Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian Review
As the Atelier series has experienced a boom in popularity in recent years, Gust is looking to take advantage by showcasing the history of the series with crossovers and entries on new platforms. A mobile entry, Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator, was released in 2023. It seems like Gust and Koei Tecmo decided that they didn’t want to isolate the world of Atelier Resleriana solely to mobile platforms. Enter Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian, a console game set in the same world as its mobile counterpart. As someone who played the global version of the mobile game from release until its end of service, I’ve been itching to see more of this world that Gust has established.
Taking place a few months after the first arc of Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator's story, this story takes place on another continent in the same world. Reason, a young girl with a penchant for getting into trouble, and Slade, a young man seeking answers to a mysterious book left to him by his father, meet up in the town of Hallfein. An incident 10 years prior left the town in ruins, and Rias and Slade are brought on board to help restore the town after the pair discover an atelier deep in the town's mine.
For the most part, the story takes a backseat to the general gameplay loop. The game throws bits and pieces of narrative in between segments of the game, but it takes a long time for the story to really become significant. I believe a part of the reasoning for that is that this Atelier series entry works as a crossover game first and foremost. Atelier Resleriana brings together many characters introduced over the series' long history. Going into the game, I was hoping to have a big ensemble cast to choose from as I made my way through. I would be sorely disappointed, however.
Despite being a crossover game, the party is shockingly small. There are only 6 playable characters that join the party over the course of the game. While this is pretty typical for Atelier games, it's still a tease given that so many characters appear but are unplayable. Even the namesake characters of Atelier Resleriana, Resna and Valeria, are locked behind paid DLC. I was hoping to at least be able to team up with them in this game.
As someone who played the mobile game, I was pretty familiar with the overall combat. Atelier Resleriana uses a panel system for its turn-based battles. Each character's turn displays as a panel on the top right, and sometimes there will be an effect on the panel. There are buffs, debuffs, and heals on particular panels. Management of the panels will help you survive some of the tougher battles in the game. You can use skills to manipulate the turn order, you can "break" enemies to force them to skip their turn, or take out a particular enemy. I found myself underleveled most of the time, but taking advantage of the game's mechanics meant I could keep up with the challenge pretty well on Normal difficulty.
The other loop of the game involves you trying to put the town back together. Rias owns a shop in town, and through synthesizing items to use in battle, you can also make items to sell in the shop. Money made from the shop goes towards buying products in town, certain quests, and paying for fairies to help Rias run the shop. The more customers you get, the faster the town can develop. As someone who enjoys a good town management sim, even a simple version kept me entertained by finding more ways to profit from my synthesized items.
I played this title on Switch 2, and there are no Switch 2 improvements for it except for framerate. The game is locked to 30 FPS, and the Switch 2 handled it easily. However, the technical graphics aren't great. Muddy and blurry textures really stand out on this next-generation hardware, and unfortunately, this is just a case of a game lacking improvements for improved hardware. Artistically, the game looks quite nice with varied and vibrant environments and character designs.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and the White Guardian is a decent game that is good for short bursts of gameplay. If you're a longtime Atelier fan, this likely has more meaning for you, seeing your favourite characters come together for another adventure. For people not familiar with the series, there's not a lot here to hook you.