Alchemist: The Potion Monger [Xbox]
Art Games Studio’s previous title, Alchemist Simulator, was an enjoyable step into the world of alchemy. It introduced the concepts of utilising different aspects of various items, and the potions you can craft from them. Alchemist: The Potion Monger takes all that information you learned last time and ramps it up, adding not only a boatload of new ingredients to discover (and new aspects to identify), but it changes up the gameplay massively, too. From the humble beginnings of being tethered to your cauldron, to having so much more freedom and a whole world to explore; this sequel has truly gone bigger and better.
When you begin, you will be given the choice between two different difficulty levels, Apprentice and Alchemist. If you’re looking to keep things very relaxed - removing the worry of death penalties and making potion-crafting a little easier - then Apprentice is the choice for you; but if you’re open to a little more challenge, then Alchemist is the way to go. You’ll pick a character - with a surprisingly decent amount to choose from, each with a differing number of hearts worth of health, as well as some pros/cons to each such as gaining better deals at shops. You’ll then go on to name your character, as well as your dog, who is the first of four pets you’ll gain in your quest to become a pro alchemist. Each of the unlockable pets will help you to identify different elemental aspects from the ingredients you collect, so always make sure to bring new items to your pets for a sniff test. I hadn’t quite anticipated the extra pets, so ended up with two out of four having fairly matching (Pokémon) names, the dog named after my dog (Ripley)… and a cat named Cat.
The world is comprised of a few different zones, each with their own locations to discover and ingredients to find. You don’t have the quickest legs, so thankfully once you’ve been to each, you’ll activate a warp portal to allow you to easily travel from area to area. You’ve got your home, and the immediate area surrounding it, which spans down to the beach and up and over grassy hills populated with big green slimes; to the icy heights of the Winterlands, and the spooky, probably smelly, Swamplands between, just to name a few. The world isn’t massive, but it’s definitely decently sized for exploring - and it’s far more interesting than the confines of the first game. There’s a bit of combat, though this is probably the least enjoyable part of the game. You’ll need to whack the slimes that are bouncing around to gain the items inside them (as well as some gloopy slime remnants), with each of the main areas having their own slime variants. They lunge towards you when you’re within range, sometimes damaging you from above, but they’re not at all difficult to deal with. There are also red-eyed enemies later in the game who do offer a little bit more of a challenge, especially when they catch you off guard as you come out of a portal, but even these are relatively easy to kill. I can appreciate that the combat was added as another means of gathering items, but it just doesn’t feel that great, unfortunately.
You’ll meet various characters along the way, with tasks to complete such as killing some cows (and if you’re up for some lighter mischief, making them float), resurrecting kinda-dead goat-witches, and more. In order to progress, you’ll have to explore the world to gather up the relevant ingredients for each task - you can buy potion recipes to make things a little easier to work out, though experimenting with different ingredients and all of the mystical aspects they contain just might surprise you with a cool new potion… or an explosion - it could go either way. There’s a lot of humour peppered throughout, and despite feeling a little clunky at times, the jovial gameplay really does help. Crafting your potions can be done in a few different ways: it might be as straightforward as collecting an ingredient that does the job (which is usually the case in the very early stages); but later, you’ll have to use the different types of equipment - that can thankfully be purchased at the market - in order to tweak ingredients to uncover certain aspects before plopping them all in your cauldron. Some ingredients are far rarer than others, so this is an interesting way to utilise their aspects even if you’re struggling to find the typical ingredients. A bit of to-ing and fro-ing between the different equipment and you just might manage to turn shit into diamonds… in the elemental sense, that is.
Early in my playthrough, an odd glitch occurred where buying things from vendors didn’t actually affect my in-game money. Safe to say, I took full advantage of this, and bought up everything I could possibly find; only this then left me gutted when an update rolled around and removed the glitch. I usually do my best to stay away from exploits like this, but I’d already bought half the shop by the time I realised, so needless to say I kept going for as long as I could. On a further playthrough I did things the ‘right’ way, which did prolong the game-time quite a bit, since I had to work harder to make money through fulfilling requests before I could even set up my own stall for selling potions, but this did actually come with the benefit of making me more resourceful with my ingredients and smarter about the order in which I bought certain items.
Priced at £16.74 on Xbox - or £22.99 if you’d rather buy the Alchemist Bundle, which includes this as well as the previous title, Alchemist Simulator, which is a pretty decent price for not just one, but two games. Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a fun game for all ages, and as much as it had its flaws, I still had a good time with it.
In the end, we decided to give Alchemist: The Potion Monger the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.
Are you interested in Alchemist: The Potion Monger? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Art Games Studio for the Alchemist: The Potion Monger Xbox review code!
