Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

I Acknowledge some people love this game and I'm not going to use the usual old time atelier fan argument of bad alchemy and combat to explain why I dislike this game. The main glaring issue that made me drop this game after 4 and a half hours is the lack of soul. Soul in games is extremely subjective it's a compilation of different mechanics and decisions that give you the feeling love and care was put into the product you're playing. When you play Yumia the UI is gray squares with a colored shadow when you select a button, if you go into different menus they're extremely clean so clean in fact that they look like UI in a modern website, far too corporate. The skill tree menu is a black screen with some particles and a line of gylphs in the back, it looks eerily similar to a lot of gacha game screens to show the upgrades you get when you roll the duplicate of a character. speaking of characters other than yumia the character designs are too safe, let me explain what i mean by that. Simple character designs aren't a bad thing but your design needs to showcase, at least a little bit, the personality of the character in question for example a blacksmith having a hammer at their hip …

First of all, Atelier Yumia is not a bad game, on the contrary, it's a very enjoyable one. If you have money to spare, and like the genre, go for it. Now, why the bad review ? Because it's called ATELIER Yumia. On this side the game is pretty weak. Gust really made it with the idea to "please the western audience". Alchemy, the core of the series, is dumbed down really bad to the point there's no mandatory crafting in the game that requiert anything. No goal at all. You can juste make the bare minimum and pass the quest. The team is not that Atelier-like too. While character, independently, are quite decent JRPG archetypes, it lack the chemistry you can found the in other titles. The open-world is Ubisoft-like/lite. While not the the cluter-monster that modern Ubisoft open world are, Atelier Yumia quite copied the formulae. Be preppared to look for the same puzzle, landmarks and towers across all the different regions. The puzzle aren't engaging at all; beside them being repetitives, they are really, like REALLY, too easy. About the core theme of the Atelier brand, there's a lot missing. Alchemy feel strange, too "magical". You don't have the emblematic cauldron. Opening is stil…

Incredibly dull game which fails at its own premise. The alchemy system feels like an afterthough, it immediately breaks the combat as anything you craft will be overpowered without putting much effort into it. Fights generally last only a couple of seconds even on the hardest difficulty. There is an attempt of depth with how each character is designed, as everyone has different skills, but battles are so short that you can't tell the difference. The open world is boring to explore, it looks good but there isn't anything interesting to find. You often find items that are powerful enough that end up bypassing the crafting system, which feels really unsatisfying. Story-wise, I've only completed the first region, so I can't say if it improves or not, but the writing didn't manage to engage me.

Personally liked the battle system and the storyline

Big Atelier Fan since Ryza brought me to the franchise, and Yumia is certainly another great entry. The combat is fast-paced, fluid, and flashy. The vast difficulty options are still there. The world is a prety big open-world with different biomes where exploration is fun, and rewarding. Soundtrack is, as usual in the atelier franchise, really nice. The main cast feels well written, and as usual there's some kinda slice of life moments in between. The story is intruiging (to me atleast), The alchemy system itself doesnt feel as fun as previous titles, but that could be a me problem. I won't go too much into detail (if even anyone reads this lol) to avoid any spoilers, Overall to me the game is a solid 8.5/10. Runs just fine in 60fps/4k for me

It's pretty chill, maybe too chill considering alchemy is too easy to break the game with, but the vibes are nice and the building is fun to play with.