For the first time, the Atelier saga arrives in Spain with Spanish localisation, making it more accessible to the public in the country and throughout Latin America. Since its origins at the end of the last century with Atelier Marie, the franchise has been the goose that lays the golden eggs for developer Gust and publisher Koei Tecmo. There have been a few years where we haven’t had a new release in the series, which has accounted for more than twenty instalments over the last twenty years. Although it is gripped by the current trend made popular by the Hoyoverse, this series has always been characterised by a manga/anime style for its characters and world, and with today’s technology, better designed worlds can be appreciated, even if we will focus on these aspects later on. For now, let’s introduce Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Imagined Land.
The story focuses on Yumia Liessfeldt, the protagonist in this instalment, an alchemist in a world where this practice is forbidden and considered taboo. The setting is the Empire of Aladiss, which suffered a cataclysmic event years ago, when the protagonist and some of her companions were younger. Although Yumia is an outsider, she wants to help find out what happened to the empire and for that she will have to make use of her alchemy, although there is some reluctance to do so. The title starts in medias res, that is, in the middle of the narrative of our protagonists, ultimately breaking the story, because it shatters all expectations about the characters: will any of them die, will any of them suffer a modification to their body? You don’t need to ask them because you’ve already seen them some time in the future in the same way as when you meet them at the start of the adventure.
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Focusing on the cast of characters, their interactions with each other and with their world, is really poor in every aspect. The most depth they have, including the protagonist, is through analepsis to understand their story after you’ve been with them for a while. They exist solely on the surface and that doesn’t make you empathise with any of the group, especially since they have very typical stories within fantasy worlds that don’t bring anything new to the genre. We won’t reveal them to avoid spoilers. Also related to the characters, let’s talk about their personalities. They are walking stereotypes. They all have a series of traumas, some even share the same trauma, making them characters sculpted by a tragic life. And you would think that they have more depth this way, that it gives them more shape. In the right case, you would be spot on, but when they ALL follow a canon, it becomes tiring for the player. Besides, each one fulfils such a strong archetype that you know where they are going to go. The protagonist who is afraid of being rejected, the friend who supports her at all times, the friend who at first is very rigid and then loosens up, the madman who goes after his own interests? The characters you’ve known all your life from adventure anime.
Let’s move on to the essential parts of this game: combat, exploration, quests, and crafting, with their different aspects. Starting with combat, we find real-time gameplay but with nuances. You can move with certain limitations in the enemy’s range, i.e. you have a close attack position and a far attack position, to dodge certain attacks and move around the enemy. Although not turn-based, your attacks are limited by rechargeable uses, making you have to strategise with a bit of precision. You can perform dodges that will give you certain advantages, but we won’t reveal more. It’s entertaining, at least for the first few hours, then it gets a bit repetitive. With every fight you get a lot of experience for the characters, making you level up with almost every fight.
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The exploration, to be honest, is fun. There are a lot of items to collect, which can be a bit overwhelming, but it makes it less tedious to walk from place to place (the bike takes quite a while to acquire and is quite disappointing). And the musket mechanic is very cool, the whole shooting around in a fantasy world is very entertaining, especially if you can use it to get items. And the bullets are very cheap to get. On the downside, it’s not much of an improvement to explore in depth either, so it can be a bit frustrating. The game’s missions are pretty dull, but that’s in keeping with the story, which suffers from the same. They are very flat and fetch quest-like, going back and forth, with long distances in between, to do what the boss tells you to do. There are a lot of side quests, some of them to spend more time with your companions, others to play as a delivery boy with NPCs. And finally, the crafting. I don’t know if it’s just me, I didn’t understand it very well, but sometimes it’s very confusing why you do what the game asks you to do. You use an item with better resonance that gives you more attributes to create another artefact that you don’t use directly. It’s weird. I guess it just didn’t really sink in for me.
Let’s continue with the graphics and design. Graphically, there are no buts, we’ve played it before release, which can cause some minor errors in textures and the camera, which doesn’t quite adapt to certain closed locations. We assume that this will be fixed with the day one patch. The performance of the title is good, with generally no lag when playing in “Quality” mode on PlayStation 5. The anime style is quite favourable to fantasy worlds, especially with the current boom of anime series such as Frieren, which have brought some interest back to these worlds. The world design is nice, you see some pretty cool scenery. The problem is that it feels like we’re playing another game, it doesn’t have a personality that makes it stand out. As far as the characters are concerned, they don’t have a distinguishing feature, although the designs are well done and very well implemented in the game, but another problem arises. The male characters are cool and mysterious, very stereotypical, dressed from top to bottom, and the female characters follow the prototypes of adventure anime, the outgoing girl and friend of everyone, the older and suggestive woman in her clothes and speech, and the introverted and fearful girl they want to protect. The sexualisation of the female characters is also very present. Very short skirts for an adventurous woman, some with large breasts? To make matters worse, we leave you a picture of the DLC costumes for you to judge for yourselves. This is often what we are used to in Japanese games, but that should change a bit.
Finally, the soundtrack. The soundtrack of the game is quite good and has a good verisimilitude with what you see on screen, making it add to the game experience. The opening sequence that plays every time you start the game has a song that fits the style of the game very well and makes you want to stay and listen to it before you start playing. During the gameplay sessions, the music accompanies the story well, so that’s a big plus. The game only has Japanese voices available, though with a great voice cast for its characters, some with well-established careers and great anime characters behind them, so if you’re a consumer of the medium, some of their voices will be familiar to you.
In conclusion, it’s a title that we didn’t love. We found more weaknesses than strengths in its features, especially the narrative, which is rather lacking. For its target audience it may be a good choice, but for the average user it is a title where you will not find what you expect from it. We encourage you to try it so you can draw your own conclusions!
