quality and how many Particles are gained in one harvest.
As a fan of the Atelier series since the PS3 era and an owner of every game (sometimes a couple of times over due to DX versions), Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is everything I could’ve hoped for in a new direction for the series. I enjoyed the open-world exploration with its dense population of ingredients and monsters, as well as the new combat that breaks free from the turn-based roots to try something new. I love this game for what it is, but I can’t wait for the sequel and beyond for all of the refining we’ll get.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is now available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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