Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian
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Critic Reviews for Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian
This latest Atelier game is a delightful RPG that will let you escape to another world.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian looks and feels cheap (I hate to go there, but it’s unavoidable) to play, and is full of what feel like kitbashed structural systems clumsily molded into a single player game that suffers from its connection to a failed gacha joint. It bums me out to say it, but that’s the vibe.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian doesn't exactly carve out it's own path - you can tell it's part of a bigger picture, and it's a shame that bigger picture is inaccessible due to the fleeting nature of gacha games. Still, taken on its own, this is an incredibly fun Atelier entry with an exciting new shopkeeping system that I hope is a major and bigger focus in future entries.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist and The White Guardian leans into the old staples that the franchise sustained itself on, focusing on turn-based combat and crafting to win the day. Several elements take a step back from what recent titles in the franchise have done, instead focusing more on farming instead of exploring. It's still about alchemy, but getting to the alchemy is more repetition and less discovery. For longtime fans of the series, the Atelier formula is still there for a good time. With that said, newer fans may recoil a bit if they first jumped into the franchise alongside Ryza, Sophie, and Yumia.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian succeeds through the strength of the sum of its parts. Its story and dialogue are a bit obtrusive at points, but the simple loop of fashioning items to flog them to forge even better ones is compelling. With strategic turn-based combat and breezy presentation, this is an overall enjoyable RPG time sink – even if its character designs and anime tropes may immediately turn some players away.
All in all, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian is a slow-paced but cute JRPG with an expansive crafting system. If you like Atelier games, you’ll have fun with it. If you’ve never tried an Atelier game, it’s not a bad place to start. Just don’t expect something revolutionary from a slice of life game about grief, town development, and alchemy.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian is a series callback not just with its familiar characters, but in the simplified exploration, synthesis, and turn-based combat, too. Fans of older Atelier games may welcome the change, but it may have simplified too much for those seeking a challenge worthy of its price tag.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian never once feels like it was developed beyond the boardroom meeting of its conception. It fails to venture beyond the foundations that the series has set for itself or delve into the world of innovation and experimentation that the series is known for. Superfans of the series may find something to love here, but for those who don’t care to dig that deep, they will find a mish-mash of boring dungeons, a bland story, mind-numbing levels of repetition, and a plethora of design shortcomings in a setting that requires prior knowledge of the world.
