Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

I want to bury my face into Lenja's fluffy tail until I black out from suffocation.

アトリエシリーズ２０年間やってきたものとしてこれはまさにシリーズダントツのSHIT！はてなマークを埋めるくらいしかやることのないゲームの一言。ユミアかわいい、だが悲しい。恒例のトロコンまでこのカレー味すらしないうんこを最後まで食べきるよ。

Rendimiento inestable y encima no tiene DLSS o FSR para al menos solucionarlo, como el juego esta abandonado a su suerte no lo recomiendo.

アイラちゃんかわいい ニーナちゃんえっち！！！！！！ ユミアちゃんの椅子になりたいだけの人生だった…

I'm roughly 8 hours in and, after seeing numerous negative reviews here, I'm honestly shocked at the overall quality of Atelier Yumia. I have prior experience with the Atelier series, and having played a few of the older titles, while this obviously isn't a *classic* Atelier game, this is a fantastic game in its own right. Yes, Atelier Yumia is GREAT - don't let the Mixed review status (or the myriad negative reviews from the legion of rabid Atelier fans) fool you. That's not to say all criticism is invalid - but we'll get to that. As other (positive) reviews have stated, this is more akin to something like Breath of the Wild, mixed with a smartly simplified version of the synthesis system from older Atelier games. I tend to enjoy well made open world games, so this combination is honestly perfect for me. Considering this title also has, in my opinion, one of the best active turn-based battle systems I've experienced, this has the potential to be incredibly addictive. Did you know there's a full building system here that allows to you build and decorate custom structures, like campsites and workshops? Did you know you can make cooking and camping supplies and go camping wherever you want? Did you know you can go fishing? There is so much here, and it's SO good. Now, there is some valid criticism out there regarding the synthesis system, though I think these changes had to be made if you consider what type of game this is, versus a classic Atelier game. I feel many reviewers are being overly harsh in regard to this - the synthesis system IS fully represented here, but again, *simplified* in areas so as not to imbalance the experience. There is a massive world to explore, after all, with lots of things to craft, places to explore, and buildings to construct, and a classic-style synthesis system simply wouldn't work here. The main point of criticism I'd like to address: Atelier Yumia simply does not run well enough - while my PC (all AMD, running Bazzite Linux, using Proton Experimental) runs things just fine, my system is by no means low or even mid spec. I tried playing this game on a GPD Win 4, which is a portable PC that lives somewhere around the mid-low spec range - anything beyond playing the game in 1080p / ultra-low settings at a shaky 30fps WITH upscaling (aka, a blurry mess) is unobtainable. I'd bet this runs poorly on the Steam Deck, too, which is a shame - this is an ideal portable, pick-up-and-play title with hours upon hours of content. Hopefully we see further optimization in the future (and perhaps an upgraded Switch 2 release?). I'd also like to see the latest FSR to be added (currently, only XeSS or a simple dynamic resolution feature are available). Now, is Atelier Yumia worth buying full price? I bought this on sale for roughly $50 USD, and considering the quality of the title and the type of game you're getting here... maybe? $70 USD is DEFINITELY a tough pill to swallow, and again, for that price, I'd expect a higher level of polish (read: performance) here. But hey, if you like the series and understand that this is a NEW direction, and you like the idea of what I've described here - go for it! You will not be disappointed in the overall quality of the title, nor the amount of content. tldr; To sum up my positive feelings, Atelier Yumia is not lacking in content, complexity, or charm, and is a fun step forward for the series. If you shift your expectations, and are a fan of open world games, there is TONS of fun to be had here.

Storage space ruined JRPGs dude. The instant they got a whole gigabyte to play with, they proved they couldn't be trusted with it, and filled it entirely with as much vapid, mile wide and quarter inch deep dog ass slop they possibly could. I'm sure if any of the vacuous, pretentious drones in Japan were to make Chrono Trigger today, it'd be 10 times longer, with exactly as much actual substance as the original game. Not content with just running you through a tutorial and then turning you loose like any number of [i]good[/i] games, this game strings together one little tutorial after another for all of its little mechanics, half of which don't need to exist, for about 10 hours. THEN the game actually got tolerable and promising, for the first large area. It was kind of like an Okay anime that you got to play. The characters had JUST enough actual personality and organic motivations to interact and BE actual characters, and the set up to the story had some interest. Then you got to the second area and it was like playing the filler arc no one likes and it never bloody ends. The characters reverted back to Standard Japanese Canine Excrement Writing where all the characters just restate their one sentence worth of motivation, goals, and/or feelings at each other. "I want to move forward and prove alchemy can be good." Really cliche, but good to clearly state the goal I guess. "I want to move forward and prove alchemy can be good." You said that five minutes ago. "I want to move forward and prove alchemy can be good!" YOU SAID THAT FIVE AND ALSO TEN MINUTES AGO! I don't know if every Japanese game thinks its players are total cretins that need very one dimensional character motivations spelled out to them in every cutscene, or if they just can't think of anything else to write, like a high schooler trying to hit the word minimum on an essay. And because there are 6 characters and because this is SJCEW, every character must get a turn to say a line in every, single, bloody, cutscene. So [i]all dialogue[/i] takes three times longer than it needs to (2x = 6 where 2 is the characters who need to be speaking for Dialogue to happen, 6 is how many will not shut up, and x is the Time Wasted Multiplier). Just about every facet of this game felt like the studio had $40 worth of Game then held a meeting that opened with Japanese for "Okay guys how do we add enough abject slugde to pad the game out enough to justify charging $70?" TRICK QUESTION! You don't make a game better by making it more tedious! The "prayer shrines" that were just the same flipping tiles with lines on them puzzle [i]over and over again[/i] in particular were about 10 times more frequent than they had any right to be. I slogged through it hoping for some resolution to the very many hours of set up, which was rushed through all right at the end and was bad. The whole plot came down to Nietzschean Giga Chad Uses Science To Just Do Things vs Pack Of Whiny Geeks Saying That Is Wrong Just Because and [i]you are on the wrong side of this[/i] because the game's entire morality is Japanese Soy Weeny Serfbrain Stooge-Leftist. Pure poison to the Faustian Spirit and I am going to have to read so much Senator Armstrong fanfiction to get the taste of this canine excrement out of my mouth. The actual gameplay might have been worth the time if the combat was balanced even a little. The moment I made Level 10 attack items I was effectively one-shotting everything until I turned the difficulty up to the point [i]I[/i] started to get one-shot, then it was a game of One Shot Or Be One Shot. Not particularly satisfying. The game mostly looks good, at least. Except Nina, who is the most misshappen mistake of a character model I have ever seen, and spends most of her screentime clipping various parts of herself into other parts of herself. Even the soundtrack is bad. I have [i]never[/i] before played a game and consciously thought the soundtrack was bad. But much of this sounded like copyright-free elevator music and I sincerely hope they used AI to make it, because the alternative is that someone got paid for this, which offends any sense of decency or justice. To whoever is responsible, it was a bad job you did and I hope this review hurt your feelings. Do not buy this game. Don't even "tactically acquire" it. Learn from my mistakes, and waste 90 bloody hours of your lift on something better.

Actually pretty good overall, but there are plenty of nitpicks that can be made in terms of gameplay, some maybe just issues with this being a port. Minimal crashing, steady performance, yada yada. Open world is a bit too cluttered, combat is much simpler than it looks and a bit too easy. Story is a bit dumb, though, despite trying to be darker than something like Sophie. Making it revolve around memories means there's a fair share of sap, so be wary of that if you're not into that. Though there were a lot of dialogue choices along the way, I don't feel like they really affected anything other than characters' responses. At the least, there was no visible indication that anything changed as a result of one choice or the other. There was a lot on the main characters not being set stereotypes, which is definitely a bonus. However, Rutger often steals the show (both with his attitude and spotting a lot of things the others don't notice) while most of the others kind of don't land too much- though one of them's development is main-story-specific progression outside of the titular MC, so that doesn't help her case much. Meanwhile, the villains have a tendency to chew the scenery a lot more than the party, and their motivations are pretty standard for villainy. The final antagonist really just lacks presence entirely until the final boss fight with him, and at that point it's just a "let's get this over with" kind of feeling getting there. For an open world game, it's okay but a bit too cluttered with stuff and riddled with wonky terrain (including collision issues that may be port-related). There were too many moments of being able to "Skyrim it" to stuff I otherwise couldn't reach thanks to wall jumping- and later regular multi-jumping after unlocking it. At some point, I ended up with "open world fatigue" from there being too much stuff and then lacking something as simple as actual fishing spot indicators since those are important ingredients. It was also WAY too easy to become overpowered compared to my experience in Sophie thanks to being able to get the ingredient-rank-boosting skills early. After awhile, even the more complex game mechanics- and their version of Limit Breaks- were impossible to use because fights were ending within five seconds. Not just because of equipment stats but even combat items which aren't "consumed" when used were just way too powerful- especially in Yumia's hands. Then again, combat seems complicated until you realize you just press buttons on whatever regular attacks are ready to use, since grouped enemies count as a single health bar which renders any AoE consideration kind of moot. Maybe if the difficulty is turned up then it would matter, but Normal should play reasonably difficult to necessitate using the mechanics properly rather than being a non-Easy mode where you just mash buttons to win. So yeah, recommend but maybe on sale, not sure if you should go for the DLC since I didn't and probably won't. I just wish I could have romanced Rutger. Viktor isn't bad, but Rutger just... Hits that 'scoundrel with a heart of gold' sweet spot.

まず、今までにないアトリエだなぁと思いました。 調合も戦闘も、ちょっといい素材が手に入っちゃえばものすごく単調になっちゃって脳死になってしまいます。 そして、シナリオが重い！　でもキャラクター個人の背景が作りこまれていて、それでいてくどくない説明でとても見ごたえがありました。クリアしたあとストーリーの余韻が半端ないです。 BGMも最高！ 買ってよかったと思えたゲームでした。 なにより、フラミィがかわいい！！