Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land is a fantastic entry into the Atelier series. Yumia is a fantastic protagonist for the series, and Aladiss is a fun continent to explore.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land is a bold new direction for the series, with particularly great combat.

After years of small-time games, the franchise finally reached more people than its dedicated niche following. Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land capitalizes on successes from the Ryza trilogy and blazes its own trail with changes of its own.

At the end of the day, Atelier Yumia is a strong entry in the beloved JRPG franchise. Despite a few growing pains, it adopts the cozy and niche franchise into something more digestible for a wider audience thanks to a well-executed open-world format, modern takes on iconic features, and an engaging, untraditional story.

Possibly the best Atelier game to date, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a thoroughly enjoyable, and rather cosy, RPG that anyone can easily sink hours upon hours into.

Despite the deluge of other shopkeep simulators and crafting games, the Atelier series has something like a comforting warm blanket. It’s a long-running RPG series that tends to focus more on the day-to-day life of being an alchemist and creating goods for the common folk. While the series has shied away from the mundane as the series has gone on, the spirit of creativity and crafting remains at its core. After a three-game run with Ryza Stout, Gust has finally introduced the latest entry in the series with Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land.

Atelier Yumia is a great open-world JRPG that shines brightly in its core mechanics, even when stumbling slightly. It's also decently playable on the Steam Deck.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land feels like a complete refresh for the series. With updates to almost every gameplay mechanic, it's hard not to be excited about the future of this niche series.

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: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land manages to stand on its own two rocket-powered high heels through the strength of its comfortable cast and flashy, fun combat. I still wish the open-world puzzles and base building weren’t so shallow and derivative, even if Atelier Yumia doesn’t penalize you too much for not engaging with them. This isn’t the major shift toward the mainstream that the series needed but if your expectations aren’t too high, you’ll have a great time exploring Adaliss with Yumia and her friends.

Atelier Yumia delivers a charming adventure with a beautiful story and world. While the memory system's complexity isn't always a blessing, and the few technical glitches detract from the overall impressive, it's still a great pick for genre fans.

Open world Atelier could still work, but Atelier Yumia does a bad job at realising this idea. A generic story, dumbed down alchemy, and lacking open world all lead to a middling RPG.