Studio She has always been one of the more franchises of Niche JRPG, but she began to gain a much more widespread attraction with the significant success of Ryz trilogy in the last few years. Now that he has closed his book on Ryza's adventures (for now, anyway …), it's time to see if I can keep that momentum and successfully transfer the bat to a new leading lady who will act as a franchise face. We would say that in that endeavor it was mostly successful. Behind the title, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Remembrance and the Provided Land may not be immediately recognizable as the entry of the studio, but that is a really A good JRPG that justifies the freedom needed in playing with the series.
By ejecting low roles, approaches for the edition of past editions, Atelier Yumia goes for a slightly crumbling and grounding approaching to his storytelling. In this world, alchemy is forbidden and mostly forgotten art is blamed for the catastrophic fall of Aladissian empire centuries ago. Now only the ruins of that formerly powerful and advanced civilization remained, and the lonely alchemist Yumia is joined by Eustella Red Eustella to help an organization in a research expedition to reveal answers about the history of the Empire and mysterious destruction.
Although there are still a lot of cute interactions and chips among the members of the actors who fit into the series' Merry identity, it is interesting that Atelier Yumia is generally a modest but not insignificant, darker tone. This is evident in the thinly curved skepticism that most characters initially secrete towards Yumia and Alchemy, and how much her characterization is influenced by the violent death of her mother in the accident three years ago.
This is an interesting story, the one that holds your occupation by painfully teasing the answer to bigger questions, and we are curious to see where thick goes with it because it works on inevitable sequels.
Given the assumption that Yumia is a key part of the research detachment, a significant amount of playing loop is focused on research, to the extent that we reminded many recent editions of the open world. Each region has an extensive map covered with fog-covered fog with points of interest, while there are various ruins and 'Ubithowers' that act as Zelda-Lite dungeon full of puzzles and secrets.
We appreciated access to freeform, because you can't go far without finding something to collect or catch on. And although there is a major search that you can always follow and Oudles of Side Quests to knock it, you encourage you to set many of your own goals by using 'pioneering effort'.
These are smaller regional goals, such as finding a certain number of shrines or lowering the tough enemy of the mini-gall, which give you points for special unlocking after hitting various thresholds. Not only does this mean that the research is constantly given a secondary, external reward, but these goals list is often constructed in such a way that they deliberately push you to use a beaten track and use the maximum from each region by ejecting a secret.
Of course, the land crawls to all kinds of enemies, and the fighting follows an action approach that mixes smartly and elements based on turning and living actions. Although you can fight together with the party members, you can only control one character one, each with a small plate of available skills (and, of course, using items) managed by Cooldowns. You can push the shots into the glittering combinations, while the enemies can at any time interrupt the attack on the poke or a larger AOE attack in the MMO style that gives you a few seconds to get out of the hot zone.
You can run freely in a circle around your enemy, and there are two 'rings' that jump in to avoid incoming strikes or set up to reject attacks that hit the weakness of the enemy. It is like a more vibrant and included version of the famous FF system of the FF Active Time of Fight – although there are combat elements where fast time and proper positioning are needed for success, many of your victories are descended to manage the refrigerators and carefully plan to break the enemy.
Some may be disappointed that Atelier is quite obviously leaving behind a fight based on turning point, but the Yumia's system feels like a satisfactory evolution of a working rush in Ryz trilogy while still feeling unique.
Of course, this would not be an assite game without a robust object synthesis. The main idea here is that you have a central 'core' of objects surrounded by several nodes, a bit like subatomic particles that are orbit in the nucleus. You place the ingredients on each knot, ideally in a way that allows their energy level to overlap with other nodes and core. Depending on the type, quality and placement of the ingredients, the item itself will “level” its different passive effects.
It is a quality craft system that goes way In addition to the tired and minimal effort of most games with mandatory 'craft' elements these days. Creativity, skill and knowledge of components are richly rewarded here. Of course, this careful system would be arduous if you had to go through the whole procedure each Time you wanted to do something; Fortunately, there is always an automatic construction feature that you can activate and direct with goals such as “quality” or “minimal minimum”. That, of course, can never do things Enough As nice as you can if you invest the weather, but it's nice to have such features when you make things.
As an extension of the synthesis system, there is now a system to build a base for those who like to personally touch their environment. Whether you have discovered another camp as part of your permanent survey in the studio, you can now make all kinds of decorations and furniture that you will be distributed as you consider appropriate in certain areas. Those who do not care about such things can choose from the growing list of pre -selected buildings if you just want to lower the basic camp and move on, but we appreciated the ability to adjust the place to socialize.
Visually, Atelier Yumia is … Well, medium. On the one hand, we loved that they were simplified and a loud interface, and the current transitions in the fight and beyond it were quite impressive there in the field. On the other hand, the quality of the texture is bad, pop-in is common, and relatively low resolution gives everything a rather vague and messy look. The world itself and the design of the characters are beautiful – we especially advocated the inventiveness of the many ruins you encounter – but the problem is that the old switch with this task is not really in line with it.
Certainly, this game running On Switch, but it is profusely clear that the modest hardware is strongly struggling to achieve disappointing performance here. In connected or manual, the staff speed usually hovers around 20fps during the best times, sinking even lower when a lot happens.
You can recover a few frames if you get into the settings, enable the 'performance' mode and prevent more advanced video effects, but then it leaves you with an even worse image of the image that, admittedly, does not seem like it is better performed.
Unfortunately Nintendo switch is obvious not The ideal place to play atelier Yumia, unless transparency is absolute. If you are a fan of the series and you have no other hardware, this port is surely transient, but we would warmly suggest that you think about picking it up for another platform (if you have this option) to gain a complete envisaged experience of this edition.
Another point that has been running a discussion, neither positive nor negative, is that Atelier Yumia feels like a much more significant departure from the traditional format, from which the series has slowly moved away from age. Producer Gusto Junzo Hosoi described This latest edition as a “brand new JRPG series that has characteristics at the”, and we couldn't agree more.
Things like a reduced focus on the plot of life and a more difficult focus on things such as combat action and extensive research are certainly welcome, but leave us to wonder if it means that the future enters will continue to distance itself from the characteristics of the series that once gave him that 'modest and comfortable' vibe. Enough to say, it is clear that the series has come long The path from the Atelier Marie or even Atelier Sophie, and there are more and more pronounced differences between modern and retro studio.
Conclusion
In most aspects, Atelier Yumia is an impressively ambitious and powerful new entrance for a long series, flaming the path to unknown parts, such as his titular protagonist. Things like Dark Story, Action Heavy Fighting and increased focus on research game work well in their advantage. The only main complaint is that this is obviously designed with a much stronger hardware than the switch in mind, and while its performance is here It's over Acceptable, it is very far from the ideal. In any case, we would give this recommendation not only for longtime veterans of the studio, but also to fans of other huge JRPG adventures like Ksenoblad series. Atelier Yumia is a brave step forward for this franchise, and she is a strong indicator that the Atelier series still has a lot of life left.
