First Impressions for Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

Written by Ross Locksley on 21 Mar 2025

Since Atelier Yumia is available from today and our review code arrived yesterday afternoon, I thought I'd bridge the gap with my initial impressions after about 6 hours spent with the game on PS5.

Firstly, I opted for PS5 because I do all my PC gaming on a Steam Deck, which is a lovely bit of kit but an unknown quantity on new releases. Gust also have a history of patchy quality when it comes to PC ports, and I wanted to give Yumia the best opportunity to impress.

For those unfamiliar, the Atelier series is an RPG franchise that centers around the art of crafting, be it weapons, armour, potions or tools, you'll collect raw ingredients and turn them into useful options - much like Link when he's cooking in the the two most recent Zelda games on Nintendo Switch. The trick for the Atelier series is to try to make this activity both fun and rewarding for the player, with the promise of rare materials being integral to the allure of exploring the open world.

Speaking of, Yumia is the most ambitious of the Atelier games in this regard, with around 70 hours of gameplay across the largest open world they have conceived to date. As you venture into Aladiss, you'll find people, monsters, items and mysterious locations to find and interact with. Alongside the main quests you'll be offered side-quests with rewards designed to keep you occupied.

The brown environments of the opening tutorial don't do much to sell the game graphically

So first impressions then - the  game certainly throws you in at the deep end, as Yumia and her party come under attack while ascending on an elevator platform, separating Yumia from her party as she falls and must make her way back to the top of the structure. The game takes this opportunity to provide a pre-game tutorial, as you learn how to navigate the landscape, duck and squeeze through gaps, fight monsters and generally familiarise yourself with movement in the game. Graphically it's not the best opening salvo from Gust - the character models and backgrounds are solid but unimpressive, with the surroundings opting for muted autumnal colours that make everything look a bit dull. The character models are all nice enough and pleasing to look at, but everything moved in a slightly stilted manner that makes the game feel functional but not exciting.

After a meeting with what I assume is the big bad of the story, Yumia is defeated once again and the game begins properly as we (I assume) go back in time and start from the beginning, with Yumia introduced as a fledgling alchemist who is neither trusted nor liked within her village. This owes to a previous disaster involving alchemy that has seen the world turn its back on the practice and sceptical of anyone who practices the art.

Once out in the open, the game looks beautiful

I have to say the village was much more impressive than the opening area, with beautiful landscapes, colourful monsters and a plethora of items to collect (which thankfully doesn't require any animation to slow the process down). You have zipwires dotted around, lakes, mountains and waterfalls which make the world look fresh and enticing. This just confirmed my initial hunch that PS5 would best suit the game as it has all the horsepower it needs to render those distant vistas and lighting effects unhindered by hardware restrictions (of course if you have a powerful gaming PC this is less of a problem). You can move around this world by running, triple-jumping up rock faces and zipping along those wires. It's tremendous fun, and while monsters are plentiful, you can avoid them easily enough if you're wanting to get somewhere fast. 

An early mission sees you treated to one of the new mechanics of the game; base building. You investigate and find an abandoned Atelier building that has seen better days up in the mountains, and from here you can recharge your mana and start your adventures in crafting. You'll be able to create building apparatus, tools, upgrades, potions and many other things to help you through the game, and over the course of my first 4 hours I got a handle on the basics thanks to the story walking me through it all fairly gently. 

One of the crafting mechanics you'll need to learn is to do with cores, which are central to upgrading items. You can open these up and infuse them with various items found around the field, taking into account stat boosts, quality, resonance and power. It's very involved, but the game takes the sting out of this by giving you options to "auto-craft" an item with an emphasis of your choice - again, whether you want the best quality, stats or abilities, it'll select the items based on your criteria and give you a hand. This seems like a good idea if you're only interested in the story, but you get the sense that learning how to do it all yourself is where the game will be most satisfying.

You can shoot monsters from a distance to give you an advantage in battle

The combat system is fairly fluid, giving you control of all members of your party by switching between them. You can block in real time and perform offensive moves mapped to each button for as long as you have enough mana, which will recharge over time during the battle. There is a structure to it, but it still came down to mashing buttons more often than not to just fire off any attack that had juice left in it, but that's more than likely down to me as a player than the mechanics employed by the game. Being a bit light on time before launch meant that I didn't have time to pick up all the nuance as I wanted to experience as much as possible before morning.

So far I've played for 6 hours of a 70 hour campaign, which has resulted in an article for now rather than a full-blown review. There simply wasn't enough time to go through everything so I've taken a first impressions approach, and so far I've been very impressed overall. The open world has a very Breath of the Wild feel to it, though clearly with more emphasis on collecting. You can stroll around seemingly unhindered, avoiding or approaching battles as you see fit, though with it's multi-character and turn based approach, it's less immediate than Nintendo's RPG flagship. That it invites comparisons at all is flattering enough, though I've seen nothing as involved or clever as Zelda's own puzzles as of yet. Another game it put me in mind of was Sony's Horizon: Zero Dawn, again mostly down to the terrain exploration and resource management.

Whether the base building becomes a chore over time is something I'll have to wait and experience for myself, but I will say that the "over-the-shoulder drag and drop" approach is an odd one since it's unintuitive and hard to gauge dimensions and distance accurately. Also, when I created a changing room to use the backpack DLC, nothing happened when I walked in it. I don't know if this is a bug or that the game hasn't unlocked this feature, but it's a pain not knowing.

Crafting is intriguing, though I found the menus a little confusing at times - this is something that goes for the interface in general, especially without a manual to accompany the game. I've been told about skill trees, but can't find how to access the blasted thing. Indeed some menus are locked until you complete a mission or two, so it could be that I'm not far enough along, but if I'm getting resources that work with the function, why can't I find it?

Lastly, the game does have some technical issues, even on Sony's beast of a console. While walking through the village one evening I saw an NPC just walking through the air above my head. The camera is jittery in tight spaces and sometimes zooms in to completely irrelevant places during exposition (such as Yumia's leg for example). A patch was issued yesterday so I assume that Koei Tecmo are still killing bugs before launch and will continue to do so after release. Nothing happened that was game breaking (though PC reviewers haven't been so lucky) so it's either irritating or amusing depending on the situation. The lack of an English voice translation may bother some, but its been standard with Atelier for a while now so I assume that Gust must be familiar enough with their audience to know that most fans won't mind.

Characters are fun and attractive - perfect companions for a long campaign

So based on this limited experience, would I recommend the game? At the moment, absolutely. I'm itching to get back to it and start discovering more secrets. I like the characters and the world I'm discovering, the characters (especially Isla) are charming and I've found the game clear in its directions that means I've been clear to just enjoy myself and the world at my leisure.

If you're a fan of the Atelier games, I think you'll enjoy the revisions here. For relative newcomers it's fun and easy to learn with plenty of instructions (for the most part) to get you started.