Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is the latest entry into the long-running Atelier franchise by Koei Tecmo. After the conclusion of Atelier Ryza’s story, Yumia seems like a breath of fresh air and at least on paper, looks like it will continue to build on the successes of its predecessors.
Does it live up to the franchise’s hype? Is it worth checking out?
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land
In Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land players will follow the tale of Yumia Liessfeldt, a brand new Alchemist in a strange land where Alchemy is seen as a dark force. The game kicks off with Yumia and her pals climbing a tower when she gets separated from the rest of her party. You’ll play through a short tutorial segment which gets you up to speed with the battle system and some of the basic game mechanics.
You’ll then face off against a powerful foe in a cutscene and get thrown off the tower. After this It’s back to the past you go to play through the events leading up to what you just witnessed. Very standard storytelling fare here to be honest.
Yumia is an alchemist and has two officers dispatched to keep an eye on her while an investigation is underway into the Aladissian Empire’s ruins. Players will venture forth into the mysterious world discovering ruins and more while slowly but surely getting to grips with what’s going on. Throughout this adventure, players will also get to learn more about Yumia and her past. You’ll also discover that Alchemy is seen as a terrible, destructive force and the way people treat Yumia is quite harsh.
As the story progresses, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of the main character and her compatriots and it’s very well done if not a tad formulaic at times. Isla and her brother for example work quite well as contrasts to each other while Yumia herself has some deep introspective monologues which help flesh out her character as events unfold. It’s all very endearing and it hooks you albeit feeling quite dark for an Atelier game.
The Atelier Ryza trilogy also had some moments which felt a lot more serious and Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land takes this further.
Gameplay in Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land has been streamlined even more than before and some fans of the Atelier franchise might find this to be disappointing. For example, you don’t even need a cauldron anymore to do some Alchemy. Yumia can just stand inside her Atelier and start synthesizing with her hands by putting together some key ingredients and mana. She can also synthesize a couple of items out in the field which includes bullets for her gunstaff.
Yup, you read that right. You have a staff that doubles as a rifle or gun and you can do quite a few things with it too. Such as shooting ladders, switches and enemies to scan them before taking them on in battle. Synthesis in the game can also be automated with a few button presses and it’s easier than ever to create the most effective new items or recipes which honestly does take away some of the fun in learning how to do these things yourself.
Battles in Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land involve players engaging in more active fights this time around with skills having short cooldowns and an emphasis on positioning in battles. You can move between close range and longer ranger and your skills will change depending on your position in battle. Characters can be easily swapped to and you can also set their strategies before diving into battles.
For the most part, battles play out in quite a button-bashy manner with players essentially using every single skill they can while they are off cooldown. If the enemy is low enough level, you’ll make quick work of them. Tougher foes however will require some level of strategy to defeat but the game is really quite easy to get through with minimum struggling on the standard difficulty. You can even drop the difficulty level further if you want to just focus on the story itself.
This brings me to one of my minor gripes in Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. While we now have a larger open world to explore which is different to previous Atelier games, there’s quite a lot of vast stretches of environment which is just filled with collectible items and not much else. The game world seems a bit empty or lifeless because of this and feels like you’re just overwhelmed with resources or chests at every turn.
It honestly reminded me of Genshin Impact but not in a good way. Just because you can do something similar to an open world action-adventure game doesn’t always mean you should.
The one good thing about the open world however is the fact that traversing areas is a breeze thanks to Yumia being able to move quite fast as well as being to jump up and climb rough terrain quite easily. You can also use ziplines to get across areas quite quickly.
Graphically Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land looks great at some points while bafflingly looking atrocious at others. The entire game has this weird washed out blurry look to it on PC and even with every single graphics setting maxed out, it’s quite disappointing seeing this. This is mentioned repeatedly in the game’s Steam discussion forum too with quite a few players reporting the same problem with the game.
Thankfully I did come across a mod which addresses this issue with the game’s lighting but players should not be required to go looking for a solution that the developers themselves could have addressed.
The game features a photo mode which has quite an extensive array of options for players to tinker with. You can use stickers, adjust camera angles, apply filters and more but bafflingly, as you zoom in closer to your character, they disappear for some reason. This is something that the developers need to address because being able to zoom in and take screenshots of your character with a gorgeous background is a player’s favourite pastime these days.
The character designs in Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land are good and I enjoyed the Japanese voice acting in the game. Character expressions also convey their emotion really well as well as their body language and the storytelling done in cutscenes is great because of this. The soundtrack is enjoyable to listen to too and the sound effects in battle are well done. I do have a minor gripe with Yumia repeating the same voice lines every now and then while out exploring the open world but eventually you do get used to her saying something whenever you collect an item or discover something.
Overall, Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a fun almost 50-hour-long JRPG with elements borrowed from multiple other games in its genre. The game’s charm lies in its characters and its storytelling and thankfully this does a lot of heavy lifting for it. Especially as you get to learn about Yumia, her past and how she deals with the severe dislike Alchemy has in the game’s world.
The actual gameplay itself is serviceable but very button bashy and quite frankly ridiculously easy so if you wanted more strategic, challenging turn-based gameplay here, you’ll be slightly disappointed. Newcomers to the Atelier franchise will enjoy this game while more seasoned veterans will be left questioning the franchise’s direction a bit since it has gotten a lot more open-world and has been simplified a bit too much in my opinion.
Atelier Yumia The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land gets a reluctant 8/10 from me but with caveats. Do give the game a try though especially if you’re a newcomer and then go check out the other titles in the franchise.
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The code was provided by the distributor.
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