Back in 2019, Koei Tecmo hit it big with Atelier Ryza, and the long-running series went from being one of the most beloved niche properties to being something that suddenly had upward mobility in sales and prominence. Not quite in the leagues of Final Fantasy, Tales, Dragon Quest or Persona, of course, but up there with the likes of Legends of Heroes. The flip side to that, however, was that suddenly Koei Tecmo didn’t have a small and very specific niche to cater for. The series traditions were no longer enough. Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land perfectly reflects that tension that the development team now clearly feels.
What has Atelier traditionally been? First and foremost, coming-of-age stories. In almost all the previous titles, leading right up to and including the first Ryza, the protagonist was always a young girl just starting to make her way in the world and learn the ropes of alchemy. The girl was inevitably innocent, enthusiastic, and conveyed a sense of wonder wherever she went. Sure there were enemies to bop and quests to complete, but to call these games “cozy comfort food” would, if anything, be underselling just how sickly sweet they were. I don’t mean any of that as a bad thing. The Atelier series has been what you turned to when you needed your spirits lifted and you wanted something to play that would make you smile. Throw in the cure art and light fan service, and Koei could be relied on to hit its niche with almost unfaltering accuracy.
Things started to change over the Ryza trilogy, and then also where Koei went back to start producing sequels to previously loved titles (most notably, Sophie 2). There was no longer a need for a coming-of-age narrative since the characters were now accomplished adventurers. With the Ryza series Gust started to look for ways to replace the twee turn-based combat with something more active and dynamic. There was a greater focus placed on the quests and the narrative was more about the adventure than the characters. I’m by no means saying that these changes are bad, but they are definite changes, with the aesthetics and tone of Atelier shifting in kind.
This all brings us to Yumia. The Gust producers have been very clear that this game is an attempt to find new audiences and explore new ground for the Atelier series. You can see that immediately with Yumia herself, who is not the bright soul with a plucky attitude and a world of experiences before her. She’s beautiful, but there’s a sadness in the way she presents herself. She hasn’t lost all the trappings of the Atelier protagonist – she has a Shima Enaga charm on her belt, and it’s very girly bit of character design (side note, the Shima Enaga is, for whatever reason, totally dominating Japanese merchandise right now – I saw more plushes, notebooks, blankets, towels, pens and the like with the little bird plastered on them than I saw Hello Kitty when I was there a few weeks ago). However, in most ways, she’s a much more mature and sober type than we’re used to in the protagonists from this series.
This is also driven home in the opening tutorial section, which is a narrative flash forward. Yumia and her full group of friends run into what we assume is the main boss. He grabs her by the throat and hurls her off a cliff. The scene cuts there and flashes back to the start of the story, but it’s an almost shockingly dark and violent start to an Atelier game. Usually, they start with the girl wandering around her local town, introducing herself via a monologue, and then getting into some kind of tiff with her parents/guardian/mentor.
The serious tone doesn’t stop there! Once we have gone back to the start, we find that no one really likes Yumia. In fact, they’re downright hostile to her. The world experienced some kind of calamity a generation ago, and alchemy copped the blame, so it’s become something of a forbidden taboo. Yumia is given an exception and allowed to practice alchemy because she signs up to support an exploratory team, but she is not trusted, people don’t want to talk to her, and they all make it clear – she’s out of there if her “forbidden arts” start looking like they’ll cause trouble.
Things naturally evolve from there and we do end up with a hero that is trusted by her allies and doing save-the-world kinds of activities, but the start nonetheless establishes that Atelier Yumia’s adventure will have a different texture and tone. That’s not to say the game doesn’t have fun and lacks bright characters, of course. Some of Yunia’s party are indeed more to the Atelier type, with sunny dispositions and the works. Punis (the iconic slime-like enemy) still dot the landscape early on (and there are several cute monsters further in). And there are of course swimsuits as DLC. Koei Tecmo would have riots on its hands if it didn’t offer that. The point overall, however, is that the “traditional Atelier” is not ignored but much more subtle in Atelier Yumia. It’s more there as a nod and concession to traditional fans, rather than something core to the experience.
To be clear and re-iterate: These are not criticisms. I love the classic approach to Atelier. I’ve got both Meruru and Escha figures positioned in prime spots in my glass cabinets. But I also like what Koei Tecmo’s done here. I enjoyed seeing Yumia’s stoicism in the face of naked distrust, even from her party members. The higher stakes to the adventuring is also appealing and the treatment of alchemy as a taboo subject, despite the abundant good that it can do, creates an appealingly appropriate parallel and real-world relevance. In Yumia, alchemy is treated as some kind of technological innovation that gave the Aladissian Empire a major advantage over other nations, only for alchemical overreach to cause the cataclysm (or, at least, that’s what people in the world believe is the cause). That is poignant framing given the way that technical development in areas like AI and quantum computing in the real world now feels like they’re being done with very little concern for guardrails and the potential consequences of uninhibited development.
In terms of what it feels like to play, Atelier Yumia is also designed as a game to appeal to a mainstream audience. The open world is large and the developers have taken notes from the likes of Genshin Impact and Zelda Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom on how to go about filling it with things to do. Wherever you wander you’ll be hit with all kinds of impromptu quests and gently goaded into exploring around just to see what you can see. The terrain is rarely flat, so traversal and figuring out how to get to your destination is part of the challenge, though the game is nowhere near as puzzle-orientated as the recent Zelda titles. On the plus side, much like those Zelda games, you do get to indulge your creativity with a reasonably rich set of base-building tools.
Combat, meanwhile, builds on the work in Ryza and is now very fast. In theory, it operates on a series of cooldowns like an MMO – use an ability and then wait for the cooldown to reset so you can use the ability again. In practice, the countdowns are so quick, and there are so many abilities to cycle through, you’re never going to stop mashing those buttons.
The combat system is slightly let down by being too hectic. It’s impossible to focus on watching the battle for signs that you need to dodge out of the way, while also paying attention to how your AI allies are faring, and keep track of other enemies, skills, and so on. So in the end you’ll play it largely as you would an action game, focusing on the timing of the dodges and taking a quick glance at your skills collection to make sure you’ve got a combo of skills to roll off. With that being said, while I personally like turn-based combat, I’m not going to criticise Yumia’s either. The combat system works and the difficulty settings are built so that they won’t punish people who are less experienced with fast combat systems.
As a final note, and my one real criticism of the game, the Nintendo Switch port is, I can only assume, massively compromised on how it must look on PlayStation or PC (or Xbox, with the series finally making its debut on Microsoft consoles). And in fairness, I appreciate that Koei even took the time to take such a sprawling, expansive experience and get it to work on the Switch. But while the art direction is gorgeous, from texturing to water and rain effects, and frame rate, this is a heavily compromised port that brutalises the hardware, and is only for people that don’t have another choice, or really care that much about portability. With any luck, the Switch 2 will get an enhanced port later down the track so that people can properly enjoy the full vision as it was intended.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a committed effort by Koei Tecmo to further grow the series and find a new audience. It means that some of the Atelier traditions have been firmly and, on the back of the Ryza series, likely permanently behind. But this new direction is wonderful in its own way. Yumia’s ambitious scope, sense of adventure, quality party of characters, and typically gorgeous music and art direction make for an exciting new chapter to the series.
