Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is the latest entry in Gust’s ongoing atelier series. Taking control of our new adorable and soft-spoken young alchemist, Yumia, many things have changed from the recent entries.
The story takes a much more serious and almost more danger-filled tone by introducing the heroine with a flash forward, already introducing the player to a very clear and imminent threat. In addition to a fresh take on the series tone, a lot of the gameplay systems have once again been given another makeover in hopes of revolutionizing the Atelier game flow once more.
Does this new recipe serve as the series’ best new direction? Or does it explode right out of the alchemy pot? Find out as we explore the new region filled with mushrooms, uni’s, puni slimes, and other things that will make you feel right at home in this new direction.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land
Developer: Gust, Koei Tecmo Games
Publisher: Koei Tecmo Games
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: March 21, 2025
Price: $69.99
Yumia is a charming heroine, which makes me wish they could have had an English-voiced translation so I could better understand her interactions with the other characters.
Not knowing Japanese made it difficult for me to get engaged with the discussions between her and the other protagonists since for the most part, the character models are too limited in their animation. If it were in English, the VAs could fill in the gaps with their performances.
Exploration in the most recent atelier games, such as the Ryza series, has progressively improved in scope with each new title. With Yumia’s game, even larger strides were made by including various Zelda-like tools to help traverse and even in some cases, solve mini-game puzzles to unlock secret treasure lying hidden in wait.
The ability to double jump against walls and climb ledges was another nice surprise, but the most notable addition would certainly be having the ability to aim her uniquely shaped staff-like rifle to fire at objects and switch devices. This also allows her to pre-emptively assault foes giving her and her party the advantage in battle.
A lot of the exploration additions certainly feel as if a lot of inspiration was drawn from the likes of Zelda, and Breath of the Wild in terms of tool and world design.
Ancient relic machinery with glowing lights upon activation certainly makes it almost unmistakable that the similarities are somewhat on the nose when compared, however, it is by no means to the game’s detriment either.
Possibly the best form of reference gleaned from another existing RPG would have to be the large, well-crafted landscapes that feel similar to a Monolith Soft RPG like the Xenoblade games. While there aren’t floating continents, exploring the world in Atelier Yumia is fun to traverse, finding secrets, and difficult foes along the way in its impressive environments.
The combat is by far where the game shines at its absolute best. Gust has once again invented a combat system in the Atelier Series that seems to reinvent the wheel in command-based combat.
Though the visual representation of battle may look like it’s command-based, it seems to feel much more like an action RPG in practice, as it involves quite a bit of timing and proper placement when engaging the enemy.
Perfect dodging, blocking, and avoiding enemy attack danger zones are all present in combat, invoking your reflexes to the max. Combat tends to be very fast and flashy which can feel overwhelming at first, especially when all three characters are attacking, it might feel like sensory overload when initially learning the flow of combat.
After a few battles, it will begin to make more sense, especially after the story begins to show some friendly character quests that also explain the more nuanced combat techniques, like being able to perfectly dodge into switching to another playable character, causing tremendous damage to the target’s stun inflicting prospects.
As Yumia and her growing entourage of friends fight, the stronger they get through leveling up, however, this does come with what seems to be a very strange decision made into the game’s design and balance against rewarding the grind. Regrettably, enemies seem to scale with your character’s level, causing the pursuit of leveling up to feel kind of a conflict of interest.
As with most games with level scaling, it is never a welcomed feature as it contradicts the whole purpose of having a level system. If you level up, so will the enemies.
In some other cases, like in Diablo or Final Fantasy VIII, level scaling may even ruin the experience entirely since it may cause certain spikes of scaling to make certain encounters way harder if you’re not properly prepared.
There is a contingent it seems however, not the most elegant solution, but also a rather disappointing one found in most modern RPGs released past the 6th and 7th generation of video games.
Scaling is nothing more than being able to just tone the game down to an easier difficulty at no cost of anything, ruining any chance of challenging and rewarding experiences whatsoever.
Once it’s time to get better gear and items, another staple in the Atelier series comes into play, which is none other than the coveted Alchemy system.
Approaching this head-on, much like the combat system, will also require some careful studying, as many of the elements and technical features may come off hard to parse at first.
In most cases, the best way to make better stuff is just to get further into the game where better materials can be found for better results. It never gets old trying to maximize a synthesized item’s potential by testing out different materials in various ways.
I was able to make weapons that were even better than brand-new weapons meant to be a direct upgrade of the previous tier weapon through the effective use of the alchemy system.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a fantastic step in the right direction for the series. The move to larger exploration, the use of handy crafted tools and slowly introducing more and more features as the game progresses never felt better in the series, and the cast of characters all have a very colorful, charming, and dazzling look to them.
The combat system is gonna be competing in uniqueness against Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I have to hand it to Gust with what they were able to accomplish with their team this time. Using fantastic references, they have made another fantastic recipe with Atelier Yumia that will please ongoing fans.
