Thank you Koei Tecmo for sending us this game to review!

The Atelier series has been going on for over twenty-eight years, and Atelier Yumia is the twenty-sixth main entry. The games have made many changes and adjustments over the years, but Yumia is one of the biggest departures since at least the PlayStation 3 era. While some fans have expressed dislike for some of them, I personally love Atelier Yumia, flaws and all.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is perhaps the most ambitious game in the series to date, with a sprawling and mostly contiguous open world to explore, and grand vistas with really beautiful scenery. It takes place in the former Aladissian Empire, which was known as one of the most advanced societies but had been destroyed through an unknown cataclysm. It happened a few centuries ago, but a more recent mana disaster brought it back to the minds of many people. The Order of Eustella from the nearby Eustellan Republic decided to form the Aladiss Research Team to investigate the ruined kingdom to learn its many secrets, and to discover what really happened to the once-great Empire.

While the Aladiss Research Team is populated primarily with normal humans, they quickly realize that they need someone with the ability to manipulate mana, despite the strong taboo in modern culture against all forms of Alchemy. This is unfortunately necessary as large portions of Aladiss are covered with manabound areas, which drives most intelligent life crazy after extended exposure. Yumia Liessfeldt lost her father as a young child, and then later her mother Irene several years ago; Yumia is now the last in a line of talented alchemists.

While Yumia remembers her mother and the many amazing things she made, she learned a lot of her alchemy skills from Flammi, her "super high-spec survey assistant", which her mother passed down to her. Flammi plays a critical role in Yumia's adventure, as she can decipher the many memory vials that are found throughout their exploration, as well as help out in other ways. She's also a tangible reminder of the mom she loved so much.

The Research Team is led by Erhard, a wise and capable leader who, despite the strong distaste for Alchemists among the team, decides to trust Yumia with important duties that only she can perform. At first, the siblings Viktor and Isla are asked to watch over her, but over time the team grows in friendship, and to double the size. Since Yumia can sense and manipulate the flow of mana, she is able to dispel the manabound areas, making more of Aladiss accessible by the Research Team. As it turns out, this ability of hers helps more than just the Research Team, but I don't want to spoil too much.

One interesting aspect of Yumia is that she is very unlike previous Alchemists in the Atelier series, or at least recent ones. The most obvious one for new players is the complete lack of cauldrons in the alchemy process. Instead, Yumia draws out the mana in each ingredient, and then forms the new item through synthesis. Synthesis takes the form of a dance, not unlike ballet. As she spins and twirls, mana glows and follows her movements, before finally forming the item once synthesized. As someone who has played over a dozen Atelier games by this point, I was certainly surprised that the 'science' of alchemy is almost entirely missing, with a more intuitive feel taking over instead.

Another notable difference is that Yumia is said to 'recall' recipes, rather than invent them. She is said to be rediscovering recipes that Aladissian alchemists had already created. There may be a couple of exceptions through the story, but even that's unclear. As Yumia's adventure largely revolves around memories in one form or another, this does make sense, but it was an unexpected change for me.

This game also introduces another form of crafting, called simple synthesis. Using this, you can create relatively simple items like ammunition for Yumia's gunstaff so she can keep using it. Yes, she has a gun, and yes, it's cool! It has many purposes, from of course striking enemies to weaken them before battle to gathering far-off materials to activating far-off ladders or switches. It's a very important mechanic for the open world aspects of exploration.

The structure of Atelier Yumia as a whole also reflects its open world structure, rather than a more linear approach of other Atelier titles. Enemy monsters are pretty much everywhere, though you really don't have to fight them. Thankfully, if you choose to, you can gain levels up to 150, so the time fighting monsters isn't likely to go to waste. I reached 99 about two thirds into the game and thought battle wouldn't matter anymore, and then I ticked to 100 and still had more to go! That was a surprise while playing.

The map is laid out into regions, and each region is made up of various manabound areas. In order to dispel them and make them safe for others, Yumia needs to find and activate the Mana Circulator controlling each section. Being an open world game, after the first few that are guided, you can complete them in pretty much any order. Outside of Mana Circulators, there are a *lot* of landmarks and various other little hidden things. These range from habitats (enemy or ingredient) to camps, ziplines, caves, shrines, treasure troves, and more. Treasure chests are also littered around the map, though those are not quite so simple to find from the map. Thankfully, chests and memory vials are not required for map completion.

On top of just exploring and finding new places, you will constantly discover mana particles. What happens is a little glowing trail pops up, and if you follow it, you can grab some particles. Blue ones just require you to find the right spot, while red trails lead to a mana crystal and some battles. The red ones are much more rewarding, but the blue ones are quick. Either way, you will need these mana particles in order to unlock or upgrade recipes from the recipe recall station, which is where she recalls recipes like I mentioned before. On top of that, of course ingredients are everywhere for you to gather, like in most Atelier games before it. It's probably most similar to how the Ryza trilogy does it, except you don't need to make various tools to improve gathering; everything's handled from the skill tree. (More on that later.)

On top of how surprisingly enjoyable exploration for its own sake is, there are also Pioneering quests as well as other quests to complete as well. Pioneering quests are given by Erhard for each region, and vary a bit for each one. There are quite a few individual tasks that contribute a percent here and there, with everything complete reaching 100%. Each 10% increment gives you a reward, and sometimes you require most or all of them to progress or unlock certain hidden items. For example, without certain bullet types, you can't destroy certain roadblocks. While probably not strictly required to beat the game, you might have a tough time for some.

As you explore you will also run into shrines of prayer and small shrines. The small shrines are simple to activate; just walk to up them and press the appropriate button or just shoot them. They also show up as points on your map. Shrines of prayer usually requires completing a small set of puzzles in order to activate them properly. You have to find relays to activate, which often needs solving a small puzzle, then after they are all activated, going back to activate the shrine again. It's time consuming, but not too bad. They also show up on the map as places of interest. There are a lot of them, but they reward you with Energy Prisms, which along with SP (skill points), are used both at prayer shrines to power up things there, but also to unlock skills in the skill tree.

There are several kinds of quests in Atelier Yumia. I already mentioned Pioneering quests, but there are main story quests, normal quests, character quests, and random quests. Each has some kind of reward, though it usually involves SP and sometimes items. Normal quests are not strictly required to complete the game, but they often have nice rewards and add to the world building in some way. Character quests are similar, but for your party members; they are all worth doing. Random quests can often be repeated, and are a great way to grind for SP if you need more. These are usually quick fetch quests, or things like beating up a bad guy and so on.

There are also requirements, particularly on Pioneering quests, that are somewhat less obvious. For example, treasure troves are discoverable on your map, but each use of the keys to open them must be found through normal exploration. Some of them are hidden quite well, though since I tend to be a bit of a completionist while playing games like this, I actually found enough so I never was short when the time came to open a trove. This may be at least in part because I completed one of the free DLCs (downloadable content) that I really recommend if you want a head start: the additional map 'Falbra Thicket'.

The Falbra Thicket DLC adds a relatively small new map region called, you guessed it, Falbra Thicket. It can be accessed when you are near the end of the first region; the side quest leading there was easy enough to trigger by accident. It's a quest that focuses on the cute Alber characters that Yumia introduces as a mascot character of sorts. But what makes the region so helpful are the Pioneering quest rewards. One is that it gives you a type of bullet that you can't get for quite a while longer; this lets you explore more without backtracking, which is pretty great. The other is that it gives you extra treasure trove keys. In the main game, there are exactly as many keys as troves; this gives you extra keys, so you can worry less about being a few short. This is important because some Pioneering Effort goals (the small tasks that you need to complete to max out the Quests) sometimes need you to build or craft something that you need to find the appropriate trove in order to learn the recipes for.

Speaking of building, in addition to crafting and exploring, there are several bases that you can discover throughout your journey. Some are just small campsites, while others are larger places where you can build large buildings. Part of the Pioneering quests will almost certainly ask you to place specific buildings in each region. Base building can be as simple or as complicated as you like; if you love to make pretty places, you can do that, or if you want to just get the basics done, you can do that too. Late in the game, you recall certain buildable items that can be placed to make your crafting more powerful, so building can pay off there, too.

Like all Atelier games, if you get good at crafting, you can make items that can break combat quite effectively. This is especially true at more normal difficulty levels. Combat is a mostly real-time affair, where you can mostly button-mash and switch up skills as quickly as you can, while dodging when the enemy attack box is about to hit you. A fair number of players complain about the combat system, and I understand their complaints. I find that the default normal difficulty is mind-numbingly easy. Even hard was not too bad after I crafted some early-game gear. Late in the game, I cranked it up to very hard, and that was also doable. The final two difficulties, charismatic and legendary? Now those are difficult. Don't try those unless you have a decked-out team.

And with how easy it is to duplicate anything late game, even ingredients (that might be a first?), eventually building out your team to stack damage gets really easy. Crafting isn't all that complex compared to most Atelier games anyway, which I honestly don't really mind. I enjoy crafting, but as a means to an end more than just because, so it keeps the experience fresh. But I know some really love solving those puzzles more than the gameplay itself, and for those, this game may be a step back. Regardless, I found that once I made items that did tens of thousands of damage per hit... well, the game remained really easy in combat. Eventually I just changed the default starting combat menu from skills (weapon-based attacks) to items because they do just so much damage. On hard or very hard, battles rarely lasted more than one round once I got my attack item crafting figured out.

I should probably point out that you will want to fill out the skill tree as quickly as you can, as crafting and gathering item levels is locked behind skill levels. SP is remarkably easy to get, as everything from quests to activating shrines to crafting generates more. There are many important skills locked behind the Synthesis, Exploration, and Combat trees, though I personally focused more on the first two before filling out the last, since combat is so simple at normal difficulty levels.

Despite all of the good, there are some strange design decisions. The menus look really great, but certain things, like the location of the healing items, is in a really weird spot, by the party formation. Simple synthesis and the exploration items are on different tabs, and you can't use the items from the synthesis screen, even though you can see and select them. The equipment/skills/items screen is a little awkward at first also, as you use bumpers and triggers both to navigate them. Once you figure it out it's fine, but it took some figuring, that's for sure. And I never did figure out how to determine how many treasure trove keys I have left, even after over eighty hours of play...

And I have to say that despite the flaws, especially the combat, I still felt compelled to keep playing, discovering new things as I went, and completely finishing all main, normal, and pioneering quests. I also got 100% map completion. Actually, it's probably easier to just point out that this is the first Atelier game I have ever gotten all achievements on! I don't usually achievement hunt, but with Atelier Yumia, I enjoyed it so much I kept going back for more.

From a technical point of view, the game ran mostly fine on my fairly high-end PC. I played almost entirely with a controller, but keyboard and mouse is also reasonably well supported. About halfway through my time with the game, we upgraded from 4k monitors to 5K ultrawide monitors. There is no native ultrawide support, but there is an excellent mod that adds unofficial support here. It worked really great for me, but as with anything unofficial, your mileage may vary.

From a moral standpoint, Atelier Yumia is pretty in line with a lot of Atelier games, and really anime games in general. There is fantasy violence, with characters hitting monsters of all different kinds. Normal humans are almost never the target, with notable storyline exceptions. The ESRB notes an item described as bloodstained, but I don't recall that. Minor curse words are used, like 'h*ll', 'd*mn', and 'b*st*rd'.

More of the issues relate to the clearly magical world and of course alchemy. While it starts off taboo, as you would expect, people do warm up to it more as you help them out using it. As such, there is a lot learned about where mana comes from, and how memories relate to its existence. The presence of mana leads to some unexpected things; I don't want to spoil the story, but the life force of people who pass on relates to this. Of course creating items out of thin air using reagents and mana is ever present in this series, even if cauldrons no longer play a part. The positive and negative uses of the levels of alchemy that Aladiss achieved is explored in quite some detail. One race of creatures prays to a deity, and Yumia volunteers to pray, too.

As is often the case with this style of game, sexual content is an area of concern. To be clear, there is no sex present at all. But characters do dress in a provocative way. Yumia herself dresses in a very short miniskirt, but the developers go to extra lengths to make sure that no players can see up her skirt. Her breasts are prominent under her shirt, and jiggle, but are not exposed. The same cannot be said of another character, Nina, who has incredibly unrealistic proportions and shows massive cleavage. I like the character otherwise, but the beyond silly proportions is really unfortunate. She also dresses alluringly with a slit up her dress. Sometimes the camera makes sure certain things are visible while avoiding others, but I've seen much, much worse in games of this type. There is a hot springs scene, but they are all wearing more modest one-piece suits - except for Nina who also has a cut-out showing her cleavage.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is probably not my favorite Atelier game to date, but I still really loved it. It's far from perfect; combat could be more engaging, and near the end I was really hoping to find those last few secrets quickly. And with some discoverables, like memory vials, there is no good way to find what you might have missed (thankfully there is no achievement for those). Nevertheless, it looks really good, and the music is fantastic. The characters are lovable and interesting, and Yumia as a protagonist is probably one of my favorites. The open world exploration was also quite enjoyable, even if I'm sure other games do that better. If I were to compare it to my more recent Atelier game before this, Atelier Ryza 3, I like Yumia quite a bit more. I would say that Atelier Yumia may be a pretty good introduction to the Atelier franchise, even if crafting and such is quite a bit simpler. If this sounds interesting, there is a free demo that I highly recommend you check out!