A brand new start to the atelier franchise, I assumed this would be the perfect start-off point for a new fan to get into the series. It seemed wonderfully ambitious with the open world, the character designs were all completely mesmerizing particularly how beautiful Yumia herself and Nina looked with their enchanting outfits. Trailers appeared to tease a more mature yet emotionally potent narrative especially with how well the presentation conveyed its melancholic atmosphere of what’s to come. Ryza got Atelier on the western market’s map for an enjoyable JRPG, but could this game be the one that will claim its critical success as Atelier’s magnum opus? The Persona 5, The Nier: Automata, The Fire Emblem Three Houses of the Atelier franchise! Well honestly it does not even come close, but there is a certain other game I want to make this comparison towards… Sonic Frontiers. An ambitious open world game with a lot of potential especially in its storytelling, but left a lot to be desired.

Essentially, despite the darker tone the plot for this game isn’t that too complicated to understand. In a world where alchemy is maligned due to the resulting fall of a mighty empire, Yumia joins the research team in adventuring across this foreign land to discover the truth about alchemy in pursuit of clearing its reputation of its evils. There’s a lot more detail to that but the general gist of it is enough of a hook for anyone curious especially to how this might differ to previous entries. Unfortunately, this initial hook is really within the premise the promotional material would show you and not within the game itself, with the flashforward at the start showing the midpoint not really conveying much of an interesting plot line beyond the main character in a perilous situation. The actual start of the story isn’t any better either with it just sort of dropping the player into the setting of exploration without much of an engaging explanation mixed in with the first few party members coming across as awfully dry in their interactions. At this point of the game it's still within the two hour mark on steam so you could potentially get your money back or just close the demo and move onto a different game. It feels quite disappointing, but frankly everything that gets you invested into playing Atelier Yumia is outside the game rather internally within itself initially.

But these characters are certainly a highlight of the game beyond their stellar visual designs. Although I originally described the first members of Yumia’s party as dry, both Viktor and Isla actually have a lot more going on as the story goes with how they are royalty and the effects alchemy and the tragedy its caused has for them. This makes their initial goal interesting to follow, but the villain surrounding their goal, Vesper, is such a non-character there really isn’t much of a payoff to their character arcs for this game which just leaves their journey quite hollow if it wasn’t for the amazing chemistry they actually have with the rest of the cast. Rutger and Nina are probably the stronger characters of the party as their backstories are actually far more relevant to the main plot while also having more fleshed out personalities which got them to steal a lot of the scenes they were in, though it also helps they had the most fun kit to play with for the combat. There’s also some furry waifu in the party and she’s honestly quite adorable in how helpless she is but her whole story was so predictable I don’t feel like mentioning it at all. Nonetheless, Yumia as the main character really does carry the whole narrative with her journey paying off quite well especially by the middle part of the game where the flashforward takes place. Overall the cast of characters is honestly quite reminiscent of the Tales of franchise and although the chemistry does occasionally hit those high highs, it's such a waste that this game doesn’t have the story skits I liked from the dusk trilogy and marie remake that could’ve added those fun banter to flesh out the cast even more. It apes Tales of so much it even follows it up with most villains being one-note and boring besides the one side villain kek.

So the game has a bit of a weaker narrative and the characters albeit charming, just simply aren’t utilised to their fullest potential. Then surely the gameplay loop has to be its main selling point as it's always been with the Atelier games right? The answer to this is… somewhat. Exploration is actually quite rewarding in finding resources through the land and treasure chests for the synthesizing better items for exploration and combat. However, going back to my Sonic Frontiers comparison at the start, these puzzles are downright baby level tile-turning and mix-&-matching. It's quaint for the first few hours but just downright repetitive after a while. Fortunately exploration is more than just puzzles as the energy system is quite interesting in how it enables Yumia’s movement through actions like jumping, going through mana dense areas, and the cool motorcycle. None of these are actually that much of a challenge though but it does present a modicum of stakes within the gameplay and not just the narrative. Combat is actually pretty fun at the start especially with the usual Atelier staple of upgrading your arsenal whenever you hit the roadblock, with the added real-time action combat making the spectacle quite the attraction when it looks like your playable character is doing a sick combo. However, like a lot of the mechanics mentioned so far, the novelty never really lasts as there’s barely much variety or depth beyond matching the weakness the enemy has so you can use the big item move for the extra damage when their shield breaks. Another disappointment on what is otherwise some really good ideas being no more than interesting gimmicks.

So to reiterate, this game shows a lot of promise in how unique it shakes the formula in presenting a really cool interpretation of what the franchise has been about. The narrative tries to portray a more mature vibe and while the characters are likeable in their interaction still leaves a lot to be desired in how they can impact the overall story in their relevance. By going the open-world route, they allowed themselves a myriad of new gameplay opportunities but what ends up being received by the players feels awfully unchallenging, uninspired and gimmicky. This is literally just Sonic Frontiers. But hey, just like Sonic Frontiers, I genuinely believe this can be a STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION for the franchise as I do think the next game can do really well if they gave it more polish. Because it really needs polish, like holy cow optimization really be damned these days with how crunchy the game can feel on PC. I’d still recommend this game though since I think I had a more positive than negative experience with this game and I really want GUST to further refine what they managed to achieve with this game. We will be eating better with the next game surely.