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| Title | Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian |
| Developer | Koei Tecmo, Gust |
| Publisher | Koei Tecmo |
| Release Date | September 26th, 2025 |
| Genre | RPG |
| Platform | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Steam |
| Age Rating | Teen |
| Official Website | |
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian was not a game I was planning on playing any time soon. I had heard that both Atelier Ryza 2 and Atelier Ryza 3 didn’t run amazingly on the original Switch. That, plus the fact that Koei Tecmo decided they weren’t going to localize the PS4 version of this new game, led me to believe it would be a long time before I played it. I suppose fate had other plans, seeing as Koei sent us a Switch copy to review. September was supposed to be a month for me to take a break from reviews and play some games just for myself for a little while, but I honestly was a little bit excited to try this game out. I had zero interest in the original, mobile Atelier Resleriana game and found myself curious what this new offline title set in the same universe would be like.
Atelier Resleriana RW let’s call it, takes place in Hallfein, a little ways away from the capital city of Lantarna, the same continent the original Atelier Resleriana takes place on. Well, what’s left of Hallfein I should say. See, the main characters, Rias and Slade, are both from Hallfein and spent a certain amount of their childhoods there. However, while they were still kids, a mysterious red mist took over the town, monsters appeared and all of the townspeople disappeared. Except, Rias and Slade each happened to survive the event. Thus, when the capital decides to allow people back in Hallfein 12 years later and gives the okay on rebuilding, they both head back. Slade has a mysterious blank book and bracelet handed down by his father, as well as a broken Geist Core from his mother which is attached to the bracelet. He learned of some ruins underneath Hallfein, which is where he later meets Rias. Rias on the other hand, heads back to town with her sister, Camilla, who ends up in charge of the rebuilding efforts. Both Rias and Slade want to find out what happened to Hallfein all those years ago, and Rias in particular is interested in helping rebuild the town.
At the start of the game, you can choose to play as either Rias or Slade. I picked Rias for my review playthrough, but you’ll have control of both characters for running around. They are also, of course, your first two party members for battles. Battles in this new Atelier Resleriana are turn-based. Ultimately, you’ll end up with a party of six, three in the front row and three in the back, much like Atelier games of the past. Attacking enemies will build up your Action Points (AP) and Technical Points (TP), AP being required for using special skills and TP allowing you to set-up multiple characters to attack, or use other skills in unison. Whoever you use last in the chain of attacks, will replace whichever character you had in the front row. Every time you chain attacks, you have to use one person from the front whose turn it is, and anywhere between one and three characters from the back row. Whoever you pick last, will replace the character in the front row. Then, that initial front row character will be moved to the back. Overall, this battle system was simple at first, but definitely a bit more difficult to fully master.
In the whole time I played Resleriana RW, I never did end up using anyone’s special Unite Burst skill at the end of a chain of attacks by multiple characters. I played the game on Normal and for the majority of the game, it was pretty easy and battles didn’t take much effort. But, I would say about a little more than halfway through, near the climax of the story, is one really tough boss battle. That’s about where things start to get more challenging and take more effort and planning. Although, I did have this idea that the randomized dimensional path dungeons might’ve been more fun on a harder difficulty. I can see this being a fun game if you want a challenge. The dimensional paths contain these randomized dungeons you’ll often venture through for the story and you’ll also periodically head back there on your own to gather materials for Rias to synthesize. There are two difficulty options that are harder than Normal and you unlock another one after beating the game. As I said before, I could see this making these dimensional paths more interesting.
Speaking of the game’s difficulty, this is where I’d like to discuss a lot of issues I had with this game. Initially, I did play the whole game on Normal. At the final boss, I ended up just barely hanging on and defeated it with my preparations, as is. I had a lot of good attack items on hand that I had synthesized, various healing and revival items, as well as late game weapons I also personally crafted, plus decent enough armor. Ultimately, though, right when I made my last attack on the final boss, during their final form mind you, when its Health Points (HP) hit 0 but characters were still attacking, the game froze. I sat there for a while fiddling around, pressing buttons, hoping the game would get unstuck. But after 10 or 20 minutes went by, it refused. At that point, I was quite annoyed and decided to simply blast through the boss again on Easy. I was ready to be done with this game and get my review written. If it weren’t for final boss spoilers, I would attach a clip above of how the game had frozen, but I won’t put those spoilers in here. I did attach an image however without spoiler text included, sort of showing where it froze on me.
The game freezing at the final boss as I killed it, wasn’t my only issue with the game. There were various other issues I had. First of all, much like another game I reviewed earlier this year, I thought Atelier Resleriana RW looked very cheap, graphically. Now, this could just be specific to the original Switch version, seeing as I don’t know how much better it looks on PC or PS5. Still, once again, I seem to be reviewing a game with very paper thin characters and outfits that seem to clip through absolutely everything, even the characters’ faces. I know older Atelier games weren’t as advanced visually as the Ryza games, but the style of everything in this one seems to be a similarly modern look. So, I definitely expected more from it. Second, when you list things for sale at the shop these fairy characters help you run, it’s quite tedious choosing specific items for sale. You can let the fairies automatically pick sale stock for you, except there’s no way to omit items you favorited and want to keep. Because of this, I usually ended up having to manually pick everything for sale myself anyways.
Another issue I had with this title, were some of the weird inconsistencies and areas where little effort seemed to be put in. The game is full of these cameo characters called Wanderers. Wanderers are characters who come from other Atelier worlds and at some point ended up in Lantarna. The majority of your party members are Wanderers and you’ll also sometimes see others around town who will have various requests for you. Each of these characters are in their original outfit. Wilbell for example, will clearly know who Shallotte is from Atelier Shallie, yet Wilbell looks like her younger self that first appeared in Atelier Ayesha. Similarly, Ryza will vaguely spoil what happens in her world during the Secret trilogy, yet she’s still in her first game outfit and looks younger as well.
The last issue I had with this game, was the alchemy system. My issues with the alchemy are mostly just a personal preference problem, not anything wrong with how it functions. I’ve simply never been a fan of blindly chaining off existing recipes to unlock new ones. That’s one aspect from the Secret trilogy, that I did not like at all. I much prefer the Mysterious trilogy’s way of discovering new recipes by collecting specific materials, or synthesizing specific items with certain traits and that sort of thing. I never enjoyed having to chain together recipes during synthesis, which is quite different from just synthesizing a specific item and much more tedious. Nonetheless, old fans who enjoyed chaining recipes in Atelier Ryza, won’t have a problem with this aspect.
In the end, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian felt very much like a mobile spin-off game. While it is mostly standalone, the events of the mobile game starring Resna are constantly vaguely referenced. Plus, it clearly didn’t get the same effort and care typically put into a mainline title, and it didn’t run amazingly on Switch either. I should note real quick, I have yet to get my hands on Atelier Yumia, so I can only compare to the two Ryza games I’ve played, as the most recent offline titles. Despite having some issues with this one, though, I did have a lot of fun playing Resleriana RW overall. Mostly, I enjoyed the relationship between Rias and Slade, and learning more about the mystery behind what happened to Hallfein when they were both kids. I think that’s where this game shines the most. Unfortunately, due to the various issues performance wise, the aspects where it felt like a quickly made mobile spin-off and with the game freezing in the worst possible place it could, I can’t be as generous with my score as I wanted to be. Sure I had a lot of fun playing this one, but there were still a lot of problems. Regardless, if you’re an old fan of the Atelier franchise, I think you’ll find a lot to love.
| Review Score | |
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| Overall |    |
