A break away from the Atelier formula leads to an enjoyable experience for fans of the series
I’m a big Atelier fan. I’ve loved the series’ slice of life, chill, very laid back games. In the previous titles we just collect items to make alchemy recipes, fight enemies and get the drops. We’re basically told that someone needs this by this date, and so we make it by that date.
Atelier Yumia is the first game in the 26-long series where the developres have decided to strategically stray from the normal formula. This game has a very clear like path, with more combat focus through the story. The story here is that a continent gets wiped out by a magical terrorist attack, and it’s up to us, an alchemist employed by the government, to help find out what the mystery is of this weird, new magical place. So that alone is very different for a series that’s usually very lighthearted.
The crafting here includes different tiers of resource quality, and we’ll want to pick up as much as we can of each item so that we can make the best quality output. For example in one alchemic recipe we may need wood, rock and maybe a metal. So if we have a B tier metal, a B tier rock and a B tier wood, we can put that together to make a higher grade item. And then within that, we have strengthening spheres that allow us put more items into them to increase the quality. So the more items we get, the better chance of that resource being a higher grade, which allows us to fast track the better crafted items. And because we can’t buy things like weapons, this crafting process becomes crucial.
The quality crafting itself is a gameplay loop that makes carrying 70 pieces of paper actually worth it. The more we have, the more we craft with, can make the quality go up and unlock another socket for improving our weapon’s or armor’s or item’s abilities.
Combat-wise, the game is split into two areas, a front and back. When we’re in the front we have melee skills, and when our character is in the back they convert to range skills. Enemies have differnt types of weaknesses that require us to bounce back and forth betwene the two zones, chipping away at armor with range while we prep for a close-up hard hit. This makes us be really strategic with how we’re fighting; it feels more involved than turn-based battles, even though it really is kind of like a turn based game at its core.
Adjacent to all of this, the Atelier games have consistently been about good storytelling, and that may make it worthwhile in and of itself. The character writing, the relationships and the world building is just genuinely enjoyable. Atelier Yumia‘s mix of that solid writing and strategic combat makes it a perfect jumping-on point for the series. It’s more modern, but maintains the weird alchemy system that is throughout the series.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to the Editor by the Publisher. It first appeared on The SideQuest for April 14, 2025. Images and video courtesy publisher.
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