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

If you’re looking for a game that’s more about relaxing than stressing, Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian (2025) might be your thing.

Instead of nonstop battles or saving the world from certain doom, this one leans into cozy exploration, lighthearted characters, and the fun of mixing ingredients into something new. It’s cheerful, colorful, and has just enough depth to keep you hooked without ever feeling like a grind.

In this charming JRPG you take on the role of either Rias or Slade, both of whom have a deep family connection to the city of Hallfein. Hallfein is a city that has fallen on hard times and your quests, alchemy and salesmanship can restore it to its former glory.

Hallfein is not a massive city by any means but it feels very intimate. You're drawn back to it so often through the story or side quests that it will soon feel like home.

As you level up your shop - Mistletoe Miscellaneous - you will attract more adventurers to visit and new shops will open up for you to trade with.

Many of these new merchants sell recipes, which you will need to expand your alchemy skills to craft more potent items.

Koei Tecmo did a brilliant job with the Shop System in Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian.

The way the Mistletoe Miscellaneous shop is interconnected to the city's growth and your abilities as an alchemist make it feel worth the time to learn and develop.

Seeing the city blossom with new shops, crops, merchants and visitors is a really rewarding and major focus of the game. In fact, for the first five chapters of the game (10-15 hours) it genuinely felt like I was playing Stardew Valley.

Threats? What threats, I'm busy farming materials to combine in my Atelier to sell so I can level up the Residential District!

While the main storyline of Atelier Resleriana (2025) is to uncover the truth behind what happened to Hallfein - no spoilers - the real joy of the game is in the world exploration and watching Hallfein come to life.

Given this is a game review, it is fair to note the pace of the game is quite slow which is not for everyone. Atelier Resleriana is not an adrenaline rollercoaster, it's a blissful walk through a forest as the sun beams down through the trees.

The first, I would say 6-8 hours of the game, are fairly uneventful as you slowly unlock all the alchemy machines, but I assure you to keep playing to get the payoff.

Set in the same universe and timeline as 2024's Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator, developer Koei Tecmo have added many characters from the previous entry as NPCs, including both of the protagonists Resna and Valerie! (Sidenote: both are playable in the Premium Version / Season Pass)

In the standard version you have six playable characters. The high energy Rias and the stoic Slade are your main characters, but you'll later be joined by four "wanderers", all four of which appeared in previous Atelier games. The coolheaded warrior Raze (Mana Khemia 2), unhinged witch Wilbell (Atelier Ayesha), the gentlehearted Totori (Atelier Totori) and the reckless Sophie (Atelier Sophie).

The core team has a good mix of personalities, especially after the slightly chaotic Wilbell and Sophie join the party. The contrast of the angelic Totori with the let's burn everything to the ground Wilbell makes for good entertainment.

I personally found Raze and Slade to be slightly one-dimensional and exiled them to my backline, but I'm aware I'm perhaps not the target market for the devilishly handsome and reserved I never get emotional warrior type.

The female lead Rias, much like the game, becomes more intriguing as the game progresses and you start interacting with more characters. Rias's relentless pursuit to succeed will strike a chord, especially as she often will have a go at literally anything with zero experience.

If only we could all be like after we grow up. While Slade and Rias are supposed to be joint leads, Rias definitely carries for the majority of the game.

While there are subtitle options the game audio is Japanese-only, which is standard for Atelier games. Fortunately, the voice acting in this game is very good, and definitely shines for the personalities of Rias, Sophie and Totori. Yet, it's also about the supporting cast of NPCs.

Outside of the core six, you also have the explosive and cocky El Bell, who acts as your lore expert. El's dialogue and voice acting is really brilliant, and I really hope she can be a playable character in a future Atelier game.

Likewise, Rias' sister-in-law Camilla radiates main character energy as the leader of Hallfein. While neither El or Camilla are playable, both are great examples of compelling NPC characters that drive the story forward in Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian.

Alchemy is the core mechanic of the Atelier series, and it’s clear that Koei Tecmo has tackled the criticisms of the previous Resleriana entry head-on in The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian.

The main feedback from the last game was that the alchemy system lacked depth and that crafting the perfect item felt too much like a lottery rather than a precise science.

In Red Alchemist & The White Guardian, traits (buffs) are no longer tied to characters and unlocked through a gacha system. Instead, they’re tied to Fairies and the items themselves.

Fairies, which you can find in rogue-like dungeons called Dimensional Paths, help upgrade and craft powerful items, plus they’re absolutely adorable, with names like Kololo, Bonbon, and Mofu.

As someone not deeply familiar with the Atelier series, I found the system intuitive and aware that alchemy is not everyone's cup of tea.

The game automatically suggests compatible items for synthesis, and you can easily randomly create something, getting a nice little dopamine hit with each successful craft.

Yet, after a few shallow crafting victories I realized the truth, it wasn't suggesting the optimal combination. The good stuff? Just one epic manual synthesis away. That's where the depth lies.

To craft powerful items, you need to strategically place ingredients in a way that ensures specific traits transfer to the final product. Traits can range from Critical damage to element resistance and can be applied to everything; consumables, throwables, weapons and equipment.

To transfer the right trait requires planning but becomes very rewarding once you understand how it works. All items also have a Gift Color (a combo of two colors), and matching these during synthesis provides significant bonuses. The bigger your arsenal of Fairies and items, the more possible matches you can make.

Additionally, adding the right ingredients can trigger Recipe Morphs, unlocking new crafting possibilities. The Item Enhancer lets you permanently upgrade creations, while the Replicator gives you the option to duplicate your best items - assuming you have enough Cole. (The Mistletoe Miscellaneous shop is a gold mine, sell sell sell)

Overall, the alchemy system in The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian strikes a great balance with its low entry barrier (mindless clicking) and high skill ceiling (masterful crafting). Koei Tecmo has clearly listened to fan feedback, offering a system that is both accessible and deep enough to master.

Combat in Atelier Resleriana is turn-based and follows a timeline similar to Expedition 33 and Honkai Star Rail. You can pick your three favorite characters as your front-line, while your back three characters can be swapped in whenever you want. For me the best combination was Rias/Wilbell/Sophie or Wilbell/Sophie/Totori.

Each character has a basic attack and up to five unique skills. A nice touch was that although each character starts out with a "main" element, they'll later get abilities of other elements, so you're not stuck with "oh it's a fire monster, better bring in my ice character". For example, Wilbell skills include Fire, Wind and Magic.

Your characters also have three passive abilities, typically buffs to DMG, DEF or healing. There is also a unique Unite meter which passively builds if you're on a roll, causing your characters to jump in automatically to perform one of two Unite Attacks.

A nice addition was the game has several mechanics to ensure your backline doesn't end up sitting there idling and gathering dust. This can definitely happen in other games once you have your favorites.

The Interrupt function allows team-mates not on the frontline to contribute at any time through consumables (heals, throwables). While the Multi-action can let a character summon up to two backline characters to team up for a triple attack.

Overall, as is traditional with Atelier games, the combat plays a very secondary role in the game and its rarely particularly challenging. With decent upgrades and unlocked skills, most fights are over in less than 20 seconds, often before the enemy has a chance to even attack once.

Because of this, the extra battle mechanics rarely get used outside of boss fights - which are also in general very easy if you craft enough heals and focus on HP upgrades.

Combat rarely requires much thought, which is perhaps why the game feels very relaxing to play. There is something very therapeutic about just obliterating enemies within seconds just to see what ingredients they might drop.

Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian is a worthy addition to the Atelier series and is a significant improvement on the previous Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy & The Polar Night Liberator.

If you're also a fan of the Atelier series as a whole, you will absolutely love all the cameos and seeing characters from different Atelier games befriend and adventure together.

Unlike Atelier Yumia which felt very sombre, it's a light-hearted adventure with a wholesome cast of characters (Willbell and El Bell the MVPs).

The exploration and ingredient gathering side of the game is very soothing and strangely addictive. A great game to flick on if you just want to unwind and not have to grind every single battle. While the combat is pretty basic, it doesn't take away from the magic of the game.

If you’re after a cozy, charming JRPG that rewards patience and creativity, this might just be your perfect brew.

Final Verdict: 8/10: A relaxing, charming Atelier entry that thrives on alchemy, exploration, and community, even if combat takes a backseat.