Potionomics

The game is excellent, with beautiful graphics, fun resource management, and a colorful cast of characters. ...until it gets overwhelming. If you love extensive micromanagement of 20 different things all at once while trying please too many characters all at once to the point they all blur together, you'll like this. It was too exhausting for me.

Potionomics is one of those precious games that gave me pure joy and calmness despite dealing lots of stress and being overwhelmed with responsibilities IRL, so I get to experience it in-game instead. LOL, XD Kidding aside, for realzies, I do love the art style so much, the calming music, and that nice touch with the concepts in potion-making and magic, which what magnetized me into playing this game. The characters are likable (and relatable) for sure. The writing is also good and gave me giggles here and there. Played and supported this game since its release, and I appreciate how the Devs actually listened to the players' request for Endless Mode (and Cozy Mode, where time limits are less harsh). Plus, they even added voice-over which gave the game a more immersive feel to it! Works well on my Steam Deck, easy controls and experienced no bugs so far. If you're looking for an eye candy, deck-building strategy, shop management game that somehow even has mental health caring tips from time to time, well then, my fellow Potion Seller, Potionomics is one heck of a treat for ya!

tl;dr, 5/10 game just barely eeking out a bad rating. Good early game, annoying late game. Gameplay is a decent management sim surrounded by grievances everywhere else. For disclaimer, I have not finished the game and don't know if I plan to. I feel as thought I've seen enough by Act 4, though. Potionomics certainly drew me in at the start- the first couple acts of the game have a good way of introducing it's complexity, and the third act is good at applying the pressure of the game's mechanics. It is, overall, a very complex and satisfying but deeply flawed management sim. The most annoying gripe is the UI of the game. Many elements simply do not get explained, or do not exist. For example, you will not learn that theres an additional two time slots in the day unless you read it in the loading screen tips. You cannot check what requirements an Adventure has without checking the wiki or savescumming to travel out to an adventurer and ask. You cannot check what qualities an ingredient has if you bought an enchantment, making it impossible to brew potions for orders. Many elements of the UI simply do not work sometimes, requiring you to drag your mouse off of them and reclick them, or if you hover at their edge they begin spasming and repeating their sound effect. Overall, it all just leads to small annoyances that build up and make the experience unworkable. Issues arise especially in the other half of the game's appeal- the narrative segments. The game's story is an abysmal slog. The narrative is in two parts- the main story of attempting to rebuild your family's shop, and the side stories with each individual romance/friendship option around town. The main narrative is predictable, which I don't think I'd take much issue with if the game didn't try to make me take it so seriously- same with the side stories. Characters are uninteresting and poorly written, and the protagonist has the personality of a friendly plank of wood with a dog painted on it, making it hard to believe any character could fall in love with her. In my playthrough, I found it easier to imagine her as someone with a chronic lack of self- a person with no face or "self". This is reflected in the game's deck-building mechanic of taking advice from other characters on how they deal with social situations- the protag is so empty of personality that they must try to learn it from others. It was more fun that way, but does not seem to be the take the writing team wanted. Smaller nitpicks, but the art is not my thing. If you are not a Disney Adult, you won't be charmed by the game's models. There's some clipping issues with the character models, as well as eye-tracking issues that make them look a bit strange, which- again- are nitpicks. Music is mostly forgettable, though the Afternoon track is nice. Overall, I don't know if I'll be finishing the game. I'm close to the end anyway, so I might just take the plunge. There are better management sims, there are better dating sims. If you're itching for a combination of both, sure I'd recommend this one. Otherwise, there's better games.

取り急ぎ、全体的にアートワークが素晴らしい！

The game has a decent story, good mechanics, great visuals, great character designs. It should by all rights be a great game. However, it is not. Because it is NOT a game. It is a job. Potionomics has the key selling points of building relationships with NPCs, romance, experiment with brewing potions and all the things everyone wanted for this cozy-appearing shopkeeping game. But those aspects are ruined by the ever impending doom-clock that is the main problem of the game: The Competitions. The competitions come every 10 days. For the first 4 days you're stuck on tutorial rails with no actual autonomy and being unable to buy cauldron fuel for a week means that your competition potions are going to take an entire day to brew and only by the grace of the RNG gods at multiple levels will it even approach passable for the minimum requirements for that first competition. You see, I played on the intended Normal difficulty the first time around. I thought I was doing pretty good, the game was fun. Then I approached the first, basic competition and the game took a massive dump on me. The minimum requirements for the potions were insane. The only way one could conceivably reach a 3-star common potion (minimum requirement) is to min-max every aspect from the very beginning, while getting only the best RNG returns from the adventurer's guild. Of course, for a new player they need to KNOW exactly what they should be focusing on and I most assuredly did not. In order to know what you should be doing, you need to start the game as a veteran of the game. It's a catch-22. So, since losing the competition is an instant game over and Loading your save doesn't help in this game because you need a full week of prep to redo things, I started from scratch. Normal difficulty again, since now I know what i'm doing. Now that I know what I need to do to progress and focused on that... every aspect of joy has been sucked out of the game. This is the early game and it's not fun. All the key selling aspects of the game are tossed out the window for precise numbers, mix-maxed time management, save-scumming in order to get different daily perks and RNG item drops. It is HORRIBLE. Even with all that, I only barely passed the first competition. There is no sense of accomplishment, just a desire to quit the game and uninstall it because IT. IS. THAT. BAD. Build these relationships? Nope. It's all numbers. Give this gift for X, expend Y time to rank up friendship to get Z Haggling card. Romance? Nope. Never gonna get there. You don't have enough time to spend on romance before IMMINENT DOOM. Experiment with potions? YOU DON'T HAVE TIME, MONEY OR RESOURCES TO EXPERIMENT. Everything must be perfect or... IMMINENT DOOM (again). To sum it up (which you can see from all the other negative reviews and most of the positive ones) the Competition mechanic and setup for it is terrible, forced on you, and destroys all your progress if you fail. It is responsible for every negative review. So what could've improved the game? Competitions should've been 14 days apart, not 10. 14 days is 2 weeks. It makes sense. 10 does not and doesn't leave any time for the less business-y aspects of the game it's being sold on. As through the story, it is revealed that Roxanne's potions are fakes. As such, you should automatically complete the first competition regardless of whether you win or not (after judging); functioning as a tutorial and setting a clear baseline for players' expectations for this so-called "boss fight" and all future competitions. Failing any competition should not result in game over. In fact, there should be no game over at all. The whole goal of the player is to pay off a debt and for whatever reason the only way we can do that is by winning all the game's competitions. We have a business making and selling potions and what is apparently a time limit of 50 days (for the duration of the competitions) and yet we can't just do our job and make the money honestly? It's bad. So, I repeat: This game is a job. Like all jobs, it is not something you want to do for fun. If for whatever reason you DO get this game: Play it on Cozy mode. I doubt it's much better considering what "normal difficulty" is as abnormal as they come. Maybe I'll probably replay it in cozy mode myself when Normal gets too unbearable (It won't be long, but it's not going to make me change my review).

The game seems unpolished. There are many progression systems in the game and they all compete against each other in an unsatisfying way. The potions and ingredients also seem too random and a lot of them are redundant pretty quickly. I think most people who like the game enjoy it for the character designs, rather than the gameplay.

The dialogue and characters in this game are so cringy that it makes me want to quit every time I play. This is definitely not my sense of humor at all and it significantly detracts from the rest of the game.

I love alchemy games. This one has a lot of soul and personality, which bring the experience to life in a way others did not. Though I enjoyed the gameplay loop, it overstayed its welcome for me just a little bit. I ended up coming back and finishing the game after a break, but I would still recommend it. It gets a lot of things right and was a charming experience.