Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian Review

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The Atelier series has become increasingly popular, and Gust, the game developer, is building on that success by revisiting the series’ history with crossovers and releases on new platforms. In 2023, they launched a mobile game, Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator. Now, they’re expanding that world with Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian, a console version of the game. As a player of the original mobile game from beginning to end, I’m excited to see this world explored further by Gust and Koei Tecmo.

This story follows Reason, a mischievous young girl, and Slade, a young man investigating a mysterious book inherited from his father. They cross paths in Hallfein, a town still recovering from a disaster that happened a decade earlier. After discovering a hidden workshop within the town’s mine, Reason and Slade are asked to help rebuild Hallfein. This takes place in a different part of the world than the events of ‘Forgotten Alchemy’ and ‘The Polar Night Liberator,’ happening a few months after those stories concluded.

The story isn’t the main focus of the game; it feels secondary to the core gameplay. While narrative elements are present, it takes a while for the story to truly feel important. This is likely because this installment of the Atelier series is primarily a crossover game, bringing together characters from throughout the franchise’s history. I was expecting a large, playable cast of returning characters, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

As a big fan, I was a little disappointed by how small the playable party is in this crossover game. You only get six characters total! That’s pretty standard for Atelier games, sure, but it’s a bit of a letdown when you meet so many cool characters you can’t actually play as. And honestly, it stung that Resna and Valeria, the main characters from Atelier Resleriana, are locked behind DLC. I was really hoping we’d get to have them join our team!

Having played the mobile game this is based on, I quickly understood the battle system in Atelier Resleriana. It’s turn-based, but uses a panel system where each character’s turn appears as a tile. These tiles can have effects like buffs, debuffs, or healing. Managing these turn order panels is key to winning harder fights. You can also influence battles by changing the turn order with skills, skipping enemy turns by ‘breaking’ them, or focusing on taking out specific enemies. Even though I was often underpowered, understanding the game’s mechanics allowed me to handle the Normal difficulty fairly well.

Another key part of the game is rebuilding the town. You’ll help Rias with her shop by crafting items – some for battles, and others to sell. The money you earn from the shop is used to buy things in town, complete quests, and hire fairies to assist Rias. Attracting more customers speeds up the town’s development. As someone who likes town management games, I found even this basic system engaging, constantly looking for ways to maximize profits from the items I created.

I tested this game on the Switch 2, and the only upgrade it received was a smoother framerate. While the Switch 2 ran it without any issues at 30 FPS, the graphics themselves haven’t been updated. The textures look noticeably blurry and muddy, especially on the new hardware. It’s clear this game hasn’t been enhanced to take advantage of the Switch 2’s power. However, the game does have a strong art style, with diverse and colorful environments and characters.

Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and the White Guardian is a pretty good game for playing in short sessions. Longtime fans of the Atelier series will especially enjoy seeing beloved characters reunited, but newcomers might not find enough to really grab their attention.

7

We tested Atelier Resleriana on Nintendo Switch. It’s also available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC.

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2025-12-01 10:57