Atelier is one of those niche PlayStation franchises that seems to get new entries annually but rarely makes a splash outside of its core community. That appears to be changing in Asia, however, where Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator – yes, that’s really its name – appears to be blowing up big time.
Officially due out in 2024 in Western territories, the PC and mobile title is making a huge splash, winning Google Play’s Best of 2023 award – and getting a massive marketing push. These are some pictures we snapped around Taipei’s otaku-inhabited Ximen district, but you can also see it gracing bus liveries and more beyond.
The game itself follows the same format as its console counterparts, with an emphasis on alchemy and resource gathering. It’s been developed in collaboration between series creator Gust, Team NINJA, and mobile specialists Akatsuki Games. While there’s no word on a console release just yet, we’re starting to see other free-to-play mobile titles like this make the transition to PlayStation, so it’s possible.
In the meantime, the most recent traditional Atelier title on PS5 and PS4 is Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg, a revamped version of the PS1 original. It’ll be interesting to see if the success of this mobile instalment sparks interest in the franchise’s mainline instalments moving forwards.
Comments 9
This is one of the few JRPG franchises I could never get in to. Something about the time mechanics of some of the games I tried just stresses me out.
Awesome, never played these games but Taiwan is on the list of places to go and I'll get there one day along with South Korea!
If the series becomes more popular I hope they also add english VA (again)
I prefer to understand what characters are saying without needing to read subtitles
@thefourfoldroot1 I know what you mean — the remake of the very first game has a Pikmin-esque time limit to complete the whole game, however the Ryza series (which I'm currently playing part 2 of) is very chill and lets you go at your own pace - time only really occurs when you're moving around and when you're crafting items, and even then the only "missable" things are timed sidequests (which will reappear sooner or later and are usually pretty basic fetch quests/bounties that have no bearing on the main plot)
@mariomaster96 Yeah, I'm all for having the option of Jap/Eng, but when your only option is Japanese, and a lot of the background chatter isn't even subtitled at all, it is a little disheartening
@Andee
That’s good to know. Does any time limit make the trophy challenges stressful (not sure if you go for the trophy challenges for 100% completion, but just in case you know).
@thefourfoldroot1 Ah, I'm very much not a trophy person myself, but just quickly looking at the criteria for the ones in the first Ryza game, they do seem pretty exclusively non-time sensitive, so you should be good to go!
Man I started with the ps3 games starting with the arland saga and still haven't fully caught up man such a good series
the Atelier series became way more lenient to almost non-existent with time limits as it went on so people could probably start with the Mysterious trilogy or the Ryza ones and go from there.
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