I loved this game and I highly recommend it! The gameplay loop was very addictive though challenging at first, the characters were lovable, interesting, and unique, the music was immersive, catchy, and yet perfectly ambient. Potionomics is the perfect blend of some of my favorite genres: management, deckbuilding, and dating sim.
I especially enjoyed the haggling gameplay, it was very fun and satisfying building a deck over time to the point of being unstoppable! And I loved how each character had a "specialty" for the cards you unlocked from them, and it was really fascinating to me how the deckbuilding gameplay really accurately captured a sort of "socialization battle" that I'm not sure I've ever seen in another game.
[b]A few tips[/b]:
When you play the game for the first time, I suggest playing on the lowest difficulty because it has quite an unforgiving learning curve.
Keep in mind that you can send your heroes out even if they won't make it to the end of the area and it's still worth it, especially in the beginning.
Increasing your relationship with each character is important, and very rewarding, because you earn cards that make haggling significantly easier. However, on medium difficulty I couldn't find time to increase relationships until week 2.
After the first week, keep an eye out for ingredients containing purple magimins, and make sure you buy the max quantity of the good purple magimin ingredients every day.
Use the filters for the ingredients when you're making potions!!!
[b]The issues...[/b]
I played the game on medium difficulty, which was a mistake because I had to restart the game when I realized just how much I was missing. I think a lot of people never finished this game because the game is surprisingly challenging on medium difficulty, and the vast amount of ingredients - a lot of them completely useless - can be overwhelming, and getting ingredients that are actually useful is completely RNG.
There's also a loooot going on, which can be stressful and make the game actually feel like a job at times. I can understand why the game is like this though, it really does make it feel like you're Sylvia anxiously on the struggle bus trying to make everything work out in such a short time, but I can definitely see how it can be off putting with the amount of stuff that you have to keep up with for casual gamers - and this game attracts casual gamers.
The story was a bit corny to me, but eventually it did grow on me and now I find it endearing and wholesome. I can definitely see why a lot of people might be put off by the corniness. It was also very predictable, but I think that might have been intentional.
I didn't like some of the characters, but interacting with the characters is completely optional. There were a few characters that I literally never talked to. Each character does something specific and there were two that had shops that I personally never used: the curses and marketing, because I didn't need that in order to succeed.
All in all though, I do recommend this game because I had a lot of fun and spent a lot of time playing it - it was only challenging the first 1-2 weeks on medium difficulty, and then after I figured out the proper gameplay loop and earned some good cards from the characters (and finally found some purple magimin ingredients...), the rest of the game was a breeze!
