Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and Envisioned Land aims to elevate the JRPG franchise to a modern standard. The title has seen massive changes from when Ryza's journey concluded two years ago. From streamlining many of the core mechanics to make the game more appealing to a vast open world full of puzzles and places to explore, Atelier Yumia has mucg to offer.
Atelier Yumia has certainly been a joyride for me, but not without a few bumps on the road that somewhat made the journey a bit uncomfortable. Let's dive into this review and find out how good the latest Atelier title is.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land promises a grand adventure of discovery and friendship
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Atelier Yumia is the starting point for a brand new protagonist and novice Alchemist, Yumia Liessfeldt. Like the series' previous entry, it tells a coming-of-age story about how our young alchemist and a group of misfits meets and bonds as they travel across The Continent.
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My prior knowledge in the Atelier series comes only from the Ryza games, and I do plan to get more invested in the franchise down the line. Yumia's journey is by far my favorite story. Here's what I loved about the game and what I disliked.
Gameplay: Combat, Alchemy, Exploration
The game features many of the classic mechanics the franchise is known for, albeit with major improvements that bring the game more in line with other modern releases. First of all, the combat went through quite an overhaul building on Ryza's systems. Combat is real-time in Yumia, with you being able to select between three characters taking the field at a time.
During combat, you will need to dodge enemy attacks based on sound and visual cues. You can avoid damage by walking out of the path of the attack or evading.
Dealing damage also comes with a set of skills that recharges over time. You can opt for close range, where you'll have more moves but will be at a risk of taking damage, or from above, where the risk will be low but so are the moves at your disposal.
Positioning is the key to Atelier Yumia's gameplay and this will hold true for you especially during the boss encounters. Ally AI also received a significant upgrade as you don't have to worry about the rest of the team members getting injured often.
Combat is not that difficult, to be honest, but Atelier Yumia feels more in line with a modern open-world action RPG than its laid-back comfortable roots. Fighting enemies is fun, and with the number of abilities each character gets, it never gets old. Sudden difficulty spikes in combat will check your proficiency with Alchemy.
The Alchemy system saw a massive overhaul with how user-friendly it now feels. You can now craft items like bandages on the go, which boosts the game's pace. You'll still need to go back to the Atelier now and then to craft certain items and gear, but getting to conjure healing supplies among other things on the go definitely goes well with how big the open world is.
The best part about the Alchemy system in Atelier Yumia is the fact that you can now auto-synthesize items based on your choice. You can set up different parameters based on what you want — the level of the item you are conjuring or the quality — and it will automatically add ingredients based on your preference.
These aspects make the Alchemy feature feel like less of a hassle for newcomers who just want to explore or complete the story. However, veteran alchemists who know their way through the lost art can definitely conjure better products.
Exploration has also received a massive overhaul in Atelier Yumia. The developers have included a plethora of tools at your disposal, making exploring the giant world of the game a breeze. The jump mechanic lets you perform a triple-jump to scale mountains. There's also a bike that lets you quickly traverse the world.
Atelier Yumia also introduces a Energy System — something akin to a stamina that depletes as you jump, fall from a height, or explore into manabound zones. Tying in with the cozy feeling the series is known for, you'll rarely run out of this energy. It depletes very slowly, and you can slow down further using upgrades.
The world of Atelier Yumia brims with various activities. I generally detest open-world games due to their checkbox completionist nature, but I'm in love with exploring the continent and unlocking various areas. During the story, it often happened that I saw a path, took it, and ended up in a new area.
Discovery and exploration tie up Atelier Yumia's world, and while the open world didn't blow me away how that of RDR2 did, it still compelled me to explore the place, whether it was to find something I noticed or just scratch the curiousity itch.
I thoroughly enjoyed the base-building and spent countless hours farming materials just to build a base I really like and being able to craft items like beds, chairs, and fences on the go.
Atelier Yumia tells a story of camaraderie and adventure
Atelier Yumia's titular protagonist will feel similar and yet somewhat different compared to the franchise's previous heroines. The game's story tends to be a bit on the darker side, with a similar tragedy that brings some of the party member and Yumia's motivation on the same table.
You will play as Yumia Liessfeldt, a member of the Aladiss Research Team who is also an alchemist. Alchemy in this world is viewed upon as a taboo, and our heroine will face discrimination for that. The Von Duerer siblings, who are tasked with supervising you and keeping your abilities in check, will become your first teammates.
As the story progresses, more characters will join your party, and like a typical JRPG, each will have a distinct personality and playstyle. These characters give Atelier Yumia's world color. Each character has unique world views, and you will slowly discover more about them as you progress.
I love Yumia as a protagonist. She is cute, a littleclumsy, and her Ahoge changes based on her mood. She can come up as a bit introverted, which is expected based on how most people treat her, but can quickly turn into a confident witch when it comes to alchemy and helping people.
The voice actors also deliver stellar performances, which makes each character stand out. Those familiar with Japanese voice actors will find known artists like Mikako Komatsu, Takaya Kuroda, and Takehito Koyasu lending their years of experience to the game.
Graphics, artstyle and music
Atelier Yumia isn't winning any awards when it comes to graphics. It looks like your typical cel-shaded anime-styled game, but the art direction is beautiful. Each region feels unique, with the various areas having different architecture and flora. The enemy designs are also memorable as the monsters are defined by the areas they inhabit.
You'll find monsters that look like abominations of an experiment in the ruins of an old scientific laboratory, bird-like creatures roaming the areas with big trees, and many more.
Music in Atelier Yumia also plays into the title's cozy nature of the title, as the OST is quite calming and will immerse you with the game's world. The battle tracks are upbeat, with some of the best music you can find for the various bosses you will encounter.
Performance verdict: Not without its flaws
While Atelier Yumia's artistic front is solid and something I have little to no complaint against, I cannot say the same on its technological side. Despite my hardware being way over the game's recommended specifications in the official Steam page, I had massive performance issues ranging from crashes to stutters.
I played the game on Standard - High settings with upscaling on, and the game struggled to hit a consistent 60 FPS as I was running around the world. Another noticeable issue was when I reached the second region of Shivash: I started facing frequent crashes everytime I tried to load into my save file.
It took a bit of tinkering and changing a few settings for the game to finally becoming playable again, but the inconsistent frame rate ranging from 40 to 60 was definitely noticeable.
Below are the specifications of my PC on which I tested out the game:
- Ryzen 5 5600X
- AMD RX 6600 8GB VRAM
- 32 GB RAM DDR4
Another thing I noticed were some occassional bugs that I will elaborate on in the next section.
A few nitpicks: Odd ingredients in the Alchemical formula
For the most part, the only concerning factor is the performance issues, but there are a few bugs here and there. One such bug I constantly ran into was getting dragged into combat when there was no enemy nearby, only to realize the creature was on a different floor. This led to several cases of backtracking, especially when I was looking for hints to solve a puzzle.
Another minor nitpick is that the story takes a while to pick up. While I feel it is the best one in the series, the first few hours were literally running from point A to B. The introductory segment dragged on for too long, which can be a dealbreaker for many.
Once that was over and the characters and their motivation are established, the game gets a much better pacing compared to the intial part and I was often rushing the story missions just to know what will happen next.
The side missions are extremely boring and most of the time are your typical fetch quests so I decided to ignore them for the most part. Outside of these issues, Atelier Yumia has become one of my favorite modern JRPGs.
In conclusion
Atelier Yumia is a phenomenal JRPG that improves on the mechanics of its predecessors and provides a much more balanced exploration that does not get stale quickly. The open-world is jam-packed with various activities and the story told is much more in line with a coming-of-age adventurer's journey than a typical slice-of-life plot.
Yumia is a great protagonist, and each of her ragtag crew of explorers has a story to tell. Pair well-written characters with phenomenal voice acting, and you've got a great cast telling you a great story.
The alchemy system sees a massive improvement compared to the Ryza games and with the added feature of automatically adding ingrediants as your liking, it will definitely be provide helpful for all the newcomers to the series. Besides the vast open-world, I think Yumia's story is the best one the series has told till date.
Despite a slow start, I got heavily invested in the story as the game went on, and I look forward to where it carries on from here. I hope we get more games with Yumia as the protagonist as she develops in the narrative.
However, the game suffers from performance issues on the PC as I faced stutters, weird bugs, and crashes despite having hardware that surpasses the recommended specifications. Hopefully. the developers will look into these problems and will solve these issues when the game comes out next week.
Atelier Yumia combines the best part of previous games and adds a set of new features that makes it the best offering in the franchise yet. The story is fantastic and carried by well-written interesting characters with clear motives that makes the journey enjoyable. It's one of the best JRPGs released in 2025 and a great entrypoint for newcomers.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and Envisioned Land
Reviewed on: PC (Key provided by KOEI TECMO Games)
Platform (s): PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Developer: Gust
Publisher: KOEI TECMO
Release Date: March 21, 2025
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