Potionomics (2022)

I'm always on the lookout for a good fantasy alchemy RPG now that the Atelier series has diverged so far from what originally drew me to it, and Potionomics seems like a suitable replacement at first glance. The music's nice, the plot's totally serviceable, and the vibes are cozy. Character design, animation, and voice acting all punch vastly above their weight, making each cutscene fun to watch even with a script that's nothing special. Love that the protagonist is super gay, too.

Unfortunately, the potion making and selling which form the bulk of the game are tediously designed and have abysmal UI across the board. Every menu is poorly presented, everything you do takes too many clicks to execute, and on controller the interface often bugs out and has to be reset. The crafting and haggling minigames have clear dominant strategies which become rote almost immediately. And most frustratingly, the lack of any meaningful automation features or limits on how many potions you can brew means that the alchemy is more a test of your patience than your wit.

In Atelier, making a potion that can kill god or a pie that sells for 8 million zenny is a tricky little puzzle that you solve once, and can then spend resources on to reproduce at will. In Potionomics, success boils down to making the exact same potions from the exact same ingredients, over and over again dozens of times a day. By putting the protagonist in massive debt on day one, the game encourages players to wring every last ounce of profit from their alchemical empire. But optimizing that machine is boring, and the characters and story aren't interesting enough to carry the game on their own.

This could very well be a great game, but I really dislike that it has the same plastic Fortnite aesthetic as other cozy games games like Palia (and yes, obviously originally inspired by Fortnite). I know it's a purely down to taste, but I really don't find this art direction appealing. I find the artistic design of the game's cover art to be more appealing, even if it's also a generic style that is borrowing from a contemporary manga/anime aesthetic.

The potion making is the worst part of this game, it starts out alright but the more ingredients you get as you progress makes the process of making the potions increasingly tedious as you have to look through your cluttered stock of ingredients to check their magamin properties then you have to put them in so that the potion is balanced and also has the required quality & tier.

There is also no form of automatic potion making that selects your ingredients for you so the more you progress the more making potions will feel like a slog & a waste of your time.

Story is delightful, but I think the amount of loading screens is a bit excessive and the mechanics are a bit repetitive. By the third week I was already tired of the potion making slog.

The first week is make or break, and I ended up having to replay it because of my compounding mistakes. But once you get the hang of it it's not a hard game.

Overall I'd like for it to get some patches to allow the true potential to shine, but otherwise recommend for someone hankering for a cute management game.