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.

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.

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.

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 i...

While the combat system has its flaws and the gameplay doesn’t innovate much within the open-world genre, Atelier Yumia is a fantastic starting point for newcomers to the Atelier franchise.

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...

Just like its impressively long and unwieldy title, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a messy game. But it’s a messy game with lofty ambitions and a lot to like, even if which pieces you end up liking are not the pieces you expected or wanted to like, especially if you’re a returning Atelier fan. It’s also hard to recommend Yumia as a starting point despite its appa...

In most respects, Atelier Yumia is an impressively ambitious and strong new entry for the long-running series, blazing a trail to parts unknown much like its titular protagonist. Things like the darker story, action-heavy combat, and increased focus on exploration gameplay all work well in its favor. The only major complaint is that this was clearly designed with much stronger hardware than the Sw...

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.