Atelier Resleriana (2025) Review: A relaxing JRPG Brew of alchemy and charm

Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian (2025) is a heartwarming JRPG focused on crafting, alchemy, and building relationships within a town. It’s a relaxing and enjoyable game with lovable characters and satisfying shop features, making it ideal for players who enjoy feel-good adventures.

If you’re like me and prefer a chill gaming experience over something super stressful, then *Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian* (coming out in 2025) could be right up your alley.

This game focuses on relaxing exploration and charming characters, rather than constant fighting or dramatic world-saving. It’s all about the joy of discovering new things and experimenting with crafting. The game is bright, cheerful, and engaging without being overly challenging or repetitive.

Story & Worldbuilding

This delightful JRPG lets you play as either Rias or Slade, characters with strong ties to the city of Hallfein. Hallfein has seen better days, and through your adventures, crafting, and trading, you can help rebuild it to its former splendor.

Hallfein isn’t a large city, but it has a cozy and welcoming atmosphere. You’ll visit it frequently throughout the game – through the main story and side quests – and it will quickly start to feel familiar and like a second home.

As your shop, Mistletoe Miscellaneous, becomes more successful, you’ll get more customers and unlock opportunities to trade with other shops.

You’ll find new merchants offering recipes, and you’ll need those recipes to improve your alchemy and create stronger items.

Koei Tecmo created a fantastic shop system in Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian.

Learning and improving your alchemy skills while exploring the Mistletoe Miscellaneous shop feels rewarding because of how connected it is to the city and your progress.

Watching the city grow with new businesses, farms, traders, and people is a key part of what makes the game enjoyable. For the first five chapters, around 10 to 15 hours of gameplay, it felt a lot like playing Stardew Valley.

Threats? I’m too busy gathering materials and crafting things in my workshop to sell – I’m trying to improve my neighborhood!

Okay, so the main story in Atelier Resleriana (coming out in 2025) is about figuring out what happened to Hallfein – I won’t spoil anything! But honestly, the best part? Just exploring the world and seeing Hallfein really come alive. That’s where the game *shines* for me.

Slow but relaxing pace

This game isn’t fast-paced, and that won’t appeal to all players. Atelier Resleriana is more like a relaxing stroll through a sun-dappled forest than an action-packed thrill ride.

The first 6 to 8 hours of the game are a bit slow as you unlock the alchemy machines, but it’s worth sticking with it – the game really picks up later on.

Characters Review

This new game takes place in the same world as Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator (released in 2024), and features characters from that previous game as non-playable characters. You’ll even see the previous protagonists, Resna and Valerie! (Just a note: they *are* playable if you get the Premium Version or Season Pass.)

Six playable characters

The game features six characters you can play. You start with Rias, a high-spirited fighter, and Slade, a more serious character. Later, you’ll meet four other characters, known as “wanderers,” who have all been in previous Atelier games. These include Raze, a calm warrior from Mana Khemia 2, Wilbell, a wild witch from Atelier Ayesha, Totori, a kind-hearted character from Atelier Totori, and Sophie, a daring adventurer from Atelier Sophie.

I’m really enjoying the group dynamic! It’s such a fun mix of personalities, especially now that Wilbell and Sophie have joined. Seriously, the contrast between sweet, angelic Totori and Wilbell – who seems to want to cause a little chaos – is hilarious and keeps things interesting. It’s great entertainment!

I didn’t really connect with the characters Raze and Slade – I found them a bit flat and kept them on the sidelines. I realize, though, that I might not be the audience for brooding, attractive warriors who don’t show their feelings.

As you play, the character Rias becomes more compelling, especially as you get to know the other characters. Her determination to succeed is inspiring, and it’s often amusing to watch her tackle challenges despite having no prior experience.

It’s a shame everyone doesn’t stay as good as they are when they’re young. Although Slade and Rias are meant to share the main roles, Rias really takes the lead throughout most of the game.

The game only features Japanese audio, which is typical for the Atelier series. Luckily, the voice acting is excellent and really brings the characters of Rias, Sophie, and Totori to life. It also extends to the many supporting characters you’ll meet.

Memorable NPCs

Besides the main six characters, there’s also El Bell, and she’s a total firecracker! She’s the one who explains all the backstory and lore, and honestly, her voice acting and the way she talks are amazing. I’m really hoping they let us *play* as her in a future Atelier game – she’d be awesome!

Rias’ sister-in-law, Camilla, is a natural leader and captivating character as the head of Hallfein. Though you can’t play as El or Camilla, they both significantly contribute to the story in Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian, making them memorable non-playable characters.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Alchemy

Alchemy is central to the Atelier games, and with The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian, Koei Tecmo has directly addressed the issues players had with the last game in the series.

Players said the alchemy system in the last game wasn’t complex enough, and creating powerful items felt too random. They’d prefer a more skill-based approach instead of relying on luck.

In Red Alchemist & The White Guardian, character boosts aren’t earned through random chance anymore. Now, you get them by collecting Fairies and specific items.

In the rogue-like dungeons known as Dimensional Paths, you’ll encounter fairies like Kololo, Bonbon, and Mofu. These charming companions can help you improve and create strong items.

Even though I wasn’t very familiar with the Atelier games before, I found the gameplay easy to understand. It’s also clear that the alchemy aspects might not appeal to all players.

The game helps you find the right materials for crafting, and it’s easy to make new items. Each successful craft feels rewarding, giving you a little boost of satisfaction.

At first, I thought the system was helping me create things efficiently, but I soon discovered it wasn’t actually finding the best possible solution. The really powerful results were still achieved through careful, individual creation – that’s where the true complexity and reward came from.

Creating strong items involves carefully combining ingredients to give the finished product desirable qualities. These qualities can be anything from increased critical hit damage to resistance to different elements, and can be added to items like potions, grenades, weapons, and armor.

Successfully passing on a desired trait takes some preparation, but it’s well worth the effort once you get the hang of it. Every item has a unique combination of two colors, called a ‘Gift Color,’ and matching these colors during item creation gives you a big advantage. Having a wide variety of Fairies and items increases your chances of finding these helpful color matches.

You can also unlock new crafting options by adding specific ingredients, which causes recipes to change and evolve. The Item Enhancer lets you make your crafted items permanently better, and the Replicator allows you to create copies of your favorite items if you have enough Cole. Don’t forget to sell everything you don’t need at the Mistletoe Miscellaneous shop – it’s a great way to earn gold!

The alchemy system in The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian is well-designed. It’s easy to pick up – you can start with simple actions – but offers plenty of depth for players who want to become truly skilled crafters. It’s clear Koei Tecmo paid attention to what players wanted, creating a system that’s both approachable and rewarding to master.

Combat

I really enjoyed the battle system in Atelier Resleriana! It’s turn-based, and the way the turns play out reminded me a lot of games like Expedition 33 and Honkai Star Rail. You get to choose three characters to be actively fighting, but you can switch out the other three whenever you need to. I found that Rias, Wilbell, and Sophie worked really well together, or a team of Wilbell, Sophie, and Totori was also super effective for me.

As a player, I really like how each character has a standard attack plus a bunch of cool, special skills – up to five, actually! What’s *really* clever is that even though each character starts with a specific element like fire, they can learn abilities from *other* elements later on. This means you don’t have to worry about always needing a counter character – it keeps things interesting! Take Wilbell, for example; she can use Fire, Wind, and even Magic attacks, which is awesome.

Your characters each have three passive abilities that usually improve their damage, defense, or healing. The game also features a Unite meter that fills up as you play well. When full, your characters will automatically team up to perform one of two powerful Unite Attacks.

Support character mechanics

One of the best features is that the game keeps all your characters useful, even after you’ve found your preferred team. Many other games let your backup characters just sit unused, but this one prevents that.

The Interrupt ability lets teammates who aren’t currently attacking directly support the team by using items like healing supplies or throwables. Meanwhile, the Multi-action ability allows a character to call in up to two teammates from the back lines to perform a powerful three-person attack.

Like other games in the Atelier series, combat isn’t the main focus here and isn’t very difficult. If you improve your character with upgrades and skills, you’ll usually win fights quickly – often in under 20 seconds – and sometimes before the enemy even gets a turn.

As a result, the game’s more complex combat features aren’t often useful except during boss battles, and even those are usually quite simple if you prepare enough healing items and prioritize increasing your health.

The game isn’t very challenging, and that’s a big part of why it’s so enjoyable. It’s surprisingly calming to quickly defeat enemies and see what useful items they leave behind.

Conclusion

Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian is a great new installment in the Atelier series, and a noticeable step up from the last game, Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy & The Polar Night Liberator.

If you enjoy the Atelier games, you’ll really appreciate all the appearances from past characters and watching them team up and go on adventures together.

This game is much more cheerful than Atelier Yumia, offering a lighthearted experience with a genuinely kind and lovable group of characters – Willbell and El Bell are particularly great!

This game is wonderfully relaxing, especially when it comes to exploring and collecting items – it’s surprisingly hard to stop playing! It’s perfect for when you want to chill out without needing to constantly battle and repeat tasks. The combat isn’t complex, but it doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyable experience.

If you’re looking for a relaxing and delightful Japanese role-playing game that values thoughtful play and clever solutions, this could be exactly what you’ve been waiting for.

Overall, this game is a delightful and calming experience. It’s a strong entry in the Atelier series, focusing on crafting, discovering secrets, and building relationships with other characters. While fighting isn’t a major part of the game, everything else works together beautifully, earning it a score of 8 out of 10.

2025-09-25 20:44