I’ll be the first to admit games that heavily feature crafting as a key component are typically a huge turn-off for me, so I was initially wary of Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land’s focus on it. Be it in survival games like Minecraft or Sons of the Forest, or even other RPGs like Final Fantasy 14 Online, I usually find it hard to engage with crafting systems; the tedium of it all quickly sets in, making me very eager to get back to gameplay that’s just a bit more exciting.

This, surprisingly, has not been the case with developer Gust’s Atelier Yumia. From equipment and accessories to helpful items and placeable furniture, so much of this RPG’s (role-playing game) gameplay revolves around its alchemical crafting system.

But that became the exact reason why I grew to love the game. In Atelier Yumia, you’re not just crafting things for small, temporarily helpful gains. Each item you synthesize provides meaningful game and character progression. Whether that’s increasing the potency of a healing item by using higher-quality gatherables or creating a version of a weapon that lets you slot in extra traits, there are always multiple avenues of customization and outfitting your party members with tools that suit your playstyle.

Pair this with an incredibly slick and stylish battle system and an open world that greatly incentivizes exploration, and in Atelier Yumia, you have a game that can easily be considered one of the best RPGs of 2025. Barring some presentational issues and the occasional bit of obtuse map design, the game is simply a near-constant joy to play.

The not-so-wicked witch

While not an exclusively dark narrative by any means, Atelier Yumia grounds things in a world where alchemy is greatly feared and shunned, having been responsible for a great many accidents throughout history.

Our titular protagonist, Yumia, is one such alchemist and, despite only wanting the best for the world and its people, is typically met with distrust. Even when she uses alchemy for the benefit of others.

Thus, Yumia sets out on a journey of truth and discovery with a party of trusted comrades. With the goal of discovering the secrets of the fallen land that once thrived beforehand, Yumia aims to prove that alchemy can be used for good and doesn’t have to be something that’s inherently destructive.

From start to finish, Atelier Yumia’s story is a pretty straightforward ride, but one that’s nonetheless enjoyable. Elements of maturity are present, especially when exploring Yumia’s past. But the game often keeps the tone light-hearted and there’s plenty of bubbly dialogue and humor to enjoy. Overall, it’s an easygoing, often cozy tale, but one that isn’t afraid to get serious as the situation demands.

A walk in the park

What Atelier Yumia gets right for the majority of its runtime is pacing - something that’s usually pretty rare in the open-world space. The game’s story rarely drags its heels, allowing players to truly take things at their own pace.

That pace, between all the game’s systems and mechanics, is usually very brisk. That’s especially true of exploration in Atelier Yumia. While you might initially balk at the abundance of Ubisoft-style question marks dotting the map, in reality, these are almost all extremely quick diversions. Optional points of interest like this include small ruins to explore, monster breeding grounds or hubs for particular materials, caves containing treasures, and boxes you can quickly nab skill points from.

While there’s certainly much to do in each of Yumia’s four main regions, you’re able to explore it at a relatively quick pace. Darting between undiscovered points of interest on the way to the next story objective always felt natural, and never like I had to seriously go out of my way unless I expressly wanted to.

That same snappiness applies to Atelier Yumia’s battle system. Like alchemy, there’s a lot to the battle system, but it’s all very easy to pick up and learn. The basics are that your party of three can engage enemies with combo attacks, set to each of the four face buttons. These combos can be used to put enemies in a weakened state, at which point you can use battle items and partner attacks to exploit elemental weaknesses for massive damage.

Battle items are also a much more integral part of the experience, and have been streamlined to a degree. They can become permanent additions to your combat loadout, only limited by a cooldown timer between uses. You’ll only need to replace them if you wish to craft better versions of them with more properties and more damage or healing potency.

As a result, while party members have their own weapons and base stats, how you can set them up is impressively flexible. For example, kitting Yumia out with elemental battle items can turn her into a robust mage, while the shield-bearing Viktor might hold a variety of stat-boosting items, essentially making him a stalwart support unit. It’s a bit Xenoblade-esque in that regard, giving you the tools necessary to build and equip characters in a way that works for you.

I require your strongest potions

As I mentioned at the top, alchemy is the system that ties everything together in Atelier Yumia. While at your atelier - or within a designated building zone in the world - you’re free to perform synthesis to create anything from battle items to benches. You will of course need materials to craft these items, but you’ll find plentiful gathering spots throughout the world and you’ll naturally collect an abundance of ingredients by simply exploring.

All synthesis projects begin by selecting an Alchemy Core as your base item, of which there are various types - including one that provides an overall quality boost or another that lets you slot in traits for additional modifiers. You’ll then add materials to help expand the core’s resonance area. The larger this area, the more drifting mana will be captured within its influence. The more mana you collect, the greater the item’s quality, thus boosting its overall potency. Plus, using materials of a higher grade will extend the ceiling of any given item’s potential power.

What makes alchemy so great is that it really is up to you in regards to how you shape these items. Materials have their own unique properties, and using specific ones can provide secondary or tertiary bonuses. A hard-hitting battle item may provide other bonuses this way, such as healing or providing various buffs. Or, you can just go all-in on power, making items that hit as hard as possible.

As you progress through the game, you’ll gradually unlock new recipes for synthesizing entirely new items. These ‘recall recipes’ can be created and upgraded at your atelier using different types of Memory Vials you can find in the world. Upgrading recipes can make them even more powerful, such as increasing their number of uses before going on cooldown, or increasing their base quality.

As I said, you’re not just limited to battle-oriented items. Synthesis can be done to create potions, armor, accessories, and more. And if you don’t want to get too lost in the weeds, handy quick synthesis options exist where the game will smartly assign materials automatically based on your preferences - whether that be the bare minimum, or going for as much quality as possible.

Synthesis doesn’t stop there, either. Workbenches will allow you to create housing items like benches, plants, or archways. These can then be freely placed as designated building spots throughout the world, letting you create your own bases or homesteads. There are so many options here, and it feels great being able to leave your own marks on the world to a greatly personal degree. Sure, it’s not quite Minecraft levels of freedom, but there’s plenty here that’ll allow you to get lost in hours of creativity.

A brave new frontier

In my Atelier Yumia playthrough, really the only thing that bugged me was the game’s overall visuals and presentation. They’re by no means bad, but I do feel like developer Gust often went a touch overboard when it comes to post-processing effects. Bloom during sunrise and sunset can be eye-searingly bright, washing out the world to an occasionally uncomfortable degree. Weather effects also aren’t particularly convincing, with an example being rainfall immediately coating the world in an overly wet and shiny look.

In better news, performance in Atelier Yumia is fantastic. On PC, I was able to maintain a rock-solid 60fps (frames per second), and load times are phenomenally fast - even when fast traveling from one end of the map to another. I found this to be crucial given the relatively fast-paced nature of the game, and I’m glad that Gust really took the time to optimize its world with this in mind.

Should you play Atelier Yumia?

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Accessibility

There’s a decent amount of accessibility features found within Atelier Yumia’s options menu. Text size and background opacity can be adjusted, as well as have three colorblind settings (deuteranopia, tritanopia, and protanopia) applied to them.

Various battle options exist that can make hitting certain commands easier, too. These include an auto-guard function for incoming attacks and an ‘easy precision counter’ that swaps you to a random character after successfully guarding or evading at the right time.

How I reviewed Atelier Yumia

My playthrough of Atelier Yumia lasted around 35 hours, taking me through the main quest line, a ton of optional map exploration, and a handful of side quests.

I spent much of that time getting absorbed by item synthesis, finding it to be the game’s crowning achievement and something I was willing to put much time into in order to craft high-quality battle items and gear. I played the game on PC via Steam with an Nvidia RTX GeForce 3060 Ti graphics card, an AOC Gaming 24G2SP monitor, and the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro controller.

First reviewed March 2025

Visions of Mana is the first original entry in the legendary Square Enix roleplaying game (RPG) franchise after a smattering of well-received remakes and remasters. Does the new game live up to venerated titles of the series’ history? Well, that’ll all depend on what kind of experience you’re looking for.

Off the jump, the most noticeable thing about Visions of Mana is its jaw-dropping visuals. This vividly-colored world really jumps out on an HDR-compatible display, and the game staunchly sets itself apart from the grimdark photorealism of other modern RPGs. Mana’s graphics aren’t state of the art but its visuals nonetheless leave a lasting impression - particularly within its larger cities and sprawling explorable zones.

Being an action RPG, developer Square Enix has managed to craft an interesting - if occasionally cumbersome - combat system. With straightforward combo strings and a range of magic spells, it’s a simple combat system that adds depth with Visions of Mana’s impressive class system that - when applied to the game’s five playable party members - allows you to unlock tons of abilities for highly customizable play. This is easily Visions’ strongest selling point, and worth checking out for alone.

With that all said, I can’t in good conscience say that Visions of Mana will stand the test of time. It’s a highly repetitive game from start to finish, and while its plot has bags of potential with some strong initial narrative hooks, statically-animated cutscenes, and ho-hum voice acting takes much away from the overall experience. Visions of Mana reminds me of Tales of Arise in that sense; a fundamentally great game that fumbles on some of the genre’s core foundations - ultimately leading to a game that likely won’t live long in the memory, and sadly not among the best RPGs we've played this year.

Sell your soul

Visions of Mana is set in a beautiful world with an unenviable burden. Once every few years, the patron Faerie visits each major region of the world to choose an alm - a person of incredible talent and willpower. These alms are typically assigned the element that governs the region they hail from, be that fire, earth, light, darkness, the moon, and so on. These alms, along with a person chosen as a protective ‘Soul Guard’, must make a pilgrimage to the Mana Tree at the center of the world to offer up their lives as sacrifices to sustain life for everyone else.

It’s a strong premise with an immediate hook, and as such, the initial story beats in Visions of Mana are exceptionally compelling. That’s especially so considering regions that fail to deliver an alm to the Mana Tree are met with catastrophe. As a result, we’re given a setup with immediately high stakes, and it paints a picture of an incredibly cruel and unfair world where anything short of perfection is met with disaster.

Our protagonist, Val, has been chosen as the Soul Guard for the latest pilgrimage. What complicates matters is that his significant other, Hinna, has also been selected as the alm of fire. Again, this is a fantastic hook; Val and Hinna are excited to travel the world, but neither wants to have to permanently say goodbye at journey’s end. A quandary arises; do they give into the sacrifice to avert widespread chaos, or do they try and find another way that doesn’t require such a price?

Unfortunately, I found that Visions of Mana’s narrative doesn’t quite explore its themes as well as it should. The game’s darker moments don’t really land due to some extremely static cutscenes with near-unchanging facial expressions. Narratively, such moments also aren’t given much time to really set in, especially as we move from area to area at a surprisingly rapid pace. Things do pick up again in the final acts, thankfully, but large chunks of the story are left feeling hollow and underdeveloped which is a shame.

Our main characters, similarly, don’t offer a whole lot in terms of personality or quirks beyond surface-level stuff. Their designs are lovely and varied, but they almost uniformly feel quite cookie-cutter in terms of overall character development which takes much of the drama out of the plot.

Fight it out

Combat, similarly, is quite the mixed bag. The good news is that Visions’ combat system is very straightforward, making it an easy game to just pick up and play. The bad? This simplicity is let down by some pretty clunky movement and combat feel. 

The characters and their various weapon types have a range of basic and special attacks that can be strung together for combos. Each party member can also learn a variety of spells and activate devastating Class Strikes for big damage when that move’s gauge is full.

Visions of Mana’s class system is easily the game’s most impressive feature. Each of the game’s five party members has a base class when you first meet them. Then, eight more classes are unlocked as you progress through the game, governed by each of the game’s elementals. That makes for a total of 45 classes, with each party member having access to nine each.

Classes get stronger by unlocking new abilities in the Elemental Plot skill tree. Here, each class has a strictly linear track of skills to unlock, redeemable with skill points earned through battle. That linearity might seem disappointing, but it’s somewhat offset by the fact that classes are able to mix and match many of these skills. 

As an example, I was able to turn Palamena into a damage powerhouse with the Darkness-aligned Reaper class. She has naturally high magic stats, so assigning spells of various elements to this class meant she could adapt to any given situation. Careena, meanwhile, works great as a buffer and healer and most of her classes revolve around this, so kitting her out with spells and skills to both buff characters and minimize the risk of status effects allowed her to be a mainstay in my team of three.

Characters can then further be augmented with the use of Ability Seeds. You’ll find these by opening chests or converting enemy Corestones (items that are randomly dropped from enemies containing their essence) into them once you unlock the ability to do so. Ability Seeds can provide skills and benefits not found within the Elemental Plot tree, and can really help a character reach their full potential.

You’ve got plenty of options when it comes to character builds, then, and that’s awesome. Sadly, the act of combat itself can be a bit cumbersome. Overall movement feels quite slow and occasionally unresponsive. When you jump, your character loses a bunch of momentum which seems counterintuitive for the kind of game this is. The flow of combat, overall, feels similar to Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana, albeit less polished and significantly slower. This is a shame, as the vast amount of customization in Visions of Mana has laid the groundwork for what could be a truly excellent combat system. Here’s hoping Square Enix can apply some finer touches via post-launch patches. 

Take a hike

Visions of Mana absolutely nails it in the presentation department. This is a richly colorful game, and the vibrant palette really helps its world to feel alive. It’s not quite an open world here; rather, we have a number of large, explorable zones that are filled with a manageable amount of things to do.

Scattered throughout these gorgeous zones - which range from volcanic jungles to mesmerizing landscapes of ice - are treasure chests, optional combat shrines, and various environmental interactions that make use of your collected elements. The game isn’t absolutely awash with side quests, though the ones that are here boil down to simple monster-slaying or fetch quests that typically amount to little reward. Unlike The Witcher 3 or Final Fantasy 16, you’re not really missing much - narratively or otherwise - by skipping side quests in Visions of Mana.

The soundtrack also sadly doesn’t do much to stand out among the bustle of cities or the throes of combat. It very much takes a back seat and sounds quite low in the mix at default settings. Some later boss and area themes really do slap, however, so it’s not a total dud. It’s just not up to the very high standard set here by the likes of Secret of Mana or Trials of Mana.

In better news, Visions of Mana is superbly optimized on PlayStation 5. The game’s performance mode is especially impressive, managing to hold a smooth 60fps in most occasions, with the odd noticeable dip happening in busier areas or encounters. While I did note a couple of instances where the game froze up for a couple of seconds during exploration, these were thankfully a very rare exception to an otherwise pleasantly stable experience. 

Accessibility

Visions of Mana has a very basic - but welcome - accessibility suite. Subtitles are supported, as well as text language support for English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese players. You can also fully customize the game’s control scheme and adjust camera sensitivity settings.

Should I play Visions of Mana?

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How we reviewed Visions of Mana

I played Visions of Mana to story completion, which took around 30 hours. All the while, I sprinkled in plenty of environment exploration, completing numerous side quests and trying out various class combinations with the game’s five heroes. I played the game on PS5 on an LG CX OLED TV with a DualSense Edge controller, but do note that there aren’t any notable haptic feedback or adaptive trigger implementations here.

First reviewed August 2024.