Koei Tecmo and Gust have announced the next game in the long-running and prolific Atelier series: Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian. It’s coming to PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch in 2025.
I’m only realizing now that we skipped a year in this often-annual series. Unless you count the mobile-focused, free-to-play Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator. I don’t, because I prefer to push knowledge of that sector of video games out of my brain, but I suppose Koei Tecmo and Gust do since The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian is set in the same world.
We don’t know much about it at this point beyond the short teaser trailer. It’s also going to be a paid, single-player, console-focused, offline game. Beyond that, the press release says, “this new Atelier title will embark players on a magical adventure, featuring a new protagonist.” The “magical adventure” part can be applied to every Atelier game, but I guess the “new protagonist” part tells us something.
This is somewhat surprising since Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land was previously announced and is also aiming for a 2025 release. It’s bold to release two titles of these games in the same year since they’re invariably 40-50 hours long.
For a short while, I reviewed the yearly Atelier titles here at Destructoid, but I fell off with Atelier Ryza 3. By “fell off,” I mean I was practically writhing in agony at the thought of doing another. Don’t get me wrong, they’re enjoyable games. They’re often very similar but commonly come with new features and different mechanics. However, it’s 40-50 hours of microprogression-laden gameplay. Smacking resource nodes, filling your pockets, crafting shit. Over and over and over. It was like a targeted attack on my personality; a way of priming me for a life of boring office work.
So, my recommendation is to play at your own pace and don’t just pick up every new release, but that’s just based on my personal preferences and experience.
Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian is planned for release in 2025 and is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch.
Published: Sep 27, 2024 09:12 am