The residents of Moonbury have a bitter history with the medical association. Not long ago, some chemists in the capital caused untold damage to the surrounding areas, causing many plants to become extinct and even claiming life. After a long period of separation from the medical association, it is up to you, a young chemist, to solve Moonbury’s problems, starting with the mayor’s ailing daughter and the local witch doctor’s inability to cure her. You have a dog too. Yes, you can have a dog.
This is the premise of Potion Permit, and it’s as good as any life simulation game – at least in this one, you’re not given a plot of land from a dying grandparent. Instead, you’re a true fish out of water in a new city, and you’re made for feel I like this. Barely anyone will give you a chance, just you as some interloper in the big city, and you have to earn your spot in Moonbury through hard work and trouble. It is a breath of fresh air in a style where you are often treated with immense kindness and patience.
TheGAMER today’s video
RELATED: Splatoon 3 Review — Tough Splits With a Vengeance
The first thing that strikes you when you start your journey in Potion Permit is how gorgeous the game is. The pixel art has an attention-to-detail I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, the color palette is perfect for the tone of the game, and the character designs convey a lot of personality. Moonbury is a beautiful city to visit as a result. What I liked was how personal the residents’ homes were. The bedrooms of the town’s blacksmiths are filled with lavish weapons, the spooky graveyard keeper pinned butterfly displays, and the bait shop is filled with sea baubles, all drawn in a surprisingly elegant style of play.
Working your way up as the city’s chemist forms the central gameplay, which includes various minigames. Problems are diagnosed on a part-by-part basis, with memory and rhythm minigames making up the bulk of the gameplay in the early hours, with some variety mixed in as you unlock more complex situations. Once you identify what’s wrong with your patient, it’s time to start mixing some potions into your trusty skillet. It takes the form of a puzzle minigame where you are presented with a grid that must be filled using materials and resources collected on out-of-town missions. Each ingredient has its own size, and some recipes will prevent you from using certain categories, making your job a lot harder.
Establishing a new life as Moonbury’s chemist is a gradual process. The game lets you drip-feed new mechanics over time making sure you never get overwhelmed. You’ll start to learn how potion crafting mechanics work, and foster your relationships with your new neighbors, and eventually embark on quests that unlock fishing and house expansions. The gameplay cycle settles down very quickly – you wake up, examine any patients you may have received overnight, take note of any pressing treatments, and then explore Moonbury and surrounding areas to tackle your goals. Find out, whether it involves collecting ingredients for potions and upgrades, meeting with residents to progress events, or handing out items to complete quests.
The quests move very quickly, so there’s always something to keep you going. Many of these discoveries are achieved by being in the right place at the right time, and while this sounds like a recipe for disaster and frustration, handy notice boards help steer you in the right direction, to help you start new searches. Provide a clear location and time frame or series of events. Disappointingly, most of the quests are very basic, achieving quests that require a set amount of resources or the creation of a unique potion. Thankfully, they’re easy to accomplish and never take too long, and you can ask your dog to lead you directly to any NPC you need to talk to.
Many events and discoveries link strongly with the relationship system. As with most life simulation games, you get closer as you talk with your neighbors, a helpful bar that fills up once a day whenever you greet them. You can also gift characters to give their relationship meter a significant boost – unlike other games, however, there’s only one gift item: Moon Cloves. These are achieved through completing discoveries and treating patients, and the simplicity is refreshing. There’s no need for complicated spreadsheets of likes and dislikes to make the gift-giving process increasingly simple.
As you’d expect, there’s some romance too – three bachelors and three bachelors, to be exact. While the romance aspects don’t come to the fore until much later in their relationship quest series, there are some intimate hints that fill in to keep you interested, and they tend to be interesting characters to begin with. Gio and Matthio, for example, appear to pique your interest a lot at the beginning of the game, and Rue, the mayor’s daughter, is your full reason for visiting Moonbury for the first time. The narrative significance placed on these characters lends itself to their credibility as objects of your affection.
Getting to know the residents of Moonbury is another attraction. As you get closer to your new neighbors and earn their trust, you’ll feel like you’re part of the community. You’ll defrost their cold, capital-hating hearts and cement your place in town as their trusted new partner and care provider. It gives you a purpose that’s often missing from life sims, and in this way you’ll reveal the city’s somewhat mysterious and gloomy past.
Venture outside Moonbury will put you in danger, but it is something you will need to do. This is where you’ll gather resources for potions or quests, whether it’s by chopping down trees and breaking rocks or defeating monsters in battle for their stuff. At the start of the game, it takes longer than you’d expect and feels a bit monotonous, but once you move a bit and start uncovering new areas, collecting materials becomes a breeze, And combat encounters require ample skill to be satisfied. It’s very basic, though – your tool’s upgrade level dictates how long you can string combos, and you’re given a simple dodge roll to evade attacks. I’d describe the game’s combat as ‘serviceable’ – it’s certainly not the main focus of the game but there are enough mechanics at work to make things interesting.
While life simulation games are easy enough in the name of creating a relaxing experience, even for the genre, Potion Permit is extremely easy, potentially to its detriment. I’ve never failed in a minigame, never failed to catch a hint thrown at me in dialogue, and never struggled with potion crafting. In fact, the only thing that stopped me in my tracks was a game-breaking bug that often deleted entire quests from my quest log, leaving me unable to complete them. This meant that various residents would be locked into the base trust level forever, making me an unreliable newbie no matter how many months I’ve been around.
There’s a lot to love about Potion Permit. As mentioned, this is a game that gives you a purpose, and does a great job of letting you experience the journey from total newcomer to the heart of the community. It’s the perfect game for those who want a relaxed, chilled-out experience – a tonic for a market full of life sims that emphasize profit and efficiency. The only things lacking are a bit of difficulty keeping things interesting and some bug fixing to keep things running smoothly.
The review code was provided by the publisher.
NEXT: I Think We’ve Reached the Breaking Point of Adorable Farming Sims
Source
