This game has a lot of disconnected ideas and parts that, on the surface, seems like they wouldn't work together, but I must admit that there is a masterful level of cohesion and competency in how the systems interact in making a system fun and engaging. The way the myriad modes this game runs through, including the shop management, brewing, haggling, social aspects, gardening, and more all entwine into something where you naturally want to engage with ALL of it is already great. However, wanting to engage with all of the systems not just for the sake of having to do so for a deadline, but because I genuinely wanted to experience more of characters, mechanics, or beat personal bests is an incredible display of what this game actually is as an experience. I will say that I disagree with this being considered a "cozy" game given that it does get quite involved if you're playing at a reasonable degree of optimization, but otherwise was a fantastic singleplayer experience through and through. That's my summary, though, detailed thoughts below if you want more substance.
I wholeheartedly recommend this game, which is rare for me to do in such glowing fashion but I do genuinely love this game for what it did and the experience I had.
In terms of story, there's enough built up within dialogue of characters that feels natural and reasonable for how characters behave at time that even if some of it feels a little surface-level, I never felt it egregious or obnoxiously vapid. There are some beats where Sylvia, the main character, should be able to honestly describe other events to other characters that she knows from conversations of other characters but I recognize that is a lot of overhead design to ask for.
In terms of characters and writing, this game is a home-run. Sylvia, while air-headed, is a likeable character who genuinely has incredible quips and generic statements that make her feel relatable or otherwise likeable. The other characters are no slouch, and while I definitely got some initial negative impressions of some characters when I first met them in the story, interacting with them afterwards substantially improved my opinion of EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, to the point where a character I thought I'd loathe (Baptiste) became one of my favorites. Overall, characters are extremely well written and only a couple of times did I feel reactions were unfounded or otherwise "cringey" for lack of better terms.
The haggling system definitely takes some getting used to, but the satisfaction I got in assembling my deck strategy that won me the game is something I seldom get to have anymore. Patience as a currency is very restrictive at first, but because you get more options in the system as you progress social ranks with other characters, you genuinely feel like Sylvia would feel at getting better at haggling. While that may be unintentional, it reflects in your decks and strategies getting stronger and stronger as the tournament progresses, resulting in a fantastic satisfaction. My winning deck ended up using a cycling approach using many of Owl, Xid, and Baptiste cards to create a feedback system of cycling through my deck to find Chorus cards as baseline pressure, but the real goal of sustaining a loop of cheap or free cards that eventally lead into a Carpe Diem finisher from Salt and Pepper that, during the final showdown, got me a +182 Interest nuke I was very proud of.
The potion system can also be initially difficult to micromanage and work with but I think this again is very related to how Sylvia does have to learn how to make these potions that make it more satisfying when you finally get good at making many Masterwork potions with high quality stuff. I like the magimins system, though I do wish there were ways to remove magimins from certain ingredients or that certain ingredients were easier to get in other systems.
Otherwise, in terms of the downtime or gardening or more that this game allows you to do, I think I have generally positive feedback for, although I do think some systems are either really underbaked or aren't really viable in the actual gameplay loop that a player is going to naturally fall into. So here are my negatives:
The whole requests system is kind of absurd. Even with such high amounts of ingredients available to me, I simply didn't bother with the request system once they started requesting certain sensations because finding those sensations is strictly dependent on you having that ingredient. Perhaps that's part of the system, but because getting ingredients is fairly random, it's hard to justify to me ever accepting and following up on it until the end of the game when you likely don't need money anymore and are just sprinting to finish your final social links. In that same thought, the adventure system, while an interesting concept to use your potions on that I did engage with a few times for some ingredients, is very inefficient for gathering new ingredients, especially at the start of a new week with the ballooning costs (even with the discounts!). It was far more efficient to just fund expeditions and gamble on the Salt and Pepper chests to find new and powerful ingredients for the next round of potions than it was to waste pressure time, resources, and money on expeditions. The risk/reward profile is just heavily skewed to not give profit most of the time for all but Corsac as a hero. It's disappointing, as I feel like there should be more incentive to clear out environments fully with heroes. One final thing that felt underwhelming or useless was honestly Muktuk's upgrades. He absolutely is necessary to get your new cauldrons and shelves as the game progresses, but there is very, and I mean VERY little incentive to chase down the upgrades for existing ones you have. 5% increases to price aren't really important when in 4 days you're about to be offered the same thing but only requires gold and not several resources with may be rarer or more expensive to get. It's a shame, because I think some of the designs and such are cool, but was basically never encouraged to use anything other than the base stuff Muktuk produced because that's what was needed to get to the challenge and I needed the funds to get the new ingredients for the contest and to fund expeditions and such to create a supply of them through Quinn. The upgrades are just too expensive and inconsequential to ever be worth engaging with so I never used them. One final negative is with the UI. I appreciate the filters, as they saved my life a ton, but I wish there was a sorting option instead of all ingredients presented in the *order they were added to your inventory*. It was very difficult to track sometimes, especially late-game. Just a way to sort by highest to lowest as a minimum would have gone a long way to making the UI or menuing a little nicer.
Overall, this game does an incredible amount of stuff right in ways that created a fun and satisfying experience in both story, gameplay, and general vibe that made this a smash-hit to me in enjoyment. While the game can be overwhelming at the start, the satisfaction as you figure out and perfect many of the systems as you get more and more invested is something I rarely get to experience anymore and made this game fun from the management point of view. I've seen some other reviews mention that complexity as a bad thing, that it hampers the "cozy" vibe, but I disagree with calling this game cozy and feel the game was much better for NOT just being "cute little shop sim", but having real tangible gameplay and decision and time management that had serious consequences. It rewarded me for my time and made me feel genuine progress as I got further and further and was just one of those games I could not put down once I got going. An excellent game all around.
If you like scores, a solid 9/10.
