izigame.me

Quick first impressions review after three hours:
Is it an Atelier game?
Not really. The whole vibe is different. The atmosphere is not as chill, a lot of things seem to have been moved from cozy to cool. The girls are older and seem to already have found their calling rather than little dorks growing up with the player. Even the intro is completely different, where all the Atelier games used to have nice anime scenes specifically drawn just for the intro song, Yumia only has an in engine pre-rendered movie and sadly at a low resolution (looks like 1080p to me).
I think it would have been fairer to market this as a completely new franchise, but I understand it is harder to create interest for that.
Is it a good game?
Oh yes absolutely. It shines in many areas and even though it's not the Atelier I'm being used to, I think Yumia will be a good fit for a lot of people:
1. Graphics.
Despite the AAA pricetag, studio Gust is still very far away from having AAA graphics. That being said they are a huge upgrade from older Atelier titles. The environment is not that good tbf, but the characters are done very nicely. Lots of facial expressions, hair and clothing flow naturally during movements, there are many small details on the anime style such as blushes, light falling on hair, shiny skin spots on shoulders and knees. Movements and combat are very sleek. It's an overall good presentation.
2. Technicals.
It runs like butter, I only use 50% card capacity in 4k and that's rendered natively. There are all the option settings I wanted except maybe color saturation, I would have prefered more of that. The menu structure and game interface are modern and good to use. Settings and interface used to be sort of an achillies heel of this franchise and I'm glad it's done properly for once.
3. Gameplay.
Like I said it's not really an Atelier game, it falls more in line with what you expect of an open world RPG these days. There is more freedom, more space, more to see. Quite frankly, if someone showed me just the footage of the world with no background transmitted it could be a Palworld or Genshin clone - definitely something people will like.
As far as the action combat goes it's just okay. Because you're not really fighting freely, you hit the mob and get into a seperate arena fight where you then button smash away and evade attacks. I don't know why they did it this way, but there was a Neptunia game a while ago that did the same and it wasn't a great feel there either. I think going the middleground between round based and open world combat is not the way to go.
What's nice is how much more freedom to explore you have. And there are some entertaining side activities such as photo mode and base building. I also liked that the world has verticality to it. Mountains to climb, ruins and caves to descend into. Sadly you can't swim and not go further into the water than having your feet wet.
Item synthesis is easier to understand this game and I like it. In addition to that, calm cauldron steering has been replaced by doing a magical dance to fall in line with the new pace of the game. And you can make basic items everywhere while not at home.
Worth?
Entry price of 70€ is pretty steep. I don't feel the game should cost this much, but that has been Koei's strategy for decades now: AA game at AAA pricetag. The stuff you get for paying for the 120€ best edition gives very little extra for now. Just a few costumes and customization fluff. Would have to wait until autumn to see how much content there is in the expansions to recommend buying the whole package.
I think if you can wait, it would be better to pick up just the base edition at a discount of like 30%, then you'll get your money's worth.