Atelier, Gust’s long-running item synthesis RPG series, reached new heights with the debut of *Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout* in 2019. Gust used that momentum to sincerely attempt to reinvent what Atelier is in both systems and scale, leading to the massive and successful *Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land*.
At the same time, the series couldn’t escape a certain albatross hovering above Japanese RPGs. We saw *Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy & the Liberator of Polar Night* hit mobile and PC as a free-to-play game featuring a gacha system. The history here is as important as it is fun to recount — *Polar Night* hardly made it a year in the global market before being shut down.
The years 2024 and 2025 have been brutal for mobile spin-offs of RPG giants, with even Square Enix shutting down games left and right, some of which had been around for five or more years. In this harsh landscape, Atelier really had no chance.
Gust seems to have responded to this situation with today’s review subject: *Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian*.
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### Part Two: Atelier Boogaloo
Set in the same world as *Polar Night*, this game is a more traditional Atelier adventure. It features turn-based combat, characters who join the journey as part of the story, and — notably — no online restrictions or currency-adjacent gameplay limitations.
While it’s impossible to know if this was intended as a mobile game or some kind of expansion to *Polar Night*, it feels more like a course correction or pivot than an entirely new entity. Unfortunately, it’s held back by systems that feel like a mobile game being fed into a proverbial wood chipper.
You can choose between two playable characters: Rias, a scrappy girl who sifts through ruins searching for treasure (while avoiding her overprotective sister who works for the local government body), and Slade, a more serious young man who inherits a mysterious relic and an empty book linked to lost civilizations.
The two meet early on, and their goals quickly intertwine, especially as Rias discovers she can utilize the lost art of alchemy. These characters have a lot of personality and chemistry, which initially makes the game seem promising.
Rias is a particularly fun twist on the typical Atelier protagonist, beginning her story by running away from a giant, rolling “Puni” (think of it as a slime from *Dragon Quest*, but obnoxiously cuter) in a ruin — a goofy homage to *Indiana Jones*. Slade, playing the straight man to Rias’s antics, balances the duo well.
I was genuinely having a good time watching these characters bounce off each other, but soon the game’s shortcomings became apparent. It caught me off guard with how sloppy it feels overall.
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### Slapdash Adventure
After the rising quality of the *Secret* series and the go-for-broke energy of *Yumia*, *Resleriana 2* (for lack of a better shorthand) feels slapped together in almost every way. From its low-budget aesthetic to grind-heavy, menu-laden systems that scream mobile game design, it’s hard to ignore the stark difference.
Gameplay involves running a shop staffed by identical, color-swapped fairies, alongside simple dungeons that require little thought to clear. There’s an endless supply of these fairies to throw money at and recruit for your store.
Everything you need is accessed through a small, localized hub. The story is told at a snail’s pace with shallow bonding scenes peppered throughout. Alchemy feels constrained and de-streamlined compared to other recent Atelier games, seemingly designed to encourage grinding and resource management rather than creative experimentation.
During Ryza’s rise and Atelier’s growth arc, Gust released other titles too. These included a surprise sequel to an earlier Atelier game (*Sophie 2*) and a sequel to Koei Tecmo’s *Fairy Tail* adaptation. While I had some issues with the latter (*Sophie 2* remains superior), both projects retained the oomph, polish, and strong identity characteristic of Gust’s bigger releases.
So this doesn’t feel like some reined-in spin-off, or at least it’s not explainable as such. Instead, it feels like a massive step backward — one that would be extremely confusing if not for what you find when you plug *Atelier Resleriana* into a search engine.
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### Combat That Shines
One bright spot in *Resleriana 2* is its combat. The game returns to a traditional turn-based system from the more active combat styles of recent Atelier titles but adds some engaging twists.
Combat emphasizes teamwork with follow-up attacks and features a replenishing Ability Point system. This means fights are more about maintaining flow rather than worrying about dwindling resources. Battles move at a fast pace and reward paying attention to turn order and enemy weaknesses.
It’s also a relief to command characters as a party after several years of real-time systems focusing on individual control. This refreshing combat design helps salvage some enjoyment from an otherwise underwhelming package.
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### Looks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck… But Not a Duck?
Even though this game has its merits — after all, it’s still an Atelier game with the core loop that makes the series fun — *The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian* is almost immediately compromised narratively by its ties to the previous *Polar Night* game.
Not only do characters from previous Atelier titles appear as dimension-traveling Wanderers (a clear tell of mobile game design influence; sorry, *Octopath Traveler* fans, but it’s true), characters from the first *Resleriana* and allusions to its story are presented as a big deal.
Unless you played that prior game before its shutdown in March 2025, it’s impossible to understand that context without consulting YouTube or other external sources. That’s a major problem.
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### Final Thoughts
I’ve come to really appreciate the Atelier series over the years, despite initially avoiding it (time limits stress me out, to be honest). I’ve imported physical trilogy cartridges for the Nintendo Switch and even pre-ordered the special edition of *Ryza 2* back when I had the means.
I share this to emphasize how much of a step backward this installation feels in the series’ evolutionary trajectory.
*Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian* looks and feels cheap (I hate to go there, but it’s unavoidable). It’s full of what feels like kitbashed, clumsily molded structural systems shoehorned into a single-player game that suffers deeply from its connection to a failed gacha title.
It bums me out to say it, but that’s the vibe.
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### Availability
*Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian* is available on September 26, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher for this review.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146079/atelier-resleriana-red-alchemist-white-guardian-review-score
