Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land Review (PS5) – Push Square
GuestGuestLogin | Sign UpPush SquareGuestLogin or Sign UpAtelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned LandPS52025 N/AGame RatingUser Ratings: 0Our Review: Scroll DownAtelier what I want what I really really wantVersion Reviewed: PS5 (Standard) / EuropeanWhile the Atelier series has been steadily evolving and tweaking its winning JRPG/craft-’em-up formula across 30 years and 20-plus games, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land perhaps represents the most radical shift yet. But that doesn’t mean existing fans should be worried: for all of the changes, Yumia is still an Atelier game at heart, only bigger, more action-focused, and a little darker than before.Atelier Yumia takes place in a land ravaged by a past cataclysm. The world was nearly ended many years ago by the powers of alchemy, and so now the practice is deemed taboo, reviled by many, and outright outlawed in some places. Yumia is a sweet young alchemist sporting killer — literally — high heels and wielding a magical staff that doubles up as a rifle. She learned alchemy from her late mother, and lives in seclusion atop a hill with only her floating, talking lamp Flammi for company.When she’s approached by a research team to help investigate the ruins of the Aladissian Empire she sees an opportunity to learn more about why the empire fell, whether alchemy was truly responsible for the calamity long ago, and to perhaps rehabilitate the image of her craft. Initially, she’s met with scepticism by some of her new comrades and the people she meets, but over time hearts are warmed, lessons are learned, and the power of friendship trumps prejudice.It’s a darker story, and has higher stakes than is typical for an Atelier game. But you shouldn’t go into this expecting something like Metaphor: ReFantazio. There’s a little bit of name calling and side-eyeing towards Yumia and her craft, but it doesn’t get much nastier than that. The tone of the game is mostly charming and optimistic, with the darker elements of the story acting as seasoning for the narrative rather than the dominating flavour of it.Throughout the adventure you’ll explore an expansive open world. There are four large areas in the game that are unlocked by following the main questline, but each locale is packed with a plethora of side quests, treasures to find, monsters to slay, and items to collect. Side quests are largely throwaway fare: go over there, kill a thing, come back, etc. But the open world is fun to explore, with secrets lurking in every nook and cranny of the map.We frequently took time off between story beats to peruse the map, heading to each question mark in turn just to see what was there and mostly felt rewarded by what we found. It helps that Yumia is an agile protagonist with the ability to triple jump up walls making getting over obstacles easier than it has any right to be. Later she gets a swish motorcycle to further speed up the proceedings. There’s also an array of ziplines strewn throughout the world that once found and repaired can make getting across the map a breeze.While traversing the world of Atelier Yumia you’ll run afoul of all manner of nasty beasties to do battle with. Combat is more action-focused than in previous Atelier titles, and while it’s perhaps a little on the easy side, some smart design decisions stop it from becoming tedious across the 40 or 50 hours it’ll take to finish the main storyline of the game.During battle you control one character — Yumia by default — and her attacks are mapped to the four face buttons. Each attack has a set number of uses and a cooldown attached to it and so the idea is to use a skill and then once it’s recharging use different ones. You can also freely strafe Yumia from right-to-left during combat, and when an enemy telegraphs an upcoming attack you can adjust your position to stay out of the highlighted area on the ground to avoid damage.Tapping down on the d-pad moves Yumia away from her opponent, and once at range all of her attacks change to long distance magical skills. Enemies are weak to either magical or physical attacks, and so you need to move between the front and the back rows to exploit that weakness, stun your foe, and then unleash big damage. As you progress through the game you’ll unlock dodges, tag-team attacks with a squad-mate, and the ultra powerful Mana Surge abilities that can turn the tide of battle in an instant.On normal difficulty combat against the rank and file enemies is generally easy and battles are often over in a heartbeat with just a few taps of a face button so it never becomes irritating battling monsters either for experience or when farming for resources. Boss encounters are where the combat shines, with more complicated attack patterns from your enemies, and some mid-battle cut-scenes to add to the drama. Plus, one of the bosses is voiced by Takaya Kuroda, famous for voicing the greatest man that ever lived Kiryu Kazuma from the Yakuza series. So that’s nice.You can farm as much experience as you like in combat but that’ll only get you so far. Even if you’ve hit the level cap of 100 you can quickly find yourself outmatched by lower level foes if your equipment is not up to snuff and that’s where alchemy comes in. At Yumia’s workshop you can unlock the recipes you’ve found out on your adventures as long as you’ve got the requisite items to do so, and then you’ll synthesize a recipe using collected resources in your backpack.Better quality resources in the pot yield better rewards, generally, but once you get the hang of the process you can alter the recipe to produce items that might be of higher quality, or ones that come with additional effects. So you could make a sword that’s got higher base stats, or one that specialises in raising one stat in particular, or one that does more damage against a specific type of enemy. It’s a little daunting at first but fairly straight forward once you’ve done it a few times, and you can always automate the whole process if recipe micromanagement is just not your thing.You can also create building materials such as walls, rooves, flooring, and decorations. While you’re exploring the world of Atelier Yumia you can find building sites to set up secondary bases of operations and design them how you see fit. It’s a fairly rudimentary set of building options, but welcome nonetheless. A couple of tents and a sleeping bag just won’t cut the mustard when you can knock up a small cottage with cherry blossom trees in the garden for a pit-stop between missions.Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a wonderfully charming addition to the long-running JRPG series. It’s a fantastic jumping in point to the franchise for new players, and has enough tweaks to the established formula to provide a breath of fresh air for existing fans. The story is a little slight, but the appealing characters, streamlined yet robust crafting system, and rewarding exploration make this a recipe for a good time.Great 8/10Review copy provided by Koei TecmoHow we review productsScoring PolicyRelated ProductsPlease note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.About John Cal McCormickJohn has been an avid gamer since the late ’80s and has been playing primarily on PlayStation for as long as PlayStation has been around. Since starting to write for Push Square in 2016 he’s penned over a hundred reviews and most of them were pretty good. He’s a huge fan of JRPGs, likes Kiryu Kazuma more than he likes most people he knows in real life, and spends an absurd amount of time coming up with cute outfits for his character in Final Fantasy XIV.Comments 21Glad to hear that the combat is speedy. In the last Ryza installment, even battles against a handful of punis could take an age. Sometimes you just want to whack a puni and move on with your life, you know?It’s early in the year, but this has to be a contender for best sub heading of the year already 🤣Game sounds pretty sweet too 👍Yumia looks like a step up from Ryza, from its story to its open world. Can’t wait to get my hands on it next weekThis is one of the rare RPG franchises I haven’t played. After reading the review, I might just pick this one up. It sounds really great, and I’m glad it’s a good jumping in point for newcomers like me.@Amnesiac Yeah, it seems a lot more seamless with the general overworld potteringGood review but man it looks like a PS3 game.I’m currently playing Atelier Sophie 2, it’s a lot of fun but it’s a bit tough to handle the aggressive anime-ness of it all.Every woman in the game has the face of a child and skimpy almost school or nurse outfits with a chest that could support medium towns atop them.This game looks similar with its blue fox girl, but I’m sure it’ll still be fun if you can look past it.Loved the Ryza games. Can’t wait for this one.Thanks for the review. Looking forward to get this next week.I perfectly understand that developers want to broaden their audience, but oh man. My favourite Atelier games were pink candy apple: no villains, no high stakes, frilly dresses, everyone were cheerful, friendly and helped each other. No saving the world, just wholesome slice of life goodness. And I loved it. And now I doubt I will ever see such games again.Anyway, preordered physical, but it will only arrive march 28. Guess I’ll play a demo an hour at a time till then.Atelier’s games arent my speed, but commenting on this article just to give the subtitle props. If theres an award for Top Push Subtitle of the Year, it’s got my vote 😂I can’t read the review rn because I am at work. I was just wondering if you have only one character in combat or if you get to use other characters?I will read this later but the combat has me super interested@AFCC You control Yumia by default but you can switch. Each character has something unique about them, skills, etc. You don’t have to switch if you don’t want though. I mostly stuck with Yumia and ran into no trouble.Not familiar with this series, I tend to avoid the really Japanese looking JRPG and stich w/ FF, DQ, Tales and Mana, but the review and summary have me very interested. Probably won’t get to it gif another couple of years, but that’s OK, I’m growing my backlog so I can skip the PS6.Will try out the demo. Unless that’s for a different game. Really there seem to be so many of these I mostly just ignore the lot.😂@Dalamar I’m hoping that the new Resleriana game will be more traditional. Then we can have the best of both worlds.Anime bleh!!! Loath it@hel105 IIRC that’s just the offline version of crossover mobile gacha game.The only Atelier game that I have played is Ryza 1. But I may give this demo a try.Well this review has certainly piqued my interestBelieve or not I am a huge fan of the Atelier series since I casually bought Atelier Rorona, the original version, for cheap from a local store. Since then I have bought all the games, some of them multiple times, I have beaten all of them and I have the platinum trophy in most of them. Since I started moving to Steam I have already preordered Yumia and hopefully the game will run dine in my Sream DeckThe Atelier series are that one game I keep getting on Day 1 when its released and they haven’t disappoint me yet. I do love that their protagonists design grew up with their players and Gust somehow still managed to design a refreshing take on the alchemy system this late into the series.Can’t wait to deep dive into this new one with Yumia next week! Show CommentsLeave A CommentHold on there, you need to login to post a comment…58 PS5, PS4 Games You Should Buy in PS Store’s Mega March SaleRecommended PS5 and PS4 games in the latest sale12 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for March 2025 AnnouncedPrince of Persia! Armored Core galore!GTA Online: All Cars and Vehicles Compatible with Hao’s Special Works Tuning UpgradesSupercharge your fleet with HSW’s new-gen upgradesRumour: Oblivion PS5 Remake Releasing Next Month Appears More and More LikelyUpdate: Original leaker shares moreLast Chance to Get These 43 PS5, PS4 Games in PS Store’s Dealmania SaleRecommended PS5 and PS4 games going cheapGame ProfileTitle:Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned LandSystem:PlayStation 5Also Available For:PS4, SwitchPublisher:Koei TecmoDeveloper:GustGenre:Action, RPGPlayers:1Release Date:PlayStation 5Series:AtelierReviews:Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land (PS5) – Relentlessly Charming JRPG Is a Must PlayOfficial Site:atelier.gamesWhere to buy:Pre Order on Amazon
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