Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian (Switch) Review

The Atelier series is back with another wonderful addition; Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian. This is the 27th game in the series, but don’t worry if you’re a new or returning player — this RPG has something to offer for everyone. This was my first time playing an Atelier game and I was totally blown away by the amount of fun characters, intriguing story, stunning presentation, and interesting gameplay loop.

This game features two main characters, Rias and Slade, both survivors from the town of Hallfein that suffered a mysterious disaster many years before. They return to the town to help restore it and search for answers, they decide to team up when they have a fateful encounter in a hidden ruin near the town and discover an alchemist’s atelier that holds more mysteries but possibly some answers too. At the beginning of the game you get to choose which of these two characters you start with, though they meet up fairly quickly they both have their own unique opening sequences that introduce you to the characters and the world. 

I really enjoyed checking out both perspectives, though to my dismay there was no option to turn off the tutorials, even with new game plus, so I would recommend you pick the character you like best and stick with them. Throughout the game you will meet many fun and interesting characters — maybe even a few familiar ones if you’ve played past games — and I feel like they are the soul that fuels this game. All the characters have their own journeys, big or small, that they’re embarking on and I enjoyed meeting them and seeing how they fit in with the overall story. Amongst these characters are the four additional members to your party, their interactions with the main characters and each other were my favourite in the game, they were just the right mix of playful and genuine and they felt like a real friend group. 

The story of this game felt very straightforward to me at first, and although that was the case a few times, it regularly surprised me with plot twists I wasn’t expecting. I thoroughly enjoyed the game’s story, and the lore and world building enhanced the realism of it all greatly, however there were a few times where something was mentioned as important but never brought up again, which was a little confusing. 

The downside to the story for me was the ending, which felt like it came one chapter too soon, and the main goals of the characters weren’t fully resolved. I kept waiting for something else to happen, and I even played for a while in my cleared game save to see if I was missing something. Perhaps there are bigger plans with the story to come in a future game, but it was a little disappointing to have a story I enjoyed so much and was so invested in finishing in a way that didn’t feel like an ending.

But what is the game actually like? Well the first thing I’ll say is that it is beautiful, both the graphic and sound design are absolutely top notch and you will not be disappointed in those areas. The actual game play though is a little complex, not in a bad way there’s just a lot of elements to grasp and I’ll admit that many of them took me far too long to be sure I knew what I was doing. 

There are a few core gameplay elements in The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian; alchemy synthesis, exploration, battles, and town and shop management. They are all essential parts of the game and you do have to understand at least the basics for all of them, although I would say that the alchemy is the most complex one of them all and I recommend spending some time on it, if only to make everything else a little easier. One thing I did appreciate though is how easy it is to spend the time learning what you enjoy most and just doing the basics in other areas; for example you could really dive into alchemy and ignore the complexities that battling has to offer, you could spend a lot of time gathering ingredients or running your shop, the balance is pretty much up to you. 

The battles are great though — it’s classic turn-based combat with some interesting mechanics that allow you to team up with your party for special attacks. There are many strategies you can employ with these battles, there are mechanics for moving characters between the front and back lines, using items at the same time to combine them creating new effects, and buffing your allies or debuffing your enemies. For much of this game I spent my time in my atelier figuring out new recipes and crafting gear before running out to gather something else I needed, and it wasn’t until much later in the game that I really started paying much attention to the battles. 

Speaking of the alchemy, I will say it does have some good and bad things about it. The best parts were how much like a puzzle it feels, the game doesn’t give you every recipe, rather it gives you some and then a recipe tree that contains clues about what related things you can also make by altering the base recipe. They call this function a “recipe morph” and I really enjoyed this way of crafting. I also enjoyed the flexibility of recipes, if the recipe calls for a flower then all of your flowers count as valid ingredients for that recipe, except in the cases of morphing where you do need a specific ingredient to be able to morph. 

This allowed me to use up excess ingredients I gathered, as well being able to choose the different qualities of ingredients — if I was handing in a side quest I wanted to use my low quality ingredients and save my good ones for crafting better gear. There are also catalysts that allow you swap an ingredient out if you’re low, saving ingredients for something else, or need a specific ingredient for morphing, as well as to change their colour properties. 

Unfortunately, in order to craft well and get the possibility to morph, you do have to be able to match colours together, which for colourblind people could be a little tricky, though the game does help a little by suggesting colour matching ingredients first in your list and by joining two matching ingredients with a line. This becomes less helpful the further you get into the game as your ingredients list grows. Colour matching is also part of the selling portion of the shop, though it does not offer suggestions for matching colours when choosing items to sell. The game does offer colour filters, but I know these are often unhelpful and I wish they’d added a pattern or something else to distinguish the matches as even I struggled a lot of the time and I have no colour issues. 

The other downside to alchemy is that there are just too many effects. On one hand, that is useful if you want to craft things specifically for a character to buff their attacks or to fight a boss that uses specific types of attacks, but on the other hand I don’t remember what “golden glow” or “rare metal” does, and I don’t want to quit out of my alchemy to search through the very extensive list. Of course, some of them are easy to understand, like “defence boost” or “attack up”, but a lot of them do have less-than-helpful names so often I found myself doing a lot of work to use a different ingredient because I couldn’t remember if a trait was useful or not.

With so much alchemy to do you’re going to need somewhere to get all those ingredients and The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian has you covered. There are many unique places to explore in this game, although it is not an open world I personally enjoyed having distinct areas to explore. For the most part exploration is straightforward however there are many areas that you’ll only be able to access through story progression as well as upgrading your gear. Though these areas are marked on the map so you know you need specific tools to access them they can get a little busy and confusing in small spaces, which happened a few times for me.

 The loading screens between areas might be a little tedious for some but I think the game makes up for that by having excellent fast travel options that really help you get to wherever you need to go. The worst part about exploring, though, is the map. There are two different maps in the game — the overworld map that lets you choose where you want to fast travel, and the minimap which is always on your screen showing you the local area. There are 3 sizes for the mini map, a small circle, a larger circle and a full map that appears on the side, the problem is though that there is no way to zoom in on the map or manipulate it in any way. I cannot tell you how long I spent squinting at the tiny map to the side trying to figure out where I was going. There’s also no way to tell what elevation sections are. Yes, there is a line that shows you that an area is separate, but sometimes it’s a cliff I can’t go up and sometimes it’s a drop that I can fall or jump down from and I won’t know until I run into it. 

My other problem with exploring has more to do with gathering and storage space. It is so easy to gather too many things in one area and have to throw things away because you can’t get back to town or the atelier. I kept hoping for an upgrade either in the skill tree or that I could craft that would increase my pocket storage but that never happened. The container storage in the atelier and shop — they are one storage box accessed at either location — has terrible sorting options. Sure, I can sort my gear from my consumables through the different tabs they offer, and yes, there are filters and sorting options to use, but I frequently found myself just scrolling through hundreds of items looking for something that those options didn’t allow me to find. 

I think it could have been improved by having a quantity filter or sorting option, because most of the time I dedicated to going through my storage was to delete things for more space — okay, yes, they do let you have 9,999 slots, but I just have to pick up the shiny thing, don’t judge me. This was especially an issue in the later parts of the game, when you spend 30 hours collecting every mineral you see and every monster part then you’re going to run out of space for the rare things you need for your alchemy.

Overall I loved Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian. As a first time player I was so impressed and enjoyed my time with Risa, Slade, and all the friends they made along the way. Whether you enjoy combat, crafting, exploration or story-focused games, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian has something for you. You’ll be intrigued by the mystery of the town’s destruction and all those who come together to save it, repair it, or destroy it, while an incredible soundtrack and beautiful visuals help immerse you in the rich world The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian has to offer.

Rating: 4/5