Atelier Yumia is the latest installment of the Atelier franchise based on an entirely new setting on an open world to explore. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Review Overview

What is Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land?

Atelier Yumia is the newest installment in the popular Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) franchise, the Atelier series. Players navigate a vast, open-world environment filled with diverse regions such as Lignumbria, Syvashi, and Auruma. Each area presents unique landscapes, resources, and challenges. Engagements with enemies occur in real-time, incorporating the use of synthesized items to exploit enemy weaknesses and adapt to various combat scenarios.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land features:
　⚫︎　Open world map
　⚫︎　New cast of characters
　⚫︎　Reworked combat and synthesis systems
　⚫︎　Base building feature
　⚫︎　Random events and monster raids
　⚫︎　Simple synthesis system for consumables

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land's gameplay and story.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
There’s So Much to Do The Characters Give the World Life Reliable, Time-Tested Themes on Display Even the Grind Feels Natural You Can Pet Animals. GOTY?	Combat Takes a While to Get Going Use of Deliberately Agitating Dialogue Synthesis Will Be Confusing Early On Badly Optimized for PC on Release

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Overall Score - 86/100

Atelier Yumia is a game that plays it safe with its story but still manages to keep things entertaining, even if the in-your-face dialogue can get a bit much. The combat’s a solid step up and gathering’s way less of a chore now, though you’ll still trip over the tiniest bump on the ground. It looks great (sometimes too great for its own good), sounds awesome, and while the $70 price might make you wince, there’s plenty of content and replay value to make it feel worth it.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Story - 8/10

If you’re looking for a story that doesn't take too much of a risk, yet still comes off as engaging, then look no further. Atelier Yumia uses time-tested tropes for its story, guaranteeing reliability and effectiveness. The only real issue with it, besides the lack of novelty, comes from the narrative’s excessively agitating dialogue meant to push its issues to the reader.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Gameplay - 9/10

In exchange for slightly less luscious thighs for the protagonist, Atelier Yumia’s combat received a fair bit of an upgrade compared to the series’ previous entry. Exploration was also heavily streamlined to make gathering materials much faster and less of a button-clicking marathon. Unfortunately, though, none of the developers’ efforts went into making movement better, meaning you can still get walled by things such as two inches of elevated soil or a piece of rock.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Visuals - 9/10

This is the first time a game has made me lag so hard because of its grass physics and lighting, which should give you an idea of just how gorgeous this game looks. Every character model looks beautiful as well, even though it falls just short of truly exceptional ones from some of its peers. What irks me, though, is the lack of care on the detailing for everything underneath your feet; a major issue considering you’ll be looking at the ground half the time to collect materials.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Audio - 9/10

I don’t think anybody can complain about the Japanese voice acting, considering the level of skill the talents behind each character has. On the other hand, the same cannot be said for the background music and sound effects. While most of them are definitely good enough to be enjoyed even outside the game, some of its tunes and sounds definitely fall flat.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Value for Money - 8/10

Although the game certainly doesn’t look and play like something worth $70 on today’s market, I would argue that its price is justified by the amount of content the base game has. That is, every chapter is a marathon of tasks and side quests, intentionally taken or not, that can eat your time without you realizing it. Plus, the game does have quite a bit of replay value due to the different ways you can tackle some main story quests.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Review: Pure Unsynthesized Enjoyment

After the absolutely baffling release that was Atelier Resleriana and its weird daily stamina refills, I was keen to try out the next (non-mobile) release in the Atelier franchise to bleach my memories of the previous experience—and maybe relive the Ryza days. Unfortunately, it took almost a year before a new game was even announced. As it turns out, the franchise was finally stepping away from the Ryza series after three games, because, well... number four is taboo.

So, what’s new with the latest Atelier title? Besides the price, I mean. Well, for one, the game now uses an open-world environment for you to freely explore, which does wonders for giving my GPU some hardcore cardio. Combat and, of course, the alchemy mechanics were also improved (somewhat), and the collectathon experience was made much, much more streamlined. Otherwise, it’s really not all that different from the previous entry, Atelier Ryza 3.

That, of course, is a good thing—especially if you look back at Atelier Resleriana. (I’m joking, by the way.)

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land—a game that definitely has a below-average word count on its title—is an open-world adventure game that centers around Yumia Liessfeldt. She’s an alchemist working for the Research Team of the Eustellan Republic, a country that considers alchemy taboo. But instead of trying to blend in, she proudly uses her talents to help those around her, despite the discrimination she faces for it.

As part of the Research Team, your job is to open up the foreign lands of the fallen Aladiss Empire—an ancient civilization that was destroyed by the destructive potential of alchemy. But because of Yumia’s talents, she can do way more than your regular team member carrying spears, guns, and swords. Yumia can not only fight, but also dispel heavily concentrated mana from tainted lands that basically act as walls to normal humans.

This ability lets her rack up some serious accomplishments, sure. But it also means that, as the trailblazer of the Research Team, she gets first dibs on a lot of things—especially when conflict is involved. This also means she inevitably attracts some major players in the Research Team, like the noble siblings Isla and Viktor, the money-hungry adventurer Rutgert, the mysterious mercenary Nina, and my personal favorite, Lenja. Unfortunately, you probably won’t get to those points at the best times, because—

Please Let Me Do My Quests

If there’s one thing Atelier Yumia is great at, it’s distracting you from what you actually set out from your home base to do. Like, you wanted to finish the story chapter? Well, there’s a trail of materials in your way, so it wouldn’t hurt to take a tiny detour. Is that a ruin at the end of the trail? No harm in checking it out for a few minutes.

Before you know it, half an hour’s gone by and you’re no closer to your goal. Fret not—that’s definitely a common experience in this game. It’s a collectathon, after all, and it’s very likely a deliberate design choice. They even made the material gathering process from Atelier Ryza way more convenient; now you only need to press two different buttons to gather anything.

Yep, that’s right. No more scrolling through your bag for a pickaxe to mine rocks or an axe to gather lumber. Yumia’s trusty gunstaff can annihilate any mineral node or log with one swing—satisfaction guaranteed. As a bonus, Yumia gathers materials so fast that she can keep her running momentum going even when she’s collecting small minerals (though she still visually stops at each node), allowing you to move on to the next deposit right away.

I get why they designed collecting like this. Atelier Yumia’s base-building and synthesizing features require an unholy amount of materials. The base building in particular—basically a direct, and honestly unnecessary, upgrade to Atelier Ryza’s system—often asks you for ridiculous amounts of resources, ranging from dozens to literal hundreds.

Why? Well, because in Atelier Yumia, you’re no longer limited to just having a handful of ateliers. Okay, technically you still only have one main atelier, and you’re actually just building base camps on the front lines, but you can have several of them in every region and deck them out with all the furniture needed to perform every alchemical art—as long as you have enough materials.

That’s right: In Atelier Yumia, you can build base camps. Think The Forest, but with fewer cannibals. Honestly, it’s an apt comparison, because you’re not just limited to building sweatshop ateliers for synthesis purposes. You can build entire multi-story mansions, complete with rooms for every member of your party, and every medieval fantasy room you can think of. For some reason though, randomizing a base camp design never gives you any windows. What’s up with that?

Anyway, on top of that, the game didn’t get rid of camping grounds either. You still need resources to turn them from bare hovels that barely protect you from the rain into comfy rooms where you can kick your feet up.

Synthesis, meanwhile, remains one of the franchise’s most complicated (and essential) systems. It lets you freely modify the properties of your items—like increasing their effectiveness, giving them a totally different effect, or, if you’re feeling particularly out of your mind, boosting stats your party members might not use or appreciate. (I gave Viktor, my tank, a ton of Speed for no good reason.)

Aside from base building, synthesis is probably the most time-consuming feature. It takes a lot of experimentation with materials. Not all materials are equal, after all, and if you’re on a budget, you’ll need to think hard about how to allocate your resources to get the best results. Otherwise, it’s back to the material mines.

Is the game bloated? Nah, I don’t think so. Atelier Yumia’s base-building and synthesis systems might eat up so much of your time that you’ll wonder why you’ve barely progressed in the main story after several hours—but it never feels grindy or pointless. Heck, I didn’t even talk about the random events you can encounter (yeah, the game has those too), or the monster raids that sometimes happen, and even then I still think the game’s pace feels just right for anyone who enjoys the adventure.

The Experience Is a Complete Saga, for Better or for Worse

As you would expect from a high-profile JRPG, Atelier Yumia’s story is quite dense and holistic in a character-driven way. Each part of the game develops multiple things simultaneously, from the main plot to individual character arcs and themes. Then, it concludes each at opportune moments to bring certain aspects of the narrative to a climax.

This is readily apparent right at the beginning of the story, during the conclusion of the first region. That point isn’t even a couple of hours into the game, and it’s already trying to juggle progressing Yumia’s main story, developing Viktor and Isla as characters, dropping some foreshadowing between Rutger and Nina, and reinforcing once again that alchemy = bad.

Now, you might be thinking, "Hey, that sounds good. It’s just like real life!" You’d be correct. However, unlike real life—where each of us is the protagonist in our own story—there's multiple main characters here, and their lives are viewed through our limited perspective. This inevitably leads to scenes that should be more powerful on their own but end up diluted by everything else happening around the characters.

Going back to the earlier example, the first region wraps up with the party’s fight against Vesper—public enemy number one for both Viktor and Isla. Since this happens early in the game, fighting what’s basically a late-game boss means the party inevitably bites the dust.

So naturally, the follow-up scene should’ve focused on the siblings—the ones with the deepest emotional connection to the enemy at this point. Instead, we get an abrupt introduction to Nina—another major character—along with some heavy-handed foreshadowing between her and Rutger. This sudden detour makes it harder to savor the weight of Viktor and Isla’s unresolved conflict.

Fortunately, the game nails it when it comes to party banter. Your party members frequently toss out remarks about what you’ve just crafted, where you are, what you’re doing, and sometimes even what you ate. It’s a bit limited early on with just a couple of companions, but it quickly ramps up as you recruit more members and they start bouncing off each other.

The best lines definitely come from Flammia. Despite her straight-laced personality, she’s got some real venom in her words, much to Yumia’s chagrin—who’s almost always the target of Flammia’s subtle sarcasm. Maybe it’s because Yumia never figured out how to program any filters into Flammia’s logic, but the latter always seems just a little too eager to spill some of Yumia’s most intimate secrets just to get one up on her in a normal conversation.

The main plot isn’t half bad either. Even though it uses some really common themes and tropes, they’re all time-tested and reliable ones. For example, tragic backstories are an easy way to make readers sympathize with characters—something that’s quite relevant to more than just a couple of people in Yumia’s party, including herself. Fighting against enemies by basically tapping into the power of friendship also rarely fails, especially in the very character-centric narratives that JRPGs specialize in.

Atelier Yumia’s competence in using common themes is especially apparent in its use of each character’s struggles as a way to advance the main story. For example, the game utilizes Yumia’s feelings of wanting to prove herself as an alchemist, as well as her drive to learn why alchemy has been branded taboo, as the main driving forces of her unique charisma, allowing her to attract numerous people to accompany her.

At the same time, however, the game’s writing does feel a bit contrived to the point of being unnecessary in order to achieve this. For example, everybody else in the Research Team seems all too eager to voice their opinions against alchemy to Yumia’s face, despite her being the Research Team Chief’s underling—or her steadily increasing lineup of achievements. Like, you would normally gossip about that behind their backs, right? It really doesn’t feel natural.

Combat Goes from Annoying to a Work of Art

The combat system from Atelier Ryza is definitely one of the things that got the biggest upgrades going into Atelier Yumia. In a word, the combat is now “faster.” To be more pedantic, it feels much less like a rhythm game now and more like an actual action game. And that’s saying something, considering the combat system in Ryza 3 was already noticeably faster than its predecessor.

One major difference is that skills in Atelier Yumia no longer use Action Points but are now governed by cooldowns and charges. Depending on the skill, multiple charges can be gathered and used in succession to pull off combos and the like. Certain actions also reduce skill cooldowns, such as Yumia’s, which allows items to be used more frequently. This is important to remember because another big change in this game is that items are treated more like skills now instead of, well, items.

In addition, you have enemy attacks to pay attention to. There are various ways to deal with them, ranging from guarding, dodging, or just running out of the way. You can also change your distance from the enemy, which doubles as a way to gain access to additional skills. This effectively gives you eight skill slots—going up to twelve if you include items.

Unfortunately, though, to actually get to that point, you’ll need enough levels to unlock skills in all four of your usable slots, as well as synthesize enough items to fill those out for everyone. Until you do, Atelier Yumia’s combat might feel like a drag half the time as you wait for your skills to finish cooling down.

I Spent 15 Minutes Just Petting Animals

Yes, you can pet dogs, deer, and other animals in the game. Game of the Year contender? Absolutely.

Runs As Well As Mud on PC

Now, look. I’m aware that Koei Tecmo has a bit of a reputation for PC ports feeling like mere afterthoughts. However, it feels like they themselves aren’t conscious of it, because playing this on my rig feels like I’m being whipped for not subordinating myself to the console legion.

For reference, according to the game’s recommended system requirements, it specifies needing 16GB of RAM, a GPU at around the RTX 2060’s level of competence, and some random processor you can probably buy off Facebook Marketplace for cheap. Meanwhile, my system has 32GB of RAM and a GPU/CPU combo that outperforms the recommended ones.

Surely with that, the game should run relatively well, even on medium settings, right? Spoilers: it doesn’t.

I have no idea how, but with a rig that can even run Monster Hunter Wilds on medium-high settings, Atelier Yumia manages to curbstomp my average frame rates to a measly 40-50 FPS on its default medium settings. Desperate for numbers, I had to slap some graphics settings lower just so I could reach the magical number 60. But even then, there were some locations that made my GPU feel like it was trying to run Cyberpunk 2077 back on release day. Heck, the game sometimes lags so bad that sound effects simply do not load.

Is it because the game is open-world? Is it because there are too many blades of grass? Or is it because the workload of rendering Yumia’s nicely-shaped bare legs makes my computer sweat? I have no idea. But what I do know is that, at least on the version I’m playing, optimization for the PC is definitely not one of the game’s best points.

Is Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Worth It?

The Game is Worth the Money, The Performance Not So Much

Atelier Yumia is an experience that I definitely don’t mind having again. Despite all its distractions, it never really gets to a point where it feels frustrating or grindy. The combat is also quite enjoyable once you get to a level where you have more options, and the story is definitely worth following—especially if you’re the type who enjoys the typical themes of good vs. evil and defeating enemies with the power of friendship.

Plus, you can pet a wide range of animals in this game. That alone definitely gives it Game of the Year qualifications.

The only problem, at least for this review of the PC version, is that the game is optimized quite poorly. Given Koei Tecmo's track record (even as recently as the PC port of Rise of the Ronin), it doesn't come as too much of a surprise. But it’s definitely still a bummer. So despite the game’s content and design deserving its $70 price tag, you should probably wait to see if there are any performance patches if optimization is a priority of yours.

Digital Storefronts
Steam	PlayStation	Xbox	Switch
$69.99			$59.99

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land FAQ

Is Atelier Yumia a sequel to Atelier Ryza?

Unlikely, especially considering the difference in treatment for alchemists between the two games. In Yumia, there’s blatant discrimination against them, while in Ryza, the subject is treated as a proper scholarly subject, especially later in the series.

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Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Product Information

Title	Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land
Release Date	March 21, 2025
Developer	Gust
Publisher	KOEI TECMO
Supported Platforms	PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch
Genre	Adventure, RPG
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	Teen
Official Website	Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Website

Alfonso Majarucon

Writer of things from game, anime and manga reviews to news and webnovels. Hopelessly addicted to story-driven games, especially cross-platform ones. Favorite games include Punishing Gray Raven, Arknights, Limbus Company, Elden Ring, Touhou, Soul Nomad and the Disgaea series (except 3 and 6). Avid..