Clearly nobody is playing this game and have moved on to better things. Below is a my review that I posted elsewhere. This is the first Atelier game I have ever been disappointed in, unless you include that stupid gocha game. Between that gocha game and this game, I am not sure I am on board with what the developers are trying to do with the series. I will approach any future games with caution.
Yumia is a decent jRPG, but it is an awful Atelier game. I have been playing every Atelier games since the PS3 and this one is the worst by far. I would not even call it an Atelier game. It is Atelier in name only.
Pros:
1. Interesting world to explore.
2. Interesting characters, for what little you get to talk to them.
3. Pretty cool story and boss battles.
Cons:
1. The map will remind you of Assassin's Creed with a million points of interest, each one a copy and paste of the last.
2. The game has camping, but it feels very last minute. There are barely any places to camp, the camping scenes are not voiced, and there is very little point in even camping. A clear example of scope creep.
3. I hit the level cap of 100 about a third of the way through the game. In the beginning of the game, you gain a level after every battle and sometimes gain 2 levels. The only way to improve yourself in the end game is to make better items.
4. Combat is pretty awful and your characters is just jumping around like a lunatic. It all happens so fast you can barely keep up. Just mash buttons while your powers cool down and you do it again.
5. Alchemy, if you can even call it that, is the worst of the series by far. It in no way resembles alchemy from previous games. You character makes items by dancing. The game gives you a way to auto synthesize, which is highly recommended, as synthesis is horribly boring and tedious. This is coming from a person who was addicted to synthesizing in previous games and I enjoyed doing the alchemy.
6. In order to make better items, you need to level up each item by spending energy that you collect throughout the game world. So you need to explore and grind to level up items. Then auto synthesize to get high level items.
7. To make an item, you only need a single unique ingredient to make it. The remaining items can be just about anything. It is just about quality of the ingredients to get better gear. It doesn't make much sense, but neither does dancing to synthesize.
8. You have an annoying assistant that follows you around for the entire game helping you. It looks like a floating bong. Not something interesting like a cat, but a bong. A bong holds your hand throughout the whole game. Thanks, but no thanks.
9. The game just copies other games. Clearly they wanted this series to go mainstream and they are doing so by copying every game like Assassin's Creed and every other game that has base building. Everything that has made Atelier games unique is gone. The games I fell in love with have sold out to be mainstream.
Overall I am pretty disappointed with this game and cannot recommend it to fans of the previous Atelier games. I had high hopes for this game and was very much looking forward to it. I pre-ordered the game like I have for the last dozen or so and regretted it for the first time. I will not be pre-ordering the next game and I may skip it entirely unless the developers make some changes to make the combat and alchemy better.
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