Step into another pixelated adventure with Potion Permit, a cozy JRPG that lets you turn off your brain and enjoy gorgeous scenery, charming characters and uncover the estranged relations between the people of Moonbury and the Medical Association in the Capitol.
This game offers a wide map to explore and pilfer the woods for all kinds of ingredients that you can use to put potions together. Completing adorable yet simple minigames calculate your performance and make for a pretty overall chill experience in the game.
While it comes off a bit hand-holdy when introducing mechanics and missions around town, the game allows for you to explore to your heart’s content. You can greet all the different types of people in town, spend your days in the forest collecting ingredients or completing tasks for the towns folk to better your reputation with them and learn more about the story of Moonbury.
But the best part of the game has to be Noxe, your traveling canine companion. Not only are you allowed to feed him and give him pets, but he also helps you finds NPCs around town when your companionship level is high enough. Watch him as he follows you everywhere around town and helps you to get to know people and further explore the woods for ingredients.
Story Thus Far
This endearing tale starts us off at the train; introduced to our senior, he explains to us that we are heading to Moonbury where we will be helping the mayor’s daughter get over a sickness that even their witch doctor has not been able to remedy completely. Apparently, the chemist before us betrayed the town people in some way, and only once pushed to duress does the Mayor, Myer, feel that he should reach out to the Medical Association once more.
The secret of what happened before we got there are hidden amongst the character’s stories and until we get to know each of the villagers better, we are none the wiser as to what may have occurred before we got there. And by exploring more of the woods, you can uncover even more of the story by digging up diary pages of what might be leftover notes from the previous chemist.
The townsfolk are fascinating and so incredibly diverse in not only their trade but their portrayals. It’s personally refreshing to see so much range in character skin tones as well as trades with women being in the smithery. While each person does seem to have their own niche that is unique to them, I look forward to exploring more of their backstories and learning more about their character as well as their own run-ins with the old chemist and what may have happened between them and the city’s Capitol.
Taking Proper Care of Your Patients
In order to win over the good graces of the townsfolk, first, you gotta take care of them. As the resident chemist in Moonbury, you get your own clinic left over by the previous tenant where those who aren’t feeling well will be left to receive your care. You complete a couple of pretty easy minigames in order to access their condition and come up with a diagnosis, then it’s as simple as applying the right potion to help.
The game thus far almost feels like “Baby’s First Simulator” since it is easy on the tutorials and doesn’t require much problem-solving in order to remedy a cure by choosing the right potion or increasing in that much difficulty as time goes on. Players would have to purposely be failing in order to get bad results from the patient making the game quite forgiving in that aspect and more of one that you play without having to stress too much about the details in making your gameplay perfect.
The Daily Grind of Making Potions
Your potions won’t come straight to you, so it’s up to some daily tasks to hit the forest in order to get supplies to make them. You got your three handy tools, a sickle, a hammer and an axe in order to gather resources found in the wild. But trees and rocks won’t be the only thing you find, there’s also a variety of creatures that range from normal wildlife to your typical RPG slimes. Hitting these enemies with the correct tools can actually result in discovering even more types of drops that you can use for potions, such as using a hammer when it comes to dealing with slimes so you get Goo.
Every day, your resources replenish out in the forest so it’s always a good idea to head out in order to get ahead on wood and rocks you’ll be needing to unlock more of the forest as well as to use for upgrades either to your buildings or your tools. There will also be tasks presented by the townsfolk that will help you increase your favor amongst the town and help bring it back to modern glory.
Final Observations of the Game
Potion Permit is a pretty fun game, it’s quite mindless in its delivery because while it has an interesting story and a unique twist, it’s just not that overly complicated. With Stardew Valley, farmers have to plan out their resources and manage their time carefully and with games like Rune Factory, there is more grinding to do that goes with keeping up friendships with characters, fighting enemies to get further along and tending to the farm. In Potion Permit, it’s pretty straightforward in what it expects from its chemists, but that also is a bit of a downside.
The game is a bit more expensive than it ought to be for what it offers, on Steam and through the Nintendo Switch console. There are similar games to it that offer the same experience if not more at a cheaper price. Unless the game is expecting to come out with more releases and updates then its price is pretty steep for what’s being offered, especially if you go for the deluxe editions and add-ons. Games like Stardew Valley and Graveyard Keeper have mods and DLCs to add to the gameplay that continues to make the experience enjoyable for new players as well as offering new styles depending on what you find. I’d be interested to see if Potion Permit decides to come out with any more content for the game or what kind of mods content creators will be able to make for the game. It has an exciting formula that’s just a bit more demanding than its competitor sister games.
Final Review: 3 out of 5
Jordan is a student studying Digital and Print Journalism at the University of North Texas. After discovering how much fun gaming journalism can be, she hopes to make a career in it once she graduates. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing games such as Genshin Impact, Ace Attorney, and Fire Emblem or watching Murder, She Wrote late at night on weekdays.
