Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land Review – Craft Heaven

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land Review
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is the twenty-sixth mainline game in the classic Atelier series. It’s the first entry in a new continuity and things are off to a great start. Fans of crafting games, exploration, and slow-paced fantasy are in for a treat.

In a land where alchemy is forbidden, a girl named Yumia has been given special permission to use it. The price is that she must use her power to assist with an ongoing investigation of the ruined empire of Aladiss. And she’s assigned a pair of guards to watch her around the clock.

The rest of the expedition team suspects her, her guards watch her every move, and her hard-earned skills are viewed with fear. But Yumia bears with it. She came to Aladiss for a reason: to clear out the dangerous manabound areas and discover more about the cataclysm and the ruins left behind.

Yumia sets out to change the way people look at alchemy, improve her skills, and make friends. And do a lot of intricate item crafting on the way.

Crafting Looks Great, Feels Great
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land has a lot to offer, but the single best thing it brings to the table is crafting. The Atelier games are the origin for the classic JRPG item crafting system. And trust me, Atelier Yumia has more crafting to go around than ever before.

It’s still incredibly easy to get sucked into the gameplay loop of harvesting, crafting, and harvesting some more. You can spend hours exploring and upgrading your gear without touching on the main plot. And the Synthesis system is incredibly detailed. There are hundreds of items and many, many ways to combine them for maximum effect.

This game features multiple Alchemy Cores that Yumia can power up with various reagents. Each Core has its own influence on the resulting item: quality, trait slots, effect, and more. Gear is incredibly customizable and only gets more so as you unlock new options. And Yumia’s crafting animations are lovely.

Yumia also gathers memories to unlock new alchemy recipes. And she can build bases, furniture, and exploration-related items. Simple Synthesis, which lets you craft exploration items on the move, is a game-changer. So is the ability to put containers across the map and get access to your full inventory outside the atelier.

Atelier Yumia is Just Plain Fun
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land isn’t just a crafting game. It’s also an action JRPG in its own right. Combat revolves around hitting the right buttons at the right moment. You can chain attacks, dart between different ranges, and nail on enemy weak points to stun them. Using an attack too often will put it into cooldown. And you can shift into defense mode to block and evade attacks instead. The result feels like a frantic rhythm game.

Yumia also uses her staff like a gun to solve puzzles and shoot magical ammo on the field. This is important, as the game’s open world has a treasure trove of collectibles to find. The in-game world is vast and full of secrets, which is both wonderful and very annoying. It’s difficult to tell how to get to certain landmarks from the map. I keep wandering off-course because I can’t tell what paths are walkable.

A major game mechanic is energy management. Yumia’s ventures into dangerous manabound areas are limited by her energy reserves. She can build items to help with this so she can explore longer. There is a nice sense of progression as you unlock new abilities and gather higher quality ingredients on your adventures.

However, I consistently ran into a bug where towns and even the atelier would be inexplicably manabound. This forced me to rely on combat and hidden items to recharge energy constantly. I also had trouble with accidentally deleting items from my container while trying to figure out how to equip them.

Precious Memories
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land does a great job of capturing Yumia’s alienation. I rapidly stopped talking to NPCs in camp because none of them seemed to have good things to say to Yumia. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. The game’s overall tone is a warm slice of life fantasy. Like all Atelier games, this title tells the story of a young woman growing up and making friends.

The main and secondary characters are fun, if very archetypal. Watching Yumia slowly bond with people who give her a chance is quite soothing. The character designs are very cute and the setting is suitably magical. Aladiss is gorgeous and features a variety of biomes. The monsters are cute and otherworldly. And it’s very fun to spot a cool landmark in the distance and find your way toward it.

The soundscape is nice, but relatively unobtrusive. Yumia’s dancing animations are gorgeous but lengthy. I wish some of them were skippable. Especially Yumia’s victory animation, which involves so much camera spinning it made me seasick. I am not exaggerating. I really had to close the game and lie down for a while.

Sadly, the game only offers Japanese voice acting. At least the graphics are generally quite nice. However, there were a few graphical bugs. The screen would become blurry at times, and Yumia often appears to be standing in midair while climbing. Once, I got stuck halfway up a wall.

All in all, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a fun adventure in crafting and exploration. Its chill atmosphere mixes quite well with the slightly heavier themes. And the crafting is excellent.

***Steam code provided by the publisher***

The Good

Excellent crafting system
Vast open world
Lovely narrative
Fun combat

80

The Bad

Buggy
Camera made me seasick
Long animations