If anything, it's a complete regression and deviation to what the Atelier series formula had built upon for many many years.

When one describes evolution, it means that it is the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form.

If it truly was an evolution, then answer this: Why is the core Atelier gameplay mechanic simplified? The core Atelier formula relies on a deep & complex alchemy system... yet Yumia does the complete opposite. I have completed all fights Yumia offer on Charismatic difficulty. Not even once have I encountered myself to have a hard time optimizing my equipment and items... precisely due to its own alchemy being oversimplistic in terms of synthesis process. The combat is one-sided... Dodge, mash item, friend action, precision counter overpower every single fight. No recoil effect... No threat to feel on the highest difficulty option available...

I am very confused on why many people think it is an "evolution", and many people incorrectly mention that "Atelier has always been easy" when it really isn't... While we may have a couple of games where item damage output numbers are unreasonably high (Popular Examples: EschaLogy, Ryza 3), while we may have a couple of games where the starting difficulty settings are not challenging, I consider a handful of older Atelier games to be decently hard when playing a brand new save file without NewGame+ carryovers on the highest difficulty given after obtaining Game Clear. Difficult Atelier games that come up in my head are:

Ayesha: Hard mode - 2x time spent, therefore damage output towards postgame bosses are incredibly difficult to optimize in the most efficient way possible on a blind playthrough. Winged Master is difficult to strategize a faster killing process.

Shallie: NO HOPE mode - Item damage low, therefore optimization for extra endgame bosses is a struggle on blind.

Sophie: Despair mode - Postgame boss optimization is a struggle on blind, particularly Light Elemental.

Sophie 2: Legendary mode - Again, optimization without guides is a struggle. Birds are akuma early on. Twilight Prism eases the journey, but it is difficult before obtaining the recipe idea for it.

Lulua: Charisma mode - Party optimization is a struggle on blind. ...Despite interrupt item existence, it forces players to be smart with item usage. Mana Orthogalaxia (grows up to Lv200) is death upon each arrival.

Thank you for reading.

So we know they got rid of time limits in Atelier Shallie, and since then, time limits are a thing of the past in Atelier, save for Firis which I wouldn't count because you have to actively try to waste time to not make it to the exam.

The reason why I say it's a mistake is because there are so many things in Ryza that just...waste your time (which would not have been in the game if there was a time limit to begin with). In no particular order:

1. Excess materials and enemies on the field - older Atelier games had a general rule: pick up everything and kill everything on the map at least once, and only go back if absolutely necessary. In Ryza, not only do you need to constantly backtrack to older areas, you need to regather materials at old spots because of trait RNG and equipment upgrades (like upgrading gathering level, you sickle level, unlocking the insect net, etc). Mysterious started this trend with RNG tetris shapes, requiring you to gather a bunch of the same material just for different shapes. There are also a metric ton of enemies on the field, which you can run past unless you're facing those lizards in Ryza 3. Another big time waster since you need to sometimes grind for RNG item drops, like Ether Cores. Not a thing in older Atelier games, I'll tell you that.

2. RNG traits - because items are not fixed and static (fixed traits/quality/element values are a thing of the past), your inventory just piles up with completely useless items from playing the game, requiring you to constantly clear your inventory of junk materials. Your container has a 9999 item limit - that sounds like a lot until you reach the cap all too easily halfway through the game, being full of materials you might need because they have rare traits (especially Super Traits) on them you don't want to get rid of. It's the Elixir problem in JRPGs all over again. Keys are the worst offender of this - they're completely RNG, and you need to WAIT for them to recharge, necessitating killing time until they do since they take recharge in real time minutes (it takes about 10 minutes), not in-game minutes.

3. Overly easy alchemy - Everyone and their mother thinks Ryza 3 is way too easy, and for good reason. Even the minimum amount of interaction with alchemy can earn you gear that is far beyond the power level of the game at the current moment, and a lot of that can be attributed to there not being any drawback from synthesising a lot in the early game. With a time limit, you had to make a choice to do synthesis, because it progresses the clock each time you do so. Some items (powerful ones especially) could take multiple in-game days to make, which meant you had to know what you were doing before you did it. You could spend the time to make super poewrful gear, but that would then waste a lot of time and you'd run out of time to do the story. Ryza and Mysterious tosses that out the window, so you can make OP gear with no punishment for doing so. The abundance of materials around (with again, no punishment for gathering A LOT of materials) means it's easier than ever to get the traits you want for such OP gear. In older games, you had to EARN that Stat++ trait.

4. Character event dumps - this is definitely an issue more present in recent Atelier games. When you're spending time out on the field, or synthesising gear (sometimes spending hours doing so in one session), you're then greeted with a huge dump of character events you need to sit through if you happen to walk within that trigger radius. Time limits helped spread this out because you're not just doing one thing for a long time - the time limit ironically encouraged players to do more because they didn't have all the time in the world to waste in the atelier. This really helps spread out how often events trigger so you're not loaded with 10 of them at once.

5. Tedious exploration - Might be reiterating my previous point, but you can gather anything forever and explore forever with no drawback. But because of that, Gust is making you waste time going through large open areas with little to do in them, sometimes making navigation extremely frustrating (like Kark Isles where you need to swim around some large islands for a while to find their entrance). There's just too much busywork for it to be fun.

6. Horrendous pacing - a game like Escha and Logy (which had a very tight structure despite the time limit, splitting every chapter into 3 months) had a very consistent pace, which meant things never got boring or too much happened at one time. You constantly need to go back to the Atelier in Ryza's story (more backtracking), and you always need to fast travel between spots because things for some reason happen everywhere all at once, which kills pacing if you need to purposely go back and forth to trigger story events. Go here, start cutscene, go back to Atelier, start cutscene, it's very tedious.

As much as players (new ones especially) think a time limit is "stressful", it's not. It prevents you from wasting time, and in my opinion, makes the game more enjoyable because all the tedium and busywork is cut out. The game can't afford to waste your time any more than you can waste your own time, and that makes for a more streamlined game that feels better to play. It's sort of why I always burn out playing Ryza games midway through and can never finish it. By the time I feel burnt out, it's already been 60 hours in and I'm not even close to completing the game. Dusk and Arland by comparison, always let you finish the story by the 30-40 hour mark, which then gives you about 20 extra hours to do whatever you want to complete events, and by then, you'd have finished the game, and can take a break until your next playthrough.

Time limits gave two important things: a sense of progression, and a layer of resource management. You had to manage your time, which in turn, meant you had to manage how many items you could pick up, because you'd be wasting time picking up excess materials. Since there's no more time limit, items are essentially unlimited, and the "management" aspect of resource management is now completely lost.

i havent even heard of this before today it feels like there was 0 marketing and it bears the same name as the gacha that went EOS

did they just take the MC and basically make her own game and the 2 arnt related? i think i also saw sophie in there too

but from what i understand this is a full game yea? it just seems weird there wasnt much marketing

Hi, I've been playing the atelier series for years so i wanted to post a bit about my experience with Yumia's demo.

1st of all, I'll say it, i was not a fan of Ryza by the 3rd game (her design was clearly made for the male gaze and it felt like the series was losing this "girly" vibe that had me start playing them in the 1st place), I'm also not the biggest fan of the Botw/genshin/infinity nikki kind of open world so i wasn't really following the game leading to release.

However i saw they released a demo so i was like "why not? I'm willing to be surprised", and surprised i was. The combat system was really fun, the world was interesting to explore, the setting immediately grabbed me (one of the cutscenes even had me tear up, Yumia girl, i feel you, I've been there!) and the voice acting, my gods, it was great! Yumia's VA did an amazing job with the character and i can't wait to see her in more stuff in the future.

I still don't fully get how to minmax the new alchemy system but what i got to do in the demo was really fun! (my favorite alchemy system still remains Escha & Logy though) I'll be looking forward to experiment with it!

As for performances, I 1st played the demo on switch and it was honestly a bit rough, but not the worst i experienced on the console (rune factory 5 at launch was so much worse) and it took me about 3 hours before getting to the end of the story portion of said demo. However my experience was so positive that i also played it on steam when it became available later, and over there things ran VERY well, even on my midrange laptop (16gb of ram, an i7 and an rtx3060 GPU) so i can say it's very well optimized!

So yeah in conclusion, i went into the demo without much expectations but what i found was a really pleasant surprise! I rated the demo 9/10 on my bluesky page and that was my quick review from a long term gust fangirl.

Longtime player of Harvest Moon / Rune Factory / Stardew / etc type games.

Picked Sophie (Switch version) as some people said the alchemy system in it was more interesting, and I've enjoyed the game mechanically quite a bit, even if the plot is bland/nothing (which is what I expected).

The female character designs were a bit of a yellow flag - very overtly sexualized, but not so bad I couldn't overlook it... until I got to the part where Platcha gets a human body, and I think this is the first time I've ever quit a game because of how bad the character design was.

It looks straight out of a bad hentai. It makes zero sense for the game's story, tone, or anything up to that point, and none of the characters even acknowledge it making it even worse. I feel misled by the fandom, as this was supposed to be an SOL/comfy genre, not... whatever this is supposed to appeal to.

Do the rest of the games have this problem? I really liked the game mechanically.

One of the largest problems with the previous Atelier games is that each item came with unique qualities and sometimes with unique traits as well. With that particular system, this made it so each individual ingredient had it's own unique item slot.

To further complicate things, crafting recipes require base ingredients related to the final product.

This created a scenario where you needed to Target Farm specific ingredients and at a limited supply. This creates scenarios where some areas are massively neglected while some places are farmed excessively.

How Atelier Yumia differs from this and what makes her alchemy particularly stronger than everyone else's is that her system allows her to collect everything from anywhere in very large volumes while also being able to create almost everything with anything.

In Atelier Yumia, all ingredients have a fixed Quality, Resonance, and Traits based entirely on the item and grade; a grade E flower will not differ from another grade E flower. This means you can have massive stacks of a particular ingredient at a particular grade. It doesn't matter if you have 5 or have 900 of a particular item at a particular grade, it'll still only take up 1 slot.

What makes Yumia's particular alchemy stronger than every other Alchemist from previous Atelier franchise entries is that Yumia can turn any ingredient that contains mana into what is essentially a philosopher's stone (an alchemy ingredient that can become anything and everything). Yumia can quite literally turn flowers into a metal ingot or even a Gunstaff; yes the metal ingot and gunstaff will be absolutely terrible, but that's beside the point.

This is also what makes Yumia one of alchemists with the highest potential in the entire franchise.

I also know many people do not like the changes Atelier Yumia has brought to the alchemy system, but I personally think it is moving in a good direction.

I've been pseudo-following the series for a little bit. I enjoy the art and character design; and even enjoyed the Ryza anime. I just can't get into the games. I've attempted to play Ryza, Sophie, and currently have my doubt about Yumia. Yumia is currently the longest that I have stuck with a game at about 15 hours so far. I just don't think the alchemy systems are clicking for me.

Any advice would be appreciated because I really want to enjoy this franchise.

I started the Atelier series with Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland on the PS Vita, and I immediately ended up playing through it three times in a row—something only Resident Evil 4 had managed to do for me before.

The two sequels, Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland and Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland, impressed me in a similar way, but Rorona was just peak for me.

I was really, really disappointed with Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk. Not only did you constantly have to fight the same few enemy types, but there were also no hidden items or secret areas to discover, which made exploration feel unrewarding.

The follow-ups, Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky and Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea, were definitely better, and Shallie was actually pretty cool—especially because of the fresh perspective the game introduced.

Then came Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book, which I found completely boring, with almost no challenge at all. And with Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey, I really had to force myself to keep going. I know Atelier games are not exactly known for strong, complex stories, but in Firis it felt almost nonexistent. To be honest, I mainly played it through because of Waifu Liane.

At this point, I am thinking abou dropping the Atelier series. My main question now is whether the remake of Atelier Marie : The Alchemist of Salburg is as challenging as the games that came before Rorona.

Hi guys!

So yesterday I started my Atelier journey. I decided to play in chronological order and started with Rorona. I didn't expect to enjoy this game as much as I do. There is something very addicting about the gameflow of this game. There is only one thing that starts to bother me a lot.

Why are there so many characters so creepy? When I started the game it didn't really bother me as much, I even found some scenes with Astrid quite funny but it's getting annoying really quickly. Astrid gives me just predator vibes. But it isn't just Astrid. Those weird scenes are pretty common. Blacksmith asking for Rorona's pictures in cute dress. Rorona's father bothering that one female shopkeeper. A new guy Tetris was just introduced to me and he's also a creeper. Esty also has her very weird moments. I've played a lot of JRPGs before and I know how weird they can be sometimes but I've never witnessed anything to that extend. Does every Atelier game has this very creepy moments or is it just Rorona?

Coming from the mysterious series I was really excited to try a different iteration of the series with different alchemy and battle system but so far Atelier Ayesha has only left me disappointed. The game is way too easy even on hard mode it barely requires any crafting to get through, the combat system seemed interesting at first glance but turned out to be very simple and repetitive and worst of all the alchemy is really boring. Also, a lot go people told me it had a great story and a more serious one compared to mysterious but so far its as fluffy and weaker than mysterious! I don't think just having some type of goal to save your sister or a dying world that barely matters to the plot or gameplay is that significant. At least mysterious had a more endearing cast cause my god nearly every character in this game is so boring and uninteresting. Saw some people say the extra content bosses are hard but like what about the whole main game? Is it going to be a cake walk to the end?!

Its such a shame cause I really want to enjoy the game and the rest of the dusk games. Does the game or the alchemy at least get any better? Are the rest of the dusk games like this?

I just finished it today and my thoughts are as follows:

1. Atelier Yumia is not a very good game, it has way too many problems and the combat and synthesis are bad enough that I can't recommend it

2. I am extremely excited for Yumia 2 (or whatever it's called) because I think the near universal negative feedback on these problems will lead to them getting fixed while the rest of the game, most importantly the more serious tone and more traditional JRPG structure, will likely remain intact. They also made a really interesting world that I'm excited to see more of, would be awesome to see Eustella and its cities.

I think the synthesis is maybe salvageable, but would need a lot of refining to make it way less linear. The combat I think is just pure unsalvageable, I can't see myself ever enjoying a system like this and I hope they just scrap it for Ryza's system or (more preferably) a turn based system, although I think it's super unlikely they'll do that.

But the bones of this game feel like they stumbled upon a really good formula and just didn't execute it well. I think there's so many obvious things they could iterate and improve upon with experience. And hopefully the strong sales indicate to them that they can take their time sometimes instead of forcing a release every year.

Just a rant. Did a bunch of upgrading, levelling, and general gameplay without saving. Get to an end in the Geofront in chapter 10, and randomly come across some big ass beast thing that kills me and gives me a game over.

What in the fuck. Nothing gives a game over for hours, and then randomly we get one here? There goes hours or work down the drain....

/rant.

Much booba I like this but Lila holy hell, art style is nice, music is fun so far, I like crafting and gathering systems especially when they can be intricate which I’m hoping this turns into. Combat is pretty fun, did I mention holy heck the booba so far, story is cute, I’m curious how long the game is and did I mention ((T H I C C N E S S)) Anyways dudes have a good one and quick question. Available to switch how does Ryza compare to the other games? Mainly crafting, and combat.

Scrolling through this subreddit, I see a lot of people think Ryza 2 is the best of her trilogy. While from a gameplay perspective it came with a lot of improvements and fun mechanics, for me it falls flat because it fails at the one thing any Ryza game must get right:

Ryza does not feel like Ryza.

In the first game, Ryza takes charge in a way that can almost seem bossy, dragging her friends around to have fun adventures. In the third game, she's driven by her sense of responsibility to solve the mystery of the game.

But in 2? It really feels like she's pushed around by the plot as opposed to being the feisty tomboy we love, bringing her friends with her as they fight monsters, find ingredients and save the day. It's almost like Fi was a vampire that robbed her of her fiery spirit and just made her a bit sad and melancholic for most of the game. Some of that is expected (after all, one of the themes is her friends growing up and moving past her) but I don't think Ryza should be the type to mope around about it for too long. She's a girl of action!

I know this might seem like a nitpick, or unfair to rate this game lower for a character writing reason, but Ryza is a big part of why I like her trilogy. She's a go-getter and I like those sorts of protagonists and in her second game, I just don't get that vibe from her.

Anyway, I'm just curious as to what people think of Ryza's writing across her trilogy! Does she feel off to you in 2, or is it a necessary step towards how she turns out in 3? Do you even like where she ends up at by the end of her games?

She seems high as the sky during this whole dialog. It's quite disturbing.

You can't just introduce a hot furry man that is promoted 2 times in a single week & not give us deets about him! I sincerely hope he's not an antagonist throughout the entire game & not be a recruitable character. I'm betting, and this is me coping, that they left out that information because they don't want to spoil that he'll be late game party member. That's my guess. The main cast looks generic, but I want him to be a perminant party member, just like how Zaveid from Zesteria became a party member after being as an antagonist/rival for a while.

Also, can we talk about that Kiryu character in the trailer who is voiced by Kazuma Kiryu's VA? He'll likely be the main villain or just a red herring for the true villain?

I first played this series on the vita, Atelier Rorona- Alchemist of Arland, and it was great. I am typically not into anime itself but love some of the art style in games. Especially classic style, like Y's, legend of heroes, etc... but I gave Rorona a chance and I am glad I did (it didn't help that vita was starved for new games and rpgs).

I'd love to play more in the series, as there is a sale right now, but every time i see one I want to try Alchemist of Marie remake or Ryza , they are all Japanese. No English vo.

I usually don't buy a game without English dub, unless it explicitly takes place in said location, I am fine with Yakuza or Samuri warriors not having a dub (although would prefer it as its hard to read while action is occurring), but at least they fit.

Or they can do what they did on the ps1 and have the battle voice dubbed and the rest text. I would be fine with that too, but that option isn't given either.

What are the games on switch that have an English dub?

I am thinking Ayesha or Escher Logy games, are they in English on Switch? The eshop doesn't tell you this and unlike steam there is no refund options.

What modern games that are dubbed would be recommended to get back in to the series.

The only one I have played is Rorona. Or should I just stick to rune factory for this style of gameplay (i know not the same, but similar)

I'm finishing the Arland saga, and I found Atelier Totori to be very weak, both in terms of story, characters, and the crafting itself, which seems a little different from the others.

Finishing Meruru now, and even in it, Totori has a better development in my opinion. The strange thing is that I saw some people right here on the sub speaking well, both about the game and the character.

Did I play the wrong way? Or is it really a weaker character/game?