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I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect with Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. It was my first venture into Gust’s Atelier series, which I had largely known as RPGs about crafting and chill vibes.
As it turns out, Yumia is a fresh take on the Atelier series, and so it worked out neatly; I’d be trying a new series of games, and the series was trying some new things. But even though I went in expecting to get wrapped up in roleplaying and adventure, I found myself wholly immersed in something else: picking up as many things as my bag could carry, scurrying back to my atelier like a rodent to a hovel, and crafting and building until the bag was empty.
To zoom back out, Atelier Yumia is the newest game in the long-running series from Gust, all about alchemists and item creation. The studio’s been making this series since 1997’s Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg, and while it does have some sequels, each entry is denoted and defined by their protagonist: Iris, Sophie, Ryza, and now, Yumia.
As part of a research expedition in a new land, Yumia (and the player) is tasked with venturing into new territory, making discoveries, and clearing away the toxic manabound fog. It’s open world, rather than the larger open zones I’ve heard about from the Ryza games, and it has some interesting tools for interacting with the world.
Your staff is also a gun, for example, and you can synthesize bullets using a few basic resources to shoot at switches, shrines, or even just nodes you want to mine. Collecting fruit from a tree by shooting it doesn’t really get old.
There is a lot of gathering though, and it’s brain-scratching for those who love to wander and find new collectibles to collect. Every new zone or biome promises new discoveries, and new plants to go with them. You get big pop-ups when you find new stuff, and a little ping on your screen to let you know that new recipes or advancements are ready back at base.
Then, you return to an atelier and start crafting. I was ready for it to be a little in-depth, but it’s truly engrossing. One thing I really like about Atelier Yumia’s synthesization is how you can break so many items down into their components and build them back up, reinforcing along the way to make something even stronger than before.
Take my starting gunstaff. At one point, I felt it was time for an upgrade. Well, my gunstaff needed some ingots. I could just cobble some together quickly, or I could go into the menu and spend time selecting the nodes and ingredients I infuse my ingots with, putting high-value resources into each in order to pump up the quality, resonance, and other factors. Now, when I put those ingots in as ingredients for my gunstaff, the gunstaff gets even better, and its own quality and resonance jumps up too.
It feels really rewarding to come back from a long trek of exploring and hoovering up plants, rocks, and wildlife, then dumping all of that into a new alchemical weapon or component. That has, to my understanding, been a hallmark of the Atelier series, and it shines here. With an open-world approach and so many places to explore, though, the feeling of uncovering new and unseen fauna that can be magically zapped into a sick new scythe really gels for me.
Building bases adds another layer, letting you build up the dream outpost as you explore deeper and deeper into the continent. Campsites offer small respites, but big bases also form as you clear out more of the manabound fog and expand the map.
Sticking these walls, floors, and fixtures together does feel a little finicky. Snapping can help, but sometimes random geometry, like a rock in the middle of the build area, will throw it all askew. But the feeling of establishing a new outpost and seeing the happiness meter rise is great, and as you add more installments like bookshelves, couches, beds, and furniture, both NPCs and party members will interact with them when you visit. It’s like a little home away from your atelier, and building up projects like a greenhouse or warehouse lets you expand your capabilities even further.
The thread tying it all together is the Pioneering Effort. It’s a checklist of tasks to complete, sorted between combat, gathering, and crafting. Each new checkmark adds to the percentage of the area you’re in, and hitting certain mile markers in completion unlocks new tools, like the aforementioned greenhouses or some new decor.
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All of these systems working in concert have effectively, frequently, distracted me from moving forward with the main quest. I do really like having a narrative framework around typically survival-genre pursuits, and while the plot has been a bit slow-burn even at the 15-hour mark, the characters are enjoyable—especially Yumia, who’s constantly wrestling with her own legacy and the public’s distaste for alchemy.
So often, I find myself veering off and away from the main quest markers to go collect more resources, explore new zones, build up new base camps, and push the horizon out farther. I even wound up running through an area the game clearly intended for me to tackle later in the story, just because I wanted to see what new treasures and baubles I could add to my synthesization pool for later on. Atelier Yumia dots the world with little tasks to make for yourself.
Since I’m a newcomer, I can’t really speak to how well this particular entry carries nearly three decades’ worth of legacy forward. But I can say, if you’ve ever pined for a crafting/gathering experience that’s cozy, singleplayer, and built around an RPG world with tons of checklist items to tick off, Atelier Yumia’s got that for you in spades.
It’s out on March 20, and there’s a demo available on Steam now.
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Kurt Indovina
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