When you think of a Japanese RPG, what games come to mind? For someone with a faint awareness of the genre, games like Final Fantasy obviously spring to mind. For those more entrenched in the JRPG world, series like Dragon Quest and Star Ocean might spring to mind. I would place myself somewhere in between these two levels of awareness. I know of the many series that exist, but have yet to play many of them (mainly due to time). One series, however, has always skirted around the edges of my awareness: the Atelier series. Imagine my surprise then when Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land landed in my lap for review!
Released on March 21st, 2025 by Koei Tecmo and Gust, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is the 26th main entry into the Atelier series. It was also the first of the series to come to Xbox gamers. It also became the fastest-selling Atelier series to date, beating out Atelier Ryze 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key. There have also been established collaborations with other games, such as Tekken 8.
We at Gamer Social Club released our first impressions on the Atelier Yumia’s release date. While I was only 10 hours into gameplay at the time, I was wowed by these initial hours. And now that I’ve finished the game, it’s time to give the full review!
Disclaimer: I’m going to try and stay as spoiler-free as possible in this review. I will be sure, however, to give heavy warnings if we stray into any spoiler content!
The World
Centuries ago, there existed the Aladissian Empire – a civilization that thrived and made advanced development of alchemy. One day, a sudden cataclysm wiped Aladiss from the face of the planet. Time passed and alchemy fell from grace to a “dangerous art that brings destruction”. Now considered taboo, alchemy has all but vanished from the world.
Enter the Aladiss Research Team. They seek to unravel what happened to the Aladissian Empire and determine the causes of mana disruptions that now exist.
Aladiss divides itself into four regions:
- Ligneus Region – Consisting of plains and forests, it’s the home base of the Aladiss Research Team.
- Sivash Region – A sunken area of Aladiss that has given rise to pockets of mushrooms and fungi.
- Auruma Region – Once a major industrial area of the former Aladissian Empire, now only ruins remain.
- Lacuna Region – Researchers know very little about this region.
The Cast
As the name implies, we follow Yumia Liessfeldt – a lone alchemist. Yumia has joined the Aladiss Research Team to uncover more about alchemy, along with discovering what happened to her mother. Yumia’s guiding principles are cherished words from her late mother “Learn how to judge what is right by yourself.” Yumia is accompanied by Flammi, a self-proclaimed “super-high-spec independent survey-assistance device”. Flammi belonged to Yumia’s mother and is the last thing that connects her to her late mother.
As with any RPG, Yumia is accompanied by a cast of characters that will aid her in her journey.
- Viktor von Duerer – A member of the Aladiss Research Team, Viktor serves as Yumia’s supervisor in the field. Viktor believes strongly in justice in the world, but tends to be a bit rigid in his thinking.
- Isla von Duerer – Viktor’s younger sister, Isla is the bubbly little sister that likes to push her brother’s buttons. She gives the husky energy that we all know from JRPG’s character tropes.
- Rutger Arendt – Another member of the Aladiss Research Team and the resident gremlin of the group. Rutger loves his valuable trinkets that he finds, but is reluctant to open up to others. Rutger was an orphan and resorted to shady work to support himself and other orphans he knew.
- Nina Friede – A mercenary hired by the Aladiss Research Team, Nina avoids discussing anything about her past. Shoe does, however, present as a relaxed person that puts others at ease. She’s also, well, quite…well-endowed (every JRPG has one).
- Lenja – A Welleks (a demihuman race native to Aladiss), Lenja is the only non-human of the Aladiss Research Team. While very skilled in the understanding of mana, Lenja is very timid and is always apologizing!
The Story
**Disclaimer** I am going to be VERY vague about the story. I believe this to be a key component of a JRPG and would hate to spoil it.
As I noted earlier, the Aladiss Research Team has been making efforts to uncover what happened to the Aladissian Empire. There have also been efforts to dispel the “mana-bound regions” of Aladiss – regions that may only respond to the efforts and skills of an alchemist (like Yumia). Through the guidance of Erhard Boleman, leader of the Aladiss Research Team, Yumia and her allies begin the journey to start uncovering the fate of Aladiss. It is within the Ligneus Region that we also meet Viktor, Isla, Rutger, and Nina.
The travels of Yumia and her companions lead them to the Sivash Region. This region is inhabited by both the Welleks (a fox-human hybrid race) and the Neru (a mushroom-like species). The Welleks strongly oppose alchemy, despite being aware of mana and alchemy, while being aware of mana and alchemy. Despite this, the leader of the Welleks, Cledia, sees the abilities of Yumia as a necessary evil. Sivash is where we also meet our final party member, Lenja. For the curious, imagine Senko-san from The Helpful Fox Senko-san. It is within Sivash that Yumia and her companions learn of “mutants”. These are creatures that have been warped with the power of alchemy.
With the assistance of both the Welleks and the Neru, Yumia and her party reach the Auruma Region. Auruma holds its own secrets of the fate of the Aladissian Empire. All these secrets point to the final region within Aladiss: the Lacuna Region.
I get it. “You barely told us anything!?!”. The tough part of reviewing games is that when you dive into the story, you tread into spoiler territory. Personally, I am always of the mindset that I would rather explore a story on my end than have someone tell it to me. The same holds true here.
The Gameplay & Combat of Atelier Yumia
The open-world of Aladiss. Think the style of such recent games as Genshin Impact, Breath of the Wild, and Final Fantasy XV. Enemies roam freely around the landscape, which they have dotted with points of interest, as well as hidden secrets and puzzles to solve. When in the open-world setting, you control Yumia. Combat, however, is another story. Also all over the world – you’ll gather resources for the purposes of alchemy – we’ll get to that.
Combat within Atelier Yumia flows in a real-time battle system format. You have your Inner Range and your Outer Range – each of which has its own move sets for utilization across all of your team members. While in combat, you can switch between Yumia and your other two party members that are on the Inner Range of Combat. For nearly all of my gameplay, I had Viktor and Isla up front with Yumia, and Rutger, Nina, and Lenja on the Outer Range.
As I said earlier, your Move Sets depend on where you are in the field of combat, but your use of Magical Items are standardized whether in the Inner or Outer Range. Your Magic comes from equipped items that allow your party to cast powerful spells via alchemy and follow the base traits of most magic in video games: Wind, Fire, Thunder, and Ice. As you could guess, certain enemies are weak to certain Magic types, so use this to your advantage.
Along with the ability to switch between party members are Precision Counters and Friend Actions. While in battle, you can dodge enemy attacks. If you dodge during an enemy’s attack and switch to another party member, you trigger a Precision Counter, which allows you to unleash a powerful attack by the team member you have switched to. Wearing down the defenses of enemies and stunning them triggers Friend Actions. While in a stunned state, if you use a magic spell against the enemy that they are weak to, a special sequence unlocks where you and another team member both use the magical powers against the enemy.
The Alchemy
Yumia will have to use her alchemy skills to create stronger gear, weapons, spells, and other crafting materials (it’s an Atelier game – it was bound to happen). At specific locations, Yumia can use alchemy to synthesize these useful items for use in the world, as well as for your Team Members. Be forewarned – the dense alchemy/synthesis system can overwhelm you. But the beauty is that they have an Auto-Synthesis system that allows you to specify what you want and the game will do the rest. Honest truth – I found the synthesis system a little overwhelming, but again, this is also my first game in the Atelier series. So unfortunately, I cannot speak to whether this is the norm or not.
Coupled with the creation of items via alchemy is the use of Memories. Flammi can scan vials found scattered throughout the world to discover Memories. These memories grant Yumia particles that unlock and improve upon alchemy recipes. This is the whole other side to the alchemy of Atelier Yumia – unlocking the potential of all the recipes that you learn for alchemy. Full transparency – I did not 100% this and I would hazard a guess it would take an extensive amount of time to do so.
For those more versed in the Atelier series, this may be your go-to in terms of the game’s content. For me, though, it was something that I only accessed as I needed to.
Skill Points & Prayer Shrines
Players gather Skill Points by collecting alchemy resources in the world, solving puzzles, finding new sites of interest, and completing Main and Side Quests. There are also Character Quests for each of your companions that provide these as well, which dive more into the backgrounds and personalities of each of Yumia’s companions. Without giving too much away, these Character Quests were nice little side stories to the main questline and provide some moments of light-heartedness in what is tonally not always the most happy story.
You use Skill Points to expand your skills in three domains: Exploration, Combat, and Synthesis. Expand each of these trees to fit the needs of your play style. As to be expected, the further you expand these trees, the more costly you will find the prices for further expansion and growth.
Prayer Shrines are found scattered throughout Aladiss and allow Yumia (after powering them up) to expand her Alchemy Skills and access to deeper pools of mana. Think of them as little hide-and-seek side tangents as the powering crystals for these Prayer Shrines are obviously not right near the shrine itself.
The Base Building
Across Aladiss, Yumia will unlock locations for the Aladiss Research Team to establish bases. Now what does building a base entail? Imagine Animal Crossing, but with a few more hiccups. You can build structures, furniture, tools for alchemy, as well as decorations to place around your bases.
I’ll be honest – I didn’t do much of this. I already play too much Animal Crossing as it is – I don’t need it in another game.
The Good
I have spent a LOT of time discussing Atelier Yumia, and honestly, I didn’t even touch on everything there is. But I leave that for you, the gamer, to discover. It’s time to dive into what I liked and what I didn’t like.
First and foremost – the story. While it definitely hit a lot of tropes that many JRPGs hit on (i.e, the power of friendship conquers all), it was truly enjoyable and told in a very effective manner. I didn’t feel lost in terms of what was happening due to lack of context, but I also wasn’t getting inundated in lore drops (if you’ve played a JRPG, you know what I’m talking about). And as I stated previously, they did a very nice job with the Character Quests and stories, really fleshing out who each of Yumia’s companions were.
The music was also beautifully done and is credited to the work of Akiyuki Tateyama (Laid-Back Camp, My Happy Marriage), Kujira Yumemi (As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World), and Kazukia Yanagawa (several previous Atelier games). I truly enjoyed some very well-crafted cutscene pieces that are coupled with this solid score. Imagine looking at images of the past with some hints of sepia-tones.
The combat felt intuitive, if not a little chaotic and finicky at points (I’ll get into that in the next section), but given that this is my first Atelier game, I have nothing to compare it to.
The world of Aladiss, while feeling a little empty at times, had a lot of room for exploration, puzzles, and hidden treasure chests, which really incentivized me to look to the corners of the map to make sure I located as much as I could.
The Bad
I noted combat above, as feeling intuitive, but a little chaotic. Early in the game, this was fine. However, towards the latter half of Atelier Yumia, this became a little more problematic. As you encounter larger and larger enemies, you tend to lose the nuances of the fight with some stuttering issues with the battle camera. Coupled with this, certain fights highlight the attacks of the enemy, which in turn, pulls all focus away from Yumia/whoever you’re controlling. So, say goodbye to effectively dodging in those instances.
In the same vein as the combat was the overall difficulty of the fights themselves. I played the game on standard difficulty. Challenges in my games are fun, but I don’t want to play Elden Ring. I felt that the first two-thirds of this game were… easy. Almost too easy. In the last three major fights in this game, however, the difficulty curve spiked hard, and I mean HARD. While I did manage to clear the game and all fights, it truly felt like the earlier stages of the game hadn’t fully prepared me for what lay in store at the end of the game.
Running in tandem with the difficulty of some of the latter half of the game was the use of Support Items in combat. To access this submenu in combat, you need to stand completely still (which does slow time down). However, there had not been a single fight earlier in the game that really urged me to use some of my healing/support items in this menu. Once you start using them, it’s easy enough – I think it was more just me not being in practice of doing so.
Base building. It was fussy. You could overlap lots of different items over one another. It didn’t really build on the experience of the game for me and I tended to do the absolute bare minimum that was needed in the game and kept moving along. Another gamer may enjoy this more, but it just didn’t itch that scritch for me.
Last little hiccup – there were definitely texture/lighting issues that I encountered in the game. Not a ton, but definitely…interesting when they occurred.
Atelier Yumia: The Overall
I have officially dipped my toe into the world of Atelier Yumia, and the larger Atelier series as a whole. Now, the question is – would I go deeper? 100% yes. Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land was a JRPG that I didn’t realize that I needed in my life and was an absolute pleasure to play, despite some of the road bumps that I encountered along the way. And I have to say – I could never actually fully predict where the story was going to take me, which is a nice change of pace for some games that I have played in recent memory.
If you have never played an Atelier game before, give this one a chance. If it’s not your jam, it’s not your jam – the beauty of JRPG’s is that there is always one out there that will catch your fancy.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is available for purchase now on Playstation 5, Xbox, and Steam for $69.99 and on Nintendo Switch for $59.99.
Gamer Social Club was provided an early-access code for the purposes of this review. This review was played on Playstation 5.
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