• Price: $59.99 USD (digital & physical)
  • Digital Deluxe Edition: $69.99
  • Ultimate Edition: $109.99
• Developer: Gust
• Publisher: KOEI TECMO AMERICA
• Release Date: March 21, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by ONE PR Studio on behalf of Gust & KOEI TECMO AMERICA. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I’ve been a fan of the Atelier series since Atelier Annie (NDS, 2009). The series has continued to change and grow since then, with the Atelier Ryza trilogy achieving great success in recent years. I was excited to see the new features in Atelier Yumia – especially in a world where alchemy is considered taboo!

Having only recently learned that she is capable of using alchemy, Yumia arrives at the continent of the long lost Aladissian Empire. Although people fear alchemy, Yumia was asked to accompany a research team and use her abilities to make it possible for them to reach previously inaccessible areas in the ruins of the empire.

Siblings Viktor and Isla are assigned to keep an eye on Yumia so she doesn’t use her alchemy for “anything weird.” That makes for a slightly awkward start, but they work together to establish an Atelier as their base so they’ll have somewhere to rest and synthesize items with alchemy.

In order to synthesize anything though, you’ll need to go out and gather materials. Explore the largest open field environment yet in the Atelier series, and pick up, bash, or shoot down the materials you need.

You can acquire additional materials dropped by the monsters you encounter in the field. Fight adorable Punis and more in real-time action combat, with 4 difficulty levels to choose from! Battle menus are simplified, allowing players to use their skills with minimal button pressing.

They tried to make battles more interesting with the ability to switch between close and distant attack zones; doing so allows you to avoid enemy attacks. In close combat Yumia uses physical attacks, but move her further back and she’ll fire off some magical attacks instead.

Yumia and her 5 party members each have different skills available in each attack zone, although she seems to be the only one capable of using both physical and magical skills. After using these skills, they go into a cooldown period before they can be used again.

Additionally, you can synthesize items to use in battle, which also have cooldown periods before they can be used again. I liked how these items don’t get used up, so you can keep using them once the cooldown period expires. Your enemies have elemental weaknesses that can be exploited, which can trigger more powerful attacks such as Friend Actions.

Once you’ve expanded your party beyond Viktor and Isla, you can place 3 characters on the front line and the other 3 in the back. You can easily switch to any of the other characters in battle regardless of their location – it’s just that the 3 in the front line are the starting battle party unless you swap them out.

Sometimes you’ll find yourself briefly fighting a battle by yourself in split encounters, where enemies will be in different “battle circles” and your teammates won’t join your circle until they’ve defeated their opponent in that battle. I thought that was kind of a neat idea. There are also rumble encounters that have you face every enemy in the vicinity at the same time.

It feels like the battles do have some complexity to them, but I did button mash a lot. I never had a hard time defeating the enemy (with the exception of the final boss, who I faced at the maximum level of 100 and still had trouble). Characters’ attack animations are also somewhat simple for the most part, and they don’t really have much personality compared to those in previous Atelier games. The battle system isn’t my favorite, but I didn’t dislike it either.

Now, after each battle your party might need some healing items. That’s where the new simple synthesis system comes in! Yumia is capable of making some items – such as bullets, repair kits, or healing items – while out in the field. You can use repair kits to fix devices that are important to the plot (as well as broken treasure chests and other items out in the field).

You’ll use a lot of the items made in simple synthesis while exploring. Exploration is a huge part of the game, with 4 expansive regions to explore. The map is actually incredibly helpful, allowing you to fast travel, track quests, and find special locations marked with a question mark.

Discovering one of those locations increases your map’s completion percentage. You’ll encounter ruins, shrines you need to activate by solving basic puzzles, gathering spots, and more. I found exploring quite addictive in this game; I would try to complete as much of the map as I could before advancing the story in a region.

Yumia can jump quite high and scale cliffs to get where you need to go. (Watch out for that fall damage!) Exploring is just so fun because of the different methods of transportation. Repair and make use of zip lines to enjoy views of the continent from above. Eventually, you can unlock another travel method that allows you to go much faster by land!

After exploring the land for a while, you’ll need to return to your base to synthesize more complex items necessary for the plot. Besides investigating what happened to the Aladissian Empire, the research team prioritizes pioneering efforts on the continent. You can earn amazing rewards for completing pioneering checklists.

You’re also asked to help build several new bases in each region as you get further along. This is another one of my favorite things about the game. While you can just call it a day and use preset buildings from the catalog, you can also build your base from the foundation up.

I had an absolute blast placing walls and floors and ceilings. You can unlock new furniture blueprints by completing friendship quests, accessing the many Treasure Troves across the land, and more. If you don’t complete the optional content, you’ll miss out on some great decor. I loved seeing my teammates chilling out on the lovely furniture I crafted. (You can even dye some of it different colors!)

But what about the alchemy? In Yumia’s world, a being’s life force – and memories – return to the earth and are converted into mana after they pass away. You’ll find these particles out in the field, which allow you to unlock new synthesis recipes. It’s possible to level up most recipes using additional particles, which means that item will receive bonuses during synthesis.

You can only use major synthesis when you’re at one of your bases. As usual, your individual ingredients are each ranked by their quality and have different effects. But I didn’t think that any of that really mattered in this game.

While people do ask for specific items in their requests, I haven’t seen a single one that mentions a minimum quality level or desired traits. I kind of wondered why they even included ingredient quality in this game. There are skill trees for combat, exploration, and alchemy (which I did fully unlock), but a lot of those skills didn’t seem very meaningful in this Atelier game.

It’s nice how we can have the game automatically add ingredients based on achieving the best quality, certain effects, or just the bare minimum. But since the combat is fairly easy and there aren’t any minimum requirements for synthesis, I didn’t spend much time on alchemy compared to my frequent crafting of furniture.

This may disappoint some long time fans of the Atelier series, but in some ways I found it refreshing because I didn’t have to stress as much about finding materials with specific attributes. There aren’t any time constraints like there were in some previous games, so you pretty much get to do what you want whenever – and wherever – you want to do it.

I did have some fun deliberately submitting the lowest quality materials for the research team members’ requests since so many of them shun Yumia for her forbidden alchemy skills. It ultimately had no impact on the game, but it was sure satisfying!

As Yumia’s first party members assigned to observe her, Viktor and Isla are initially somewhat cautious of alchemy, but they’re at least more neutral towards her. I really liked the main cast, who all have their own motivations for joining the research team. I had a particular soft spot for Rutger, who provided me with the most entertainment – especially in his interactions with Flammi and Isla.

In terms of the plot, Atelier Yumia seems a bit darker and more mature than previous entries in the Atelier series. I don’t know if I’d say it’s the most original storyline ever, but it works. Antagonist “C.” is quite menacing, and his voice actor really does a great job with the dramatics.

It took me about 85 hours to beat the game with 100% map completion in each region and 100% completion for the pioneering quests. Completing the game unlocks the Charismatic difficulty plus an extras menu with some content I thought was really neat! And in New Game+, players can keep their equipped weapons, armor, accessories, and items.

I enjoyed my time with Yumia, although the synthesis mechanics could’ve been stronger, and I wanted a little more detail in the main story. As far as its technical performance on Switch, I really didn’t think it was that bad. I only noticed the frame rate drop on rare occasions.

There were some areas, like the Remote Fishing Harbor area, where the performance did get extremely choppy. I also experienced 5-6 crashes over 85 hours of play time, but thankfully there’s an auto save function.

Atelier Yumia isn’t without its flaws, and it may polarize the Atelier fan base due to its departures from some of the usual mechanics, but ultimately I’m very satisfied with it. The open field exploration, variety of travel methods, base building, and furniture crafting are some of the best parts of the game for me. I think that the new features make up for any differences. Check out the demo to see if you agree!

8/10