Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian PC review

The Atelier series has had a rough few years. After Ryza 3‘s open world didn’t generate much excitement, the next instalment was a gacha game that debuted in January of 2024, only to close in March of this year. After that vanished into the ether, Atelier Yumia came out, doubling down on Ryza 3‘s open world concept, while venturing even further away from the series’ roots. When another game was announced to release later this year, and when it was revealed that the game was set in the same world as the shuttered gacha game, I thought the series was legitimately cooked. Instead, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian is a complete return to form that reminded me of why I love the series to begin with.

While the game is a sequel of sorts to the aforementioned gacha game, it features two brand new leads. For the first time since Escha & Logy, we have access to duel female and male protags, whom you choose between at the start. Who you pick doesn’t matter much as they’re both omnipresent regardless, but they do each get some unique scenes. The story here is honestly very well-written and the two leads, Rias and Slade, are both likable and believable. There’s also a big cast of returning characters from previous Atelier games who arrived in this world via multiversal shenanigans. Overall, I was impressed by the narrative, which I wasn’t quite expecting.

Your entire party outside of Rias and Slade in Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian is made up of such characters. The leads from Mana Khemia 2, Totori, Sophie, and the recurring witch Wilbell from the Dusk trilogy, round out the folks you’ll take into battle, and the game does a really good job with all of them (even if Totori’s voice actor is really struggling to maintain her annoying, overly cutesy voice after over a decade.) Protags from the gacha game show up too, although they’re barely present, but two of them are going to join the cast as DLC characters next year.

If you’re familiar with pre-gacha Atelier games, you’ll feel right at home here. As Rias and Slade, you’ll explore in the field, fight monsters, gather ingredients, talk to your friends, and, of course, craft with alchemy. In a new twist, you’ll need to staff a shop with fairies to sell the things you’ve found and made, all to improve the protags’ hometown of Halfein. This is a little barebones and it’s odd that the game’s progression more often hinges on levelling up the different merchants in town this way as opposed to using alchemy, but the systems all tie together in a decent enough way.

The town’s levels are divided into five categories of items. Selling these will level up each category and populate the shops with new items and alchemy recipes. You’ll also unlock more of these by crafting and selling specific items, but this is purely optional. One of the trickier parts is expanding each category’s level cap, which can take a serious chunk of resources and crafted items, especially if you keep going beyond the mandatory levels, which can add a solid amount of playtime if you choose to concern yourself with it. I wish there was a bit more to this, as I don’t really see how any of it would go so far in improving the town, but it works.

The combat system here really shines. You have a front row and back row, each with three characters. The back row characters can be called on to act if you have points on hand and characters have a wide set of skills that can be used to strike enemy weaknesses, as well as for buffs and debuffs. Hitting an enemy with basic attacks generates AP that you use on skills. Using skills increases a gauge that, when its level increases, allows other characters in your front row to use an extra attack. Getting it up to level five lets you use Unite, which allows your characters to attack with more powerful moves, leaving enemies to wait helplessly for it to finish. It’s actually incredibly cool, as some of a character’s strongest skills are locked behind Unite. Plus, you can block enemy attacks and reduce damage even more with timed perfect guards.

In the field it’s a pretty typical affair, though. You run around, start fights with monsters, gather at gathering spots, and open treasure chests. Rias uses a sort of grappling hook (which you’ll need to upgrade to reach new areas,) while Slade can break coloured walls if he has the corresponding Geist Core. When not fighting or exploring, there are many side stories that have fully-voiced conversations with Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian‘s characters. There’s a good amount to see here, to be sure.

Then, of course, there’s the alchemy. I really love the system in this one, granting each item colours on the left and right that need to be linked with the same colour to add traits to crafted items, as well as to successfully morph one recipe into another. Unfortunately, there’s no alchemy level here, but you’ll still need to do a lot of crafting if you want to unlock all the recipes. The crafting here is some of the best in the medium and I had a great time with it, but I feel like I hardly scratched the surface, as it can be used to make some truly broken items.

Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian also has randomly generated dungeons where you go through several floors and fight a stronger enemy in order to place Slade’s special book on a pedestal, unlocking lower floors of each dungeon and granting you a new crafting recipe. Between all of the above, there’s a lot of variety to the game, which makes it easy to get sucked into. If you’re looking specifically for combat, though, this obviously isn’t the game for you. The turn-based combat is great, but the vast majority of the enemies are giant pushovers, plus enemy variety is quite low.

Despite this, there are a couple of tough fights. A boss battle against two foes in chapter six is so difficult that I almost couldn’t believe it was in an Atelier game. It’s incredibly overkitted and is easily the hardest (and honestly, only hard) part of the game. The final boss can be punishing if you’re not prepared, but there’s so much at your disposal by the end of the game that figuring out a way through isn’t all that demanding. In total, it took me about 30 hours to play through the whole game and I was very satisfied with everything on display for the most part.

If you were worried about the direction the series has been heading, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian is a clear signal that, while we might have to wade through some unfortunate open world fluff at times, Koei Tecmo is still going to keep making great crafting games. This is a decent-sized adventure that’s neither too long or too short, and it really scratches the itch that ends with me spending hours crafting, even though I hate it in any non-Atelier game.