Atelier Yumia introduces a seamless open world, real-time action, and a creative house building system to raise the IP to a global level 

Koei Tecmo’s Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land has been announced for a March 2025 release across all major consoles. The latest entry in the long-running Atelier series is more ambitious than previous titles, with a goal of making a global breakthrough. In an interview with 4Gamer, the game’s producer Junzo Hosoi recently revealed how Atelier Yumia will push the series to the next level with an expanded open world, real-time action combat and a house building system offering high player freedom. The entire game is designed to cater to everyone from causal players to hardcore RPGers. 

Stretching back to 1997, the Atelier series boasts over 25 mainline titles and numerous spin-offs. It has amassed a strong fan following over the years, however, Hosoi emphasizes that Atelier Yumia is not just for hardcore fans. “I’m not sure if I should say this, but there have been aspects of Atelier games that compared unsatisfactorily to other RPGs but were forgiven due to being part of the Atelier series.”  Hosoi explains, “This time, we want to create a high-quality RPG that many users who have never played Atelier before will like.” 

Freedom to Explore 

Thanks to the success and high praise for the “Secrets” sub-series of Atelier (which has sold over 2 million units), the team has more budget. Consequently, the devs of Atelier Yumia are really pushing themselves to take on new challenges, including technical ones.  

First of all, Atelier Yumia will have a vast open world of the kind never seen in the Atelier series before. Although Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key brought with it larger maps, movement was still restricted to hopping between points. Atelier Yumia, however, will allow players to move freely in all directions across an open field, giving a much greater sense of freedom and exploration. “The experience of unlocking landmarks and journeying somewhere is the same.” However, as Hosoi puts it, Yumia will offer “more adventurous, open-field gameplay.” It will also be easier to explore the map vertically using the new wall jumping move. 

Atelier Yumia’s real-time combat balances strategy with action

The seamless movement and hybrid turn-based combat found in Atelier Ryza 3 will be further evolved in Yumia’s “action-like” battle system. For example, characters can now move around on the battlefield to dodge enemy attacks. Although the battles will be more intense than previous Atelier games, the devs have taken care to blend active and thinking-based combat to create a system that balances the two. Hosoi summarizes, “We’ve basically made it so that players can ponder (their moves) while fighting, giving them a pleasant action-like experience.” The game will add front line and back line positioning, new equipable items, and various other strategic aspects for the player to engage with as they choose. 

Like the combat, the alchemy and crafting systems in Atelier Yumia are designed so that hardcore players can go all out in the pursuit of that perfect potion or item, whereas casual players can content themselves with an easy concoction (thanks to a function that adds materials automatically). Hosoi emphasizes that the team has made it so that Atelier Yumia’s alchemy system expands upon Atelier Ryza 3’s, with the return of a Link Morph-style synthesis system and an even easier to understand visual interface. Follow recipes and craft new, useful items by manipulating the “mana” residing within the ingredients.

The building system in Atelier Yumia lets you unleash your creativity

A big draw for Atelier Yumia might be its house building system, a series first, which lets players to freely create buildings. Although the areas you can build on are pre-decided (you can’t just plonk down a house anywhere), players can unleash their creativity with all manner of walls, roofs, furniture and decorations. “You can even place beds in mid-air.” Hosoi explains. Yet again, housing is also geared towards players with different tastes- for those who want to go all out tweaking every aspect of their dream house, they can. For those who find building a chore- the game has preset houses. 

Balancing a serious story with Atelier’s familiar cozy atmosphere 

The story is shaping up to be more serious than the relaxed, pared-down ‘I’ve given up on saving the word’- style stories of many previous Atelier games, where you are an alchemist eking out a cozy existence.  For starters, Atelier Yumia is set in a world where alchemy is taboo, however, Yumia must use alchemy as she explores a dying continent. Along the way, Yumia and her companions will get caught up in various happenings, and the villains will also have a strong presence. However, Hosoi assures fans of the Atelier series’ cozy atmosphere that, “Even though it’s a serious story, it’s not dark and heavy, so I think you can still feel the Atelier series’ atmosphere and style of storytelling.” 

With this evolution of the Atelier series, the development team is hoping that Atelier Yumia will be popular around the world as a “next generation Atelier game”. Hosoi cites the switch to a more fluid, real-time active battle system as one of these appealing points. As a next generation Atelier game, Atelier Yumia is combining the old and familiar with the new and improved. The game’s look and feel, including its character designs, have evolved but are still comfortably recognizable and distinctively Atelier. 

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is scheduled to be released on March 21, 2025 for PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam). It will also get a physical release on PS4/PS5 and Xbox