After over two dozen mainline games, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to innovate and stay relevant in an era where a great game is coming out every few weeks, but thats exactly what KOEI TECMO aims to do with the next entry in its long-running Atelier JRPG series, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land. After spending over six hours gathering resources, doing Sailor Moon-esque magical dancing rituals, and riding around on a motorbike, Im inclined to believe theyll pull off just that, yet again. With more engaging combat, improved visuals, more convenient crafting, and an entirely new building system that lets you put your own personal touch on the world, theres quite a bit to be optimistic about, even if what I saw of the story and characters was, at least so far in the opening hours, pretty boilerplate stuff for the genre.If youve played any of the recent Atelier games, then you probably wont be shocked by Atelier Yumia at first glance. All three of the pillars that have been around since its conception are still alive and well: exploration, where you run around collecting resources and solving puzzles; combat, where you fight baddens with a party chock-full of pretty anime friends, and synthesis, where you combine your hard-won resources into alchemical creations that make you stronger. But each has been given a substantial overhaul (not to mention a serious facelift) that breathes new life into a familiar formula.Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land ScreenshotsCombat seems to be getting the biggest rework, with action-based systems that let you perfect parry, dodge out of the way, and switch to different range bands depending on whether youd like to thwack enemies in melee or take them down from a distance. At lower levels, combat seemed fairly undemanding, as I was able to just unload every ability I had, swap to other characters to do the same, then repeat it all again, ending most encounters in a matter of seconds, but later on (and especially when I wasnt properly leveled) I seriously got rinsed if I wasnt paying attention to enemy attack patterns and working on my timing. It never got especially challenging so long as I was properly leveled, but it was nice to see a less passive combat system that I couldnt just steamroll through while on autopilot.Combat seems to be getting the biggest rework.Exploration also had some improvements, like having a gun to stun enemies and collect resources at a distance, ziplines that help you navigate the map more easily once you find and activate both sides of the line, and, crucially, a badass motorcycle for you to speed around on that makes getting around much easier. Finally, theres Synthesis, which in typically Atelier fashion is so dang complicated, you could spend quite a bit of time customizing and min-maxing every aspect of your gear and crafting new items and attacks to use in battle. Or, if you dont have the patience like me, you can just hit auto mode and itll automatically optimize all of it for you. Not that I dont enjoy this aspect of the series, but its certainly nice to have the option of leaping back into the action quickly for times where I wasnt in the mood to tinker.PlayAtelier Yumia also shakes things up by adding a fourth fairly significant activity to the list of things to do as you explore and level up: the ability to build and customize settlements throughout the world map. Thats right Atelier Yumia seems to be leaning into the cozy craze, so now you can have a little bit of Animal Crossing or Sims with your JRPG by constructing your fantasy cottage on a patch of land and spending some quality downtime with your party members. I was only able to dabble in this a bit, given the constraint of the resources available to me in the early part of the story, but I could definitely see myself sinking quite a bit of time into taming the wilds with an elaborately decorated home.With all Atelier has going for it, I will say that it did very little to make itself stand out in terms of story. The characters and foreshadowing of the undoubtedly epic and convoluted story that starts to develop in the opening hours arent bad by any means, but at least so far everything has been quite predictable and retreads a lot of ground weve seen from JRPGs of the past. This is especially true of the characters I met during my explorations, like the ditzy by wholesome Isla and the stoic and no-nonsense Viktor, both of whom I feel like Ive seen half a hundred times already. But this is the beginning of a JRPG, so in all likelihood its just going to take a while for the story to start rolling or for characters to show their true colors to any level of satisfaction, leaving plenty of opportunity for my concerns to disappear given more time.PlayI would be remiss if I didnt mention that Atelier Yumia marks the first time the series will appear on the Xbox platform, and as a Westerner who would quite like more JRPGs to be readily available, thats pretty awesome to see. Achievement unlocked!