While the Atelier series has been steadily evolving and tweaking its winning JRPG/craft-’em-up formula across 30 years and 20-plus games, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land perhaps represents the most radical shift yet. But that doesn’t mean existing fans should be worried: for all of the changes, Yumia is still an Atelier game at heart, only bigger, more action-focused, and a little darker than before.
Atelier Yumia takes place in a land ravaged by a past cataclysm. The world was nearly ended many years ago by the powers of alchemy, and so now the practice is deemed taboo, reviled by many, and outright outlawed in some places. Yumia is a sweet young alchemist sporting killer — literally — high heels and wielding a magical staff that doubles up as a rifle. She learned alchemy from her late mother, and lives in seclusion atop a hill with only her floating, talking lamp Flammi for company.
When she’s approached by a research team to help investigate the ruins of the Aladissian Empire she sees an opportunity to learn more about why the empire fell, whether alchemy was truly responsible for the calamity long ago, and to perhaps rehabilitate the image of her craft. Initially, she’s met with scepticism by some of her new comrades and the people she meets, but over time hearts are warmed, lessons are learned, and the power of friendship trumps prejudice.
It’s a darker story, and has higher stakes than is typical for an Atelier game. But you shouldn’t go into this expecting something like Metaphor: ReFantazio. There’s a little bit of name calling and side-eyeing towards Yumia and her craft, but it doesn’t get much nastier than that. The tone of the game is mostly charming and optimistic, with the darker elements of the story acting as seasoning for the narrative rather than the dominating flavour of it.
Throughout the adventure you’ll explore an expansive open world. There are four large areas in the game that are unlocked by following the main questline, but each locale is packed with a plethora of side quests, treasures to find, monsters to slay, and items to collect. Side quests are largely throwaway fare: go over there, kill a thing, come back, etc. But the open world is fun to explore, with secrets lurking in every nook and cranny of the map.
We frequently took time off between story beats to peruse the map, heading to each question mark in turn just to see what was there and mostly felt rewarded by what we found. It helps that Yumia is an agile protagonist with the ability to triple jump up walls making getting over obstacles easier than it has any right to be. Later she gets a swish motorcycle to further speed up the proceedings. There’s also an array of ziplines strewn throughout the world that once found and repaired can make getting across the map a breeze.
While traversing the world of Atelier Yumia you’ll run afoul of all manner of nasty beasties to do battle with. Combat is more action-focused than in previous Atelier titles, and while it’s perhaps a little on the easy side, some smart design decisions stop it from becoming tedious across the 40 or 50 hours it’ll take to finish the main storyline of the game.
During battle you control one character — Yumia by default — and her attacks are mapped to the four face buttons. Each attack has a set number of uses and a cooldown attached to it and so the idea is to use a skill and then once it’s recharging use different ones. You can also freely strafe Yumia from right-to-left during combat, and when an enemy telegraphs an upcoming attack you can adjust your position to stay out of the highlighted area on the ground to avoid damage.
Tapping down on the d-pad moves Yumia away from her opponent, and once at range all of her attacks change to long distance magical skills. Enemies are weak to either magical or physical attacks, and so you need to move between the front and the back rows to exploit that weakness, stun your foe, and then unleash big damage. As you progress through the game you’ll unlock dodges, tag-team attacks with a squad-mate, and the ultra powerful Mana Surge abilities that can turn the tide of battle in an instant.
On normal difficulty combat against the rank and file enemies is generally easy and battles are often over in a heartbeat with just a few taps of a face button so it never becomes irritating battling monsters either for experience or when farming for resources. Boss encounters are where the combat shines, with more complicated attack patterns from your enemies, and some mid-battle cut-scenes to add to the drama. Plus, one of the bosses is voiced by Takaya Kuroda, famous for voicing the greatest man that ever lived Kiryu Kazuma from the Yakuza series. So that’s nice.
You can farm as much experience as you like in combat but that’ll only get you so far. Even if you’ve hit the level cap of 100 you can quickly find yourself outmatched by lower level foes if your equipment is not up to snuff and that’s where alchemy comes in. At Yumia’s workshop you can unlock the recipes you’ve found out on your adventures as long as you’ve got the requisite items to do so, and then you’ll synthesize a recipe using collected resources in your backpack.
Better quality resources in the pot yield better rewards, generally, but once you get the hang of the process you can alter the recipe to produce items that might be of higher quality, or ones that come with additional effects. So you could make a sword that’s got higher base stats, or one that specialises in raising one stat in particular, or one that does more damage against a specific type of enemy. It’s a little daunting at first but fairly straight forward once you’ve done it a few times, and you can always automate the whole process if recipe micromanagement is just not your thing.
You can also create building materials such as walls, rooves, flooring, and decorations. While you’re exploring the world of Atelier Yumia you can find building sites to set up secondary bases of operations and design them how you see fit. It’s a fairly rudimentary set of building options, but welcome nonetheless. A couple of tents and a sleeping bag just won’t cut the mustard when you can knock up a small cottage with cherry blossom trees in the garden for a pit-stop between missions.
Conclusion
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a wonderfully charming addition to the long-running JRPG series. It’s a fantastic jumping in point to the franchise for new players, and has enough tweaks to the established formula to provide a breath of fresh air for existing fans. The story is a little slight, but the appealing characters, streamlined yet robust crafting system, and rewarding exploration make this a recipe for a good time.
