Review: Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist Of Memories & The Envisioned Land (Switch) - A Bold New Direction That Strains The Switch

A new day dawns.

Atelier has always been one of the more niche JRPG franchises out there, but it started to gain much more widespread appeal with the significant success of the Ryza trilogy over the past few years. Now that Gust has closed the book on Ryza’s adventures (for now, anyway…), it’s come time to see if they can maintain that momentum and successfully pass the baton to a new leading lady to act as the face of the franchise. We’d say that it’s been largely successful in that endeavour. Beyond the title, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land may not be immediately recognisable as an Atelier entry, but it’s a really good JRPG that justifies the liberties it takes in playing with series conventions.

Eschewing the low-stakes, slice-of-life approach of past releases, Atelier Yumia goes for a somewhat grittier and more grounded approach to its storytelling. In this world, alchemy is a forbidden and mostly forgotten art blamed for the catastrophic downfall of the Aladissian Empire centuries ago. Now, only the ruins of that once powerful and advanced civilization remain, and lone alchemist Yumia joins with the Order of Eustella to assist the organisation on a research expedition to uncover answers about the empire's history and mysterious destruction.

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