Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land draws inspiration from where you’d least expect

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Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land, Gust President Junzo Hosoi emphasized a key point; although the success of Atelier Ryza enabled the series to persist following a string of challenging releases, the team isn’t complacent. They aim for Atelier Yumia to maintain its upward momentum in terms of sales. In fact, the game’s development, platform selection, and marketing strategies were all carefully planned with this objective in mind. Essentially, despite the Ryza trilogy being a triumph for the studio, they don’t want to overlook the possibility that the series might not have thrived if it hadn’t been a surprise hit.

As a gamer, here’s my take on that:

“Back in LA, I was demoing Atelier Ryza, a game that carried the weight of potentially saving the series if it succeeded. The team had put everything on the line to make sure it would sell well in Japan. And boy, did it ever! With Ryza’s success under our belts, they’re now setting their sights on the West.

Just a few hours ago, Hosoi flew in from France, fresh off the Europe leg of the press tour. This was the first time Gust had taken part in an international preview tour for one of their games. Exciting times ahead!

Atelier Yumia is set to launch globally, offering support for nine languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

A significant part of this global initiative is what’s driving Atelier Yumia to be the first installment in the series available on Xbox. It seems, however, that this move wasn’t solely driven by commercial considerations. Previously, Hosoi expressed his fondness for Master Chief, but we didn’t realize just how deeply he admires the Halo franchise – it turns out that Yumia’s assistant, Flammi, was modeled after the bond between Master Chief and Cortana.

Before diving into the actual event, I couldn’t help but share my curiosity about which FPS games western gamers are currently hooked on. To my dismay, it seems Halo isn’t as popular as titles such as Valorant, Counter-Strike, Apex Legends, and more these days. As a fan who’s always eager to explore fresh shooting experiences, I can’t help but hope that Borderlands 4 will live up to expectations – though the first two games were great, Borderlands 3 left me somewhat underwhelmed.

I’ve been an Xbox fan since day one and have dreamed of creating content for this platform. Regrettably, I wasn’t able to launch Ryza on it initially, but its subsequent success provided the opportunity to follow through on that ambition as part of a global promotion effort. Additionally, I found it more feasible to propose a port with a new series, catering to a fresh audience, instead of an established one.

If you began your journey with the Atelier series through Ryza, you might not realize right away that this series usually follows a loose “trilogy” structure. Typically, Gust has developed three games at a time from the series. Consequently, Atelier Yumia is designed as a fresh starting point for both returning fans and newcomers, offering a distinct world and universe unlike any seen before in the series. This includes updated gameplay mechanics and a significantly revamped Synthesis system.

Transitioning from the open-world zones introduced in Ryza 3, Atelier Yumia now encompasses a single, expansive open world. Towns, outposts, and distinctive landmarks can serve as quick travel points; over time, Yumia will acquire her own motorcycle to swiftly traverse the surroundings. With crafted gloves, you can navigate repaired ziplines between predetermined locations. Although Atelier has dabbled with open-world gameplay previously, Yumia fully embraces this concept – and it’s fascinating to discover some of the foundational influences behind the gameplay mechanics.

Apart from the standard synthesis loop found in the series, Atelier Yumia introduces a fundamental synthesis system and construction system. This system uses common, non-specific resources like wood and iron for players to create consumables while adventuring in the field or building rest areas known as base camps. Unlike Ryza 3 which only allowed customization of the ateliers in each game region, Atelier Yumia offers a much broader range of options. You can select from various presets that automatically populate if you have enough resources, but players who prefer to personalize their outposts can do so by crafting them entirely from scratch.

When inquiring about how Hosoi perceives that the Atelier franchise’s essence is built around a central gameplay mechanism, and how this influences their approach to every new undertaking, he promptly pointed out that it stemmed from a revelation he experienced while contemplating certain survival crafting games he enjoys, such as Valheim, Grounded, or even Fallout 4. The core mechanics in these games – collecting resources to create specific objects, gear, and more – could potentially align with Atelier’s ethos. However, it’s important to note that the traditional synthesis system is not neglected; rather, it stands to gain from this fresh perspective.

Thanks to the introduction of an open world, certain resources now have designated spawn points clearly indicated on the map, with specific enemy habitats and particularly powerful optional bosses also highlighted.

Yumia’s synthesis system stands out from previous ones significantly, with a unique focus on a concept called “Resonance”. To achieve successful synthesis, it’s crucial to understand how materials can amplify each other when added to a recipe – this amplification is what we call “Resonance”. After you place the base material for a synthesis, additional materials are strategically placed in specific locations surrounding that initial material. Using higher quality materials in these slots doesn’t just boost the effectiveness of the final product by itself, but if the Resonance zones can overlap with other items on the synthesis map, your Resonance score will increase too, leading to even more advantages for the completed item or equipment.

The new system presents a more fluid, adaptable synthesis method than what was available in Ryza; it’s simpler to understand yet maintains complexity for players to exploit. Even seasoned Atelier enthusiasts might find it manageable with minimal effort (though I couldn’t fully test that during my preview). What did become apparent, however, is the distinct change in experience when navigating the world and engaging in combat compared to past installments.

Unlike traditional games, Atelier Yumia operates on a real-time system featuring cooldowns, and you can alternate between close combat and long-range assaults based on the proximity of your attack. Enemies possess protective shields that can be depleted by both physical and magical attacks. However, items synthesized with an element do not automatically classify as magical attacks – instead, specific abilities will have a physical or magical attribute. In this game, Yumia’s basic moveset includes skills that deliver physical damage when used within the inner circle, while those employed in the outer circle inflict magical damage. When enemies attack, you can utilize evasive maneuvers such as dodging and parrying; eventually, you can unlock Precision Counters by timing your responses perfectly to enemy attacks.

The game offers ample freedom for you to discover and traverse the world at your own pace. Scattered throughout the landscape are remnants of the Aladissian Empire, which incorporate puzzles that utilize Yumia’s platforming skills and her gunstaff. Beyond these designated areas, players can creatively navigate the environment to carve their unique paths. Energy serves a dual purpose – it safeguards your party in manabound zones (drawing inspiration from Fallout’s irradiated areas) and also protects you from fall damage. Yumia can collect resources from ore deposits near cliff walls using her gun, but these same nodes can serve as footholds to climb or descend mountains while utilizing Yumia’s double-jump. The initial playtime, divided between understanding the new synthesis system, battle system, and more, suggests that Yumia’s open world has been carefully designed for an immersive experience.

In a related development, we got a sneak peek at a nearly final version of the game on PlayStation 5 during our visit to Koei Tecmo’s US office, and were also granted access to a PC version of the game via Steam. On the Steam Deck OLED, the game sustains a smooth 30 FPS on Standard graphics, albeit with XeSS in Balanced mode. Interestingly, the game doesn’t incorporate AMD’s FSR or nVidia’s DLSS, which is somewhat puzzling, but the XeSS implementation seems superior to FSR on both AMD and nVidia hardware. The game performed flawlessly on my laptop equipped with a Ryzen 9 5980HX and RX 6800M at 1440p high settings, with XeSS in Quality mode, delivering over 60 FPS. Similarly, it ran smoothly on my desktop with a Ryzen 7 9800x3D and RTX 5090, even when set to maximum settings and using XeSS for Native Anti-Aliasing, managing 4K at 120FPS without much strain. The game allows an uncapped framerate, but higher framerates may be impeded by CPU bottlenecks.

As a gamer, I’ve got to say, the PC port of this game feels incredibly well-crafted even before any potential tweaks before launch. The keyboard and mouse controls are surprisingly robust, with every menu fully compatible for mouse usage. If I had one small complaint, it’s a pity that the Dualsense features from the PlayStation 5 version – like the adaptive triggers – aren’t present in the PC release, not even when using a Dualsense controller and disabling Steam Input. It’s a minor gripe, though; the game ran smoothly on a standard PlayStation 5. The TAA implementation on console is noticeably less polished compared to XeSS on PC, which makes a significant difference in my gaming experience.

In summary, Atelier Yumia appears to be the daring follow-up I anticipated following Ryza’s triumph, and it’s evident that the team is self-assured about the end result. Although I haven’t evaluated how the entire game will compare to this initial glimpse of the larger story (as Koei Tecmo provided us with PC save files for later stages, but I chose to focus on the early game to preserve the authenticity of my playthrough), I’m eagerly awaiting more. Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land will debut on March 21 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Keep an eye out for our comprehensive review, which should be released next month.

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2025-02-21 03:26