Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

I think they've continued the trend of making worse alchemy systems. I didn't even really want to do any alchemy anymore by the end of the game and started just letting the game auto select material for anything that wasn't equipment.

So, I finished playing [i]Yumia[/i], and my overall impression is that almost everything in the game gives off a "had potential but wasn’t fully realized" vibe. [b]Story:[/b] Generally, it's more serious than in [i]Sophie[/i] (can’t speak for [i]Mysterious[/i] as a whole—I couldn’t get through [i]Firis[/i]) or [i]Ryza[/i], but there’s just so little of it. A lot of time is spent on open-world exploration and synthesis, so the game can’t be finished in 3-5 hours, though it otherwise could. Essentially, the story consists of: 4 bosses at the end of acts, a couple of mid-bosses, about 5 cutscenes, and a few notes. As for the character side stories—they’re so incoherent that I’d say they barely exist. Okay, I get that you can’t expect [i]Atelier[/i] to adopt an approach like [i]Baldur’s Gate 3[/i], where side quests are sometimes indistinguishable from the main plot and tightly interwoven with it, but at least some coherent standalone stories loosely connected to the main plot could have been made into proper quests. But then again, what am I even talking about—they barely fleshed out the main story itself, just sketching it in broad strokes and deciding "good enough." And the potential was there! If they had fleshed out this skeletal plot and added meaningful character side stories, the narrative could have carried a lot more weight. Throw in a twist or two, and it could have been really good. Also, character development is practically nonexistent—except maybe for Yumia, and even then, just slightly. Compare to how in [i]Ar Tonelico 1[/i] (from the same Gust), when Aurika first joins, she’s extremely shy but gradually becomes much more confident? Well, in [i]Yumia[/i], a similarly timid girl joins at the start of the second chapter, with a somewhat similar backstory. And she stays just as insecure until the very end, still whining about how worthless and unwanted she is… while standing in a team of six people about to slay [spoiler]a [strike]god-[/strike]emperor[/spoiler]. [b]Open World:[/b] The puzzles are pretty primitive and never evolve throughout the game (I was hoping they’d introduce new mechanics to make things more interesting). By the halfway point, I was bored and stopped even trying to fully explore. There’s just no incentive to clear everything: the open world’s design feels like Gust made an expansion for the first or second region of [i]Genshin[/i] (since later [i]Genshin[/i] regions have more mechanical variety), then Mihoyo terminated their contract, so Gust slightly tweaked the textures and reused the assets for [i]Atelier[/i]—same chests full of useless junk, same "treasure vaults" with "super" chests of junk, same "shoot three targets to unlock a chest" puzzles. Except live-service games at least have two reasons to explore: (1) you get premium gacha currency, and (2) between patches—when you’ve finished the new story and have to wait a month for more—exploring the open world for a couple of hours can actually be enjoyable. [i]Atelier[/i], though, offers neither rewards (instead of premium currency, you get skill points, but those are easier to grind through random quests if you really want them) nor any reason to return after finishing the story. A bit of positivity here: I like how vertical movement with tripple jumps works, both gameplay-wise and in how it is lore-explained. Gust even managed to introduce a motorcycle in a much better way than you-know-who (although, I believe, it should have been a long quest spanning through entire chapter 1 and finishing in chapter 2, maybe copying the thing from the remains of the past - this would make much more sense than just fixing half-a-milenium-old junk in 5 minutes). [b]Atmosphere:[/b] This is a matter of personal taste, but I realized that the post-apocalyptic setting, combined with the lack of action, just feels oppressive to me. Though fans of the vibe might enjoy it. [b]Crafting:[/b] If there weren’t so much ingredient interchangeability, crafting might have had some depth. Instead, we get a heavily trivialized system where you just throw in ingredients with the highest bonuses and call it a day. Gone are the days of [i]Sophie[/i] (and, from what I understand, older [i]Atelier[/i] games) where you sometimes had to carefully balance effects within a narrow range. Even just restricting material types—so you couldn’t just stuff everything with the same thing (usually ingots, since they boost attack and other stats)—would have added some challenge and required a bit of thought. But as with everything else: "not fully realized." Speaking of trait crystals: It’s absolute nonsense that there are about 15 types of "[i]Something[/i] Slayer" crystals that boost damage against specific enemy types. I can’t imagine a scenario where you’d ever need to min-max damage against one mob type—so these are just crafting junk. Meanwhile, there are almost no unique crystals with combo traits (a few exist at high crafting levels, but I didn’t bother). You’d think—if they brought this system back (trait crystals are effecively purple grathnode crystals from [i]Ar Tonelico 1[/i]), they’d at least put cool unique crystals in boss drops (as they did in AT-1) and simpler uniques in those [strike]shrines of depth[/strike] treasure vaults. It wouldn’t fix everything, but it’d give more incentive to explore than just staring at a "region explored: n%" counter. Again: "not fully realized." [b]Construction:[/b] I’m just not a fan of this mechanic in more or less any game, so I didn’t even try to do it well. If the story required it, I’d plop down a preset building just to check the box and move on. [b]Combat:[/b] The combat system has potential if they’d added interesting combos. Instead, it boils down to "press all buttons," with the only choice being whether to use skills or items. But personally, I think the "three on field, control one" format is inherently flawed, and polishing it is pointless. In my opinion, they should either return to turn-based or just lift the combat system from [i]Genshin[/i] (or more likely [i]ZZZ[/i]—since it doesn’t have [i]Genshin[/i]’s elemental system, which wouldn’t fit [i]Atelier[/i], but does have mechanics like character-swapping combo attacks that could be made into something interesting). [u][b]Verdict:[/b][/u] This feels like a rough draft, not a full-fledged game. In theory, it could be expanded and maybe even made good in sequel(s), but I don’t have much faith in that happening.

PVとか見て ユミア ってキャラクターが気にいった人には超おすすめできる作品だと思う。 そうじゃない人にはあんまりおすすめできないかなって出来栄えの作品だと感じた。 オープンフィールド・錬金・アイテム収集・ハウジング・独特な戦闘…といったように色々な要素はあるんだけれど、どれも中途半端でそれぞれの要素すべてに対して、「この出来だったらほかのゲームでいいか…」と感じた。 自分は初めてのアトリエシリーズで、ユミアのアトリエをきっかけに他の作品もやりたい！と思っていたのだけれど、それはやめようかな…となってしまっている。 でも、自分はユミアってキャラクターがかなり惹かれた・刺さった部分もあるので最後までやり切ったし、続編が出ても買うと思う。(グッズとかもめっちゃ買い揃えてるし。) そんな感じの作品でした

솔직히 최적화가 괜찮아진 지금은 이게 복합적 평가까지 받을 게임인가 싶다. 전작들에 비하면 확실히 필드 자유도가 훨씬 높아졌다. 모션이 자연스러워짐은 당연하고 굳이 계단이 있어도 그걸 고집할 필요가 없고, 낮은 장애물은 알아서 넘어다니는 등 오픈월드 측면에서 신경을 많이 쓴 점이 보인다. 연금술이라는 게임 컨셉은 그럼에도 다소 부족한 오픈월드를 보완해주는 역할로 작용하는듯하다. 연금술이 얕아진 것은 사실이고, 점점 채집의 이유가 사라진 것도 맞다. 다만 그것도 결국 전작들 시스템을 아는 사람들 이야기이기도 하고, 그걸 모르면 그 과정이 그렇게 쉬운것도 아니라서 꽤 재밋게 즐길 수 있지않나 싶다. 소재 잠깐 모으고 하루종일 아틀리에에 앉아서 조합만 하는 사람들에겐 아쉬울 수 있을것같다. 결국 이 게임은 라이자나 소피처럼 연금술을 메인으로 두기보단 전투와 오픈월드를 메인으로 삼고, 그 부족함을 연금술을 보조 역할로 남긴것이라 본다. 사실 다 ㅈ까고 그냥 총들고 오토바이타는 유미아 어케참음

Gonna put this out there now since they admitted in a recent interview they wanted to "westernize" to expand their audience and that they supposedly read this stuff. DO NOT attempt to appeal to the "modern audience". DO NOT capitulate to moral busybodies. DO NOT tone down fanservice. DO NOT force politics into your games. The people that wish for you to do that are not your customers and will never likely be besides initial support. They are poisoning the well as an anti-competitive maneuver and there is plenty of evidence of this happening to giant publishers like Capcom and Square-Enix. They are lying to yall with a smile on their face and a pat on the back. Unbelievably insidious. Focus on what people enjoy to play, not on what industry insiders want you to do. The players love this franchise BECAUSE it is Japanese through and through. Not IN SPITE of it. From an Atelier fan who has purchased the entire catalog on steam. Thanks

I liked the setting and world of Ryza, which was more similar to other Atelier series stuff. This one is more gloomy at the start because everyone hates you for being an alchemist. That's not the cozy thing I'm after for an Atelier game. The combat system here is similar to Ryza and is more a series of QTE and less a chill turn based thing I would prefer. Also: this is trying to be a open world to explore, so I would think the puzzle elements should be active as you explore. But instead everything is quest driven. You can walk past a lever while exploring, perhaps a dozen times you pass by, but can't do anything to it until you get a quest to flip the lever, then through great and unexplained contrivance, the lever is powered. This happens constantly everywhere. It's too much EA style open world and not enough of a metroidvania.

One of my least favourite Atelier games. It's not the worst, Atelier Lydie I'm looking at you, but it's crap. I loved the open world at first, great zones and pretty cool to look at, I love me a bit of exploring but... Crafting: My main gripe is that the crafting is dreadful. 1) The lack of cauldron and stupid dancing / pirouetting just doesn't work 2) It's absurdly unbalanced. Items so grossly overpower the skills that skills have no use in the game. Just load your team up with items and set the tactics to prioritise items and you have no game anymore. So poor 3) Item duplication is given so late in the game you just ignore crafting as much as possible, I got to near the end of the game with starter gear because crafting is so tedious 4) Crafting is tedious, once you work out that you can use ALL the cores (not explained) it takes an age to create something. Repeat... yeah nah Ubisoft style map clearing The maps are just littered with ? and almost all of these are tedious, low effort interactions. I did like the zones but this is a chore Combat There is no combat, just load up with best items you can craft and watch mobs disappear instantly There's other nonsense like camp sites where you can't camp, utterly irrelevant building systems for which you get mountains or pointless blueprints, completely redundant food system but the real crapness is the crafting

Sadly, this is the worst Atelier game I've played. I own every game starting from Rorona and on, and even enjoyed the spinoffs like Nelke. I couldn't recommend this game to anyone I know in real life, out of fear that they would develop a negative impression of the series as a whole. In terms of good points, Yumia is hot. She has a cute level up animation, and so does Lenja. It is kind of fun to customize and place furniture in bases. In terms of bad points, there are a ton to talk about. The two biggest things I would say is that (1) alchemy plays a very minor role in this game which makes this game just a generic JRPG, and (2) basically every game mechanic is underdeveloped and poorly thought out. Gathering materials and making good gear is supposed to be the core of an Atelier game. You should spend a lot of time sifting through recipes and ingredients trying to figure out how to make interesting items that help you break through the next challenge. However in this game what you make doesn't really matter ever. I set the game to hardest difficulty, put in the minimum effort for crafting items and equipment, and still made it through the game without being challenged. The recipes and their upgrades don't add much difference in power. You will see a higher tier of equipment with like 2 points of attack or defense for it which doesn't make any difference. Gathering particles to upgrade recipe levels was ultra painful and slow. You need a ton of them, the game uses a visual effect of lights as an navigation hint to guide you in the direction of the particles, then tells you to run through solid walls to reach the destination which is frustrating. Once you gather the particles you have to go to a menu and hold down the upgrade button for like 120 seconds until the recipe has used up your particles. Finally to craft the item, you have to individually toss like 100 ingredients into various slots of a menu, which takes many minutes to do if you want to fill out all the effects for the item. I only partially filled out the possible number of ingredients for a weaker item, since it was too painful to do this every time for every single new item to make. It was still strong enough to carry me through hard difficulty for the entire game. Combat is boring and not deep at all. You basically mash a few buttons till enemies die. 25% of the combat time will be you hitting the dodge buttons to avoid damage. There is no strategy possible and nothing special to prepare to use like equipment, items, attacks to do differently from fighting the starter Puni to the end game enemies or bosses. The skill tree is poorly designed and a huge step down from Ryza. In this game, the skill tree is ultra short and a lot of the skills you unlock are completely worthless. A few skills are essential to the game but it is designed in such a way that it trivializes any player effort. Want to make good gear? Well basically all the ingredients and particles you gather are low quality until you finally unlock the skill that lets you gather high quality materials. Things like fighting stronger enemies or going to special gathering spots are all meaningless since just unlocking particular skill tree nodes gives you S rank materials and finally allows you to get the top tier of particles for alchemy. Exploration is sad. There are a ton of treasure chests everywhere and 99% of them are worthless. There are a set of treasure chests which actually matter because they contain unique keys to open Treasure Vaults which hold recipes you need to make stuff to complete quests, and there is no good method to track them down for completion in-game. There are minigame puzzles to open chests or doors which a 3 yr old child could solve in 5 seconds, and are not fun. A lot of early game exploration is oddly locked behind exploration tools you can't get till like 10-20 hours later, but it is not even worth going back to these hidden zones or chests since they don't contain anything of value. You will see shortcuts you are supposed to repair with a future tool, but the shortcut itself is pointless to use since if you didn't use it when you first needed it, there is no point in going back to unlock the shortcut (broken ladder, etc) once you already cleared the area and never return again. A few other complaints: The story is so childish in a bad way that it is impossible to take seriously and it made me feel like it made all the characters involved seem low IQ. The music: Atelier games have a reputation for good music, and there are a few good tracks in this game. However, the devs decided to reuse the most boring tracks for every cutscene to the point you forget other music existed and it decreased my enjoyment of the story. The environmental art: a lot of the environments are just ugly and not that fun to explore. Felt like a giant downgrade coming from the Ryza series. The open world: felt pretty generic and pointless to explore. There are some time waster activities to do in the field but not useful. There are a ton of generic NPCs everywhere. They give you repeatable but useless fetch quests, dialogue that doesn't advance the story or add to the setting, and they run shops that don't sell anything worthwhile. There are very few named or unique NPCs that give the player a lasting impression. I hope for the next game in the Atelier series, they just start over with a different dev team and setting.