Game: Alchemist: The Potion Monger
Genre: Adventure, Simulation
System: Steam (Windows) (also available for PlayStation and Switch)
Developers | Publishers: Art Games Studio S.A.
Controller Support: Full
Age Rating: US Teen | EU 7+
Price: US $13.99 | UK £11.79 | EU € 13,79
Release Date: September 25th, 2024
A review code was used, and many thanks to Press Engine.
Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a simulation game for Steam, Switch, and PlayStation. It mixes elements of simulation titles, adventure games, and other genres to create a colorful journey into the life of a Potion creator.
The Gameplay of Alchemist: The Potion Monger
Like many similar titles, Alchemist: The Potion Monger has you starting by moving to a new town, starting with very little. You get a home, but it is mostly empty, and you only have a couple of odds and ends you brought with you.
You also have a pet dog that can help you identify objects that you can use in your potions. In order to play, you will need to make potions, interact with NPCs, collect and farm plants and other objects for your potions, complete quests, and even fight off slime creatures and wolves. There is a town you can head into to chat with other people in your new town and buy items.
Overall, Alchemist: The Potion Monger is one of the simulations pushing the genre and expanding into others to create large worlds with a lot to do inside them. So, let’s dive into how successful the developers were at the massive project they signed up for.
The Pros of Alchemist: The Potion Monger
There is a lot to like about Alchemist: The Potion Monger. The potion-making is incredibly interesting; you need to add ingredients and draw symbols to get better versions of the potions you are trying to make. You can put in ingredients or grind them up in order to make different kinds of potions with the same plants and things.
You have a cute variety of pets, all of which help you determine what you can use ingredients in and what each of them will do when put into various forms and potions. There’s a whole complex chart of earth, water, fire, and air elements that fan out and focus on different things. You have to uncover ingredients in order to figure out what goes where.
Alchemist: The Potion Monger has a whole bunch of NPCs, a big world, a big town to explore, and a lot of things to fight against. It’s a colorful space that feels large, and you continue to unlock new spaces, each with its own unique plants, enemies, and NPCs. It’s a rather large game with a lot of different things to explore, see, and interact with.
The Cons of Alchemist: The Potion Monger
Alchemist: The Potion Monger has a lot going for it. However, the main thing you are supposed to be doing, which is making potions, is not explained very well.
You basically have to buy all your potion recipes, which is fine, and then go out and find ingredients that match the symbols you need to complete it. You can ask your philosopher’s stone to help you out with learning which items match which symbols, but those potions don’t always work out, and I’m not sure why. For example, one potion suggestion was a picture of my wooden mortar and then a picture of an orange flower called Calendula and a piece of cow manure. So, I thought that meant I needed to make a powder of both those things in my wooden mortar and then toss them into the cauldron.
That potion failed; it was the wrong aspect. Okay, maybe I just need to use the wooden mortar on one of those objects. So I put more poop in the wooden mortar, then I tossed the flower in whole. This also failed. I tried grinding up the flowers, tossing them both in whole, and it never seemed to work out. By the time I figured out the right number and types of ingredients, I tried to brew it using the symbols and failed somehow. It didn’t help that every time I tried to use the stone and forgot to pin a recipe, Alchemist: The Potion Monger called me an “idiot” or a “fool,” which I was not fond of.
It took a while, but I did eventually figure out how to successfully brew potions with the items I had. It’s still a little easy to mess it up, but the instructions were of little help stumbling into the right answer. While it is only one part of the game and the story, it’s such a big part of Alchemist: The Potion Monger that it feels like it could be explained a bit better.
Also, the combat is terrible, at least at first. I don’t think you are actually supposed to be fighting anything in melee at all in this game; it’s awkward and easy to walk through the enemies you are supposed to be fighting.
The Place is Huge
To be completely honest, I wasn’t able to come close to finishing Alchemist: The Potion Monger. There is a massive map and a ton of quests, potions, and NPCs to chat with. I spent about 10 hours just wandering around in the village, talking to people, learning to brew potions properly, exploring the area around my house, and getting my dog to sniff random things I brought home to see how I could use them in a potion.
This is partly because the world is huge but also partly because the massive map is pretty spread out. There are a lot of big spaces with nothing in them that you just walk through until you unlock the fast travel points. Everything feels like a big adventure because it basically is. Getting somewhere takes time and effort. Thank goodness that there are fast-travel points, or I would have given up on even trying to play Alchemist: The Potion Monger a long time ago.
Cute and Funny
Alchemist: The Potion Monger does something that I love in video games: most of the game is fairly serious. It’s not like you are trying to solve world hunger or saving infants from a killer wolf or anything too intense, but you get a feeling that all the people in the world are real and asking you for help with all sorts of things. But while you are making potions and helping people (or hurting people if you choose), you will stumble across little jokes.
Conclusion
Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a big game with an innovative potion-making system that is very challenging to figure out. It’s colorful, has decent sound design, has a lot of NPCs, and has a whole bunch of quests. The world is huge, and you have to fight stuff out in the wild with a combat system that doesn’t feel great.
Overall, Alchemist: The Potion Monger is pretty fun. The world is huge but kind of empty. There is a lot that is good about it, but some things I think will not sit well with some people. However, I do think that Alchemist: The Potion Monger is worth the price. It’s cute, it’s colorful, it’s fun, it’s cozy, but it is a little bit of a pain to figure out. If you like sprawling games with a lot to do and fun little quests that are pretty chill, there are far worse games you could pick up than Alchemist: The Potion Monger.
Final Verdict: I Like it.
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