Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land by developer Gust and publisher Koei Tecmo America—Sony PlayStation 5 review or preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes.
If there's one series that keeps me excited for every new release, it's Gust's Atelier series. As much as things change over the years, the core staple of the series remains the same. It's about alchemy, exploration and the friendships built over time. Taking that next step, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land follows this pattern while shifting direction in both style and tone.
Starting off with tone, Atelier Yumia takes a bit of a more mature and somber tone to the usually bubbly alchemic adventures. Alchemy this time around is a taboo subject that seems to scare people and “should not be used”. Arriving in the lands of Aladiss as part of an expeditionary team, our titular protagonist Yumia will experience this taboo first hand as she explores this land ravaged by an alchemy that we, the players, have only really seen for “good” up to this point.
I say “good” as we've used alchemy over the years to help out townspeople or kingdoms with requests. But we've also used it to create weapons to help explore the surrounding lands and defeat monsters. It's all subjective. But here, that shift in tone makes for an interesting new adventure as it takes form in both how others treat Yumia as well as how everyone sees these lands that they've arrived in.
What’s special about these lands that you arrive in is that they are full of ruins and no other people in sight. Covered in a fog designated as manabound areas, the expedition requires Yumia’s expertise if they are to move forward. Alchemy will help protect Yumia and her party for a limited time, but there are also hordes of monsters to greet you at every pass. While fighting is an option, if you don't want to fight them? You can simply go around, or even above them. Atelier Yumia has done a great job in the transition to an open world, even if the series has always been more of attached open environments.
Like in most open worlds, anything you can see, you can generally move towards. Walking, running or driving a motorcycle, you choose your speed to explore the world. Whether gathering new ingredients from the environment or battling monsters, you’ll have access to Yumia’s staff which is a tool that I'm certain most alchemists would have loved to have in the previous entries.
It does everything.
Smashing stones, breaking ore off of rock faces, shooting fruits out of trees. Wait. What? Yes. Shooting fruits out of trees and a variety of other things in tougher higher to reach places. This time around you only need one tool, Yumia's staff. And for things that seem just out of reach? From the beginning, Yumia's high heeled boots aren't just alchemic fashion, they allow her to triple jump against solid surfaces.
What I truly appreciated with this shift is that there are a lot of small things that Yumia can synthesize on the go. Bullets, repair kits, bandages, camping kits, fishing lures, etc., Yumia just needs to take a few seconds to replenish these items. Bigger items will still need access to a form of atelier, but gone are the days of it looking super cute with a cauldron inside. You can make it cute, but the cauldron is gone…
It's honestly a small price to pay for the new flexibility offered to players. Having this open world allows for you to move the story along, at least 90% of the time, at your own pace. You want to go left? Go left. Want to go right? Go right. It's up to you. There are generally no more soft locks to progress if you haven't been back to town in a while, because there's no town to actually go back to.
This is perhaps one area that, not that I missed, but that I felt was missing? You will encounter something in this vein but there are no shops. There are no real people to talk to or interact with. They are just there and it feels empty as the NPCs just stand around. If you are to interact with someone, it's more of running up to the icon on the mini map with one of two options. The first, if the cutscene is important enough, will automatically start. The second, if it's not as important, or part of a side quest for example, will require you to use the interaction button to get the conversation started.
Not exactly having a space to call her own, Yumia can, in a way, simply build what’s needed when it’s needed. Throughout the various areas to be explored, there are designated areas where building can be done. Houses, mansions, storehouses, as long as it fits within the space allowed, it can be put down. It can also be as elaborate or as simple as you need. Small space in an alcove? Put down a bed to pass the time and a storage chest to drop off materials from your bag. Problem solved. You can spend as much or as little time as you want when it comes to building.
One thing to watch out for, however, is when it comes to dropping things off at one of Yumia’s bases. Once items are dropped off, they can only be accessed within a base’s borders, not out in the field. This took me a long time to realize certain equipment features as I wondered why I wasn’t as effective in combat as I should be, especially being as overleveled as I was. It’s very easy to overlevel when exploring the world. That is because new weapons, armor and gems to insert are only available through your base’s storage once dropped off. Once you remember that? You should be damned near unstoppable!
Which leads into the last major change, real time battles. Atelier has always been turn-based, whether that was pure turn-based or an active combat style where you had to wait for your turn icon to be available. Atelier Yumia has gone full real-time granting Yumia and the rest of the party action tokens for each of the four buttons of the controller. While you’ll obviously start off with less, you’ll gain more as time goes on. In the meantime of waiting for your tokens to come back however, you’ll have to move around and dodge enemy attacks.
If that wasn’t enough, you will also have to worry about this either up close and personal, or, further back from the action. Both come with their own skills that can be used and are useful in their own situations. Nothing says that you have to control only Yumia in battle though. Keeping with the real-time flow, you can either swap directly to another character, or, perform a precision counter that will swap the character being controlled. With all party members being able to be swapped between at any point in time, no one is ever left out and you don’t ever have to play catch up if one’s weapons and abilities are better in specific situations over another.
Finally, what’s really neat in regards to combat is that you have your up close and personal skills, your long range skills, but then you also have up to four combat items that can be equipped, per character, that also use action tokens. When the timing is right, these can also lead to more devastating attacks if you’ve broken an enemy’s defense and perform a Friend Action attack with whoever decides that they are up for it. Finally, again, you ALSO have access to another set of items for healing and bringing back fallen characters into battle if you need to. There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of options.
This makes combat much more immersive. Not only is it real time, but you are also fighting where you encounter enemies on the map. There are many times where I saw a point of interest where I may not have otherwise spotted it because I dodged an enemy attack in battle. Once the battle is over, it’s back to moving about the world and either diving into the next battle or getting back to exploring at your own pace.
It all blends in nicely together. The combat, the exploration, the various points of interest. Nothing feels like it’s there to just be something else to do. There are small shrines for example while exploring that will grant you keys to treasure troves and energy cores for upgrades. The upgrades can allow you to stay longer in manabound areas, double and then triple jump without a wall, speed up your motorcycle, etc. Or, these energy cores can be used in conjunction with a skill tree to unlock a variety of things for exploration, alchemy and combat.
If I were to have a complaint? If I really had to dig for one? I would like to have the camera swirl less around Yumia at the end of every combat. That’s about it. I don’t think it’s needed and it could give a bit of motion sickness at times. Because otherwise, on the PS5, the load times were great, the visuals were fantastic, and there are plenty of available options such as being able to remove motion blur that I was thankful for.
While I originally thought that the open world got in the way of the story progression, it doesn’t. Not really. If you want to dive into the story proper after wandering around for 20 or so hours poking at side quests and exploring the world, that is a choice, and it’s also the entire reason for this adventure: To explore these lands as part of an expedition group. Once I decided to kick the story into gear, it flowed together nicely and that is also where I noticed that I had no issues with the switch. Thinking even further on it, I think that I had even less issues than previous series entries when we used to be forced back to homebase or town in order to move the story along.
Overall, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a fantastic new entry to the series. Gust have continued to push the series forward all the while making it just as enjoyable for newcomers as long time fans.
Score: 8.75 / 10
0 comments:
Post a Comment