Played Potion Permit for a while. Serviceable game

“Serviceable games” are deadly to a blogger, though. They’re not good enough to get me excited, but not bad enough that I can move on quickly. I played quite a bit of Potion Permit over two weekends, but now that it’s time to write about it, nothing much comes to mind. Like I said, it’s serviceable. Your character moves into a town, hangs out with people, solves their problems, and… stuff.

I took a couple of screenshots, so I’ll post them here and talk through them, maybe that will help me get my thoughts together.

First the story/premise. Your character is a chemist who is posted to a village where everyone is suspicious of chemists because of an incident that happened several years ago.

They’re not that hostile, really. And they come around pretty quickly as you talk to them and give them gifts. Your character’s job is to heal sick patients by diagnosing their ailments and making potions to match. When their affection levels rise up to a point, you can do a quest to unlock the next level, making them friendlier and friendlier. Presumably you can also date and marry someone, but nobody interested me enough even hang out with, much less marry. Some of their schedules were also hard to follow (or rather I never bothered following them) so to find characters to continue quests, I often had to go stalk them in bed like this:

So I could grab them as soon as they woke up.

Anyway, as a chemist and potion maker, your job is to diagnose illnesses and then cure them.

Ailment diagnosis takes the form of various mini games. Once you figure out what the problem is, the game tells you which potion to make to cure it (Violet Mist in the case above). You make it, administer it, and presto, job done.

To get ingredients for making potions, you have to forage them from the wild using your hammer, sickle and… one more implement, I forget which. Axe, I think. Yeah, I remember cutting down trees. The tools also come in handy for attacking monsters and getting ingredient drops from them. As you go along, you’ll upgrade your tools and facilities so you can make more things and help more people. I upgraded my tools a few times but didn’t bother too much with the clinic.

Going hopney skipney through ze voods

That’s your faithful dog down there. Once you level up his affection, he’ll dig up stuff for you as well. Once you’ve picked up a number of ingredients, it’s time to return to the workshop and craft some potions. I bought Potion Permit because I thought I would get to craft lots of potions, but crafting turned out to be the least interesting part.

This is what crafting looks like.

It means that potion ingredients are largely interchangeable: as long as you can get the material pieces to fit in the grid, you can make any potion with any ingredient. It’s like ehhh, I see what they were trying to do in taking the stress out of the process, but this isn’t really what I had in mind for a potion maker game. It’s incredibly boring. As a result, I didn’t engage much with the clinic and potion crafting aspect of the game, focusing more on fighting and grabbing ingredients in the wild instead. I made it to the desert place before things got a bit annoying and I quit, but I don’t have any more screenshots to share and I don’t feel like writing much more so we’re done here.

Good Things About Potion Permit

⚗️The townspeople don’t bug you at home so you can just chill. Being bugged at home is my least favorite part of Atelier and other crafting games.
⚗️They don’t bug you at all if you don’t talk to them. Your character can go for days without talking to anyone, and that’s how I like it.
⚗️Progressing at your own pace is my kind of jam.
⚗️I liked the action RPG combat. Beating up random wildlife is also my kind of jam.
⚗️I kinda liked the art style.
⚗️I unlocked the kitchen right before I quit, so maybe the cooking part might be interesting, IDK.

Meh Things About Potion Permit

🧤The townspeople are very boring. Actually I’m super over NPCs in general, so… yeah.
🧤Not enough ingredients to grab and make things from. I wanted more variety.
🧤The potion crafting process was very boring.
🧤The patient diagnosis and curing process was also boring and repetitive.
🧤I wanted to level up from fighting enemies. I don’t like games where you only get item drops and nothing else from combat.
🧤Fishing sucked. Usually I love fishing mini-games, but this was so bad I stopped engaging with it after my first try.
🧤Having exploration progress limited by the mayor was understandable, but annoying.
🧤No overarching story besides “stay here and heal people” is good in a low-pressure way, but it makes the game feel pointless when you’re not enjoying the healing process or the people you’re living with.

And that’s it, done with Potion Permit. It was okay. I got it on sale so I’m not sorry I played it but, eh. It was okay.

Currently playing: Tokyo Xanadu eX+. This is, like, my 4th attempt at making it through this game. I made it pretty far the first time and have written about it in the past, so I won’t say much until I’ve passed the last place I reached. Hopefully playing it on the Switch will make it easier for me to get through it. Somehow PC gaming just doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it’s a mental thing, IDK.

Dropped Triangle Strategy. Fine game, but I’ve “played” it before.

Triangle Strategy was one of the games on my New Year’s Resolutions list for 2025. I may have mentioned a few times throughout the year that I was playing it. And I was, but not very fast. A chapter here, a chapter there. I forgot about it for a while, then started all over again. Played a few chapters again, but I just couldn’t make myself continue.

As the title says, Triangle Strategy is a very fine game. The soundtrack is nice, I like the 2D-3D thing Squeenix is doing lately, the characters are interesting and varied, the localization is very well done. Maybe a little… overcooked, even? It’s not a problem if you play the game entirely in English, but if you play with English text with Japanese audio, it can be jarring sometimes. The Japanese voice will say one or two words, like かしこまりました。(understood) while the English will be something like “Yea, may it be done according to thy will, O honorable one, for lo the postilion hath been struck by lightning.” Not necessarily wrong, but sometimes a slog to read through. I went out looking for examples just now and found too many to count. A little lengthening here and there is one thing, but the whole game felt bloated once you put all those long lines together. Still, not a problem since I could have just played the Japanese version if I’d really wanted to.

“Yo, I caught you stealing. Uncool.”

The problem was the story and the gameplay. I’ve played a lot of tactical/strategy RPGs, too many in fact, and so I’ve seen it all before. Way too many times.We follow Serenoa, the loyal retainer of the kingdom of… it doesn’t matter what kingdom it is. It always plays out the same: evil empire or faction invades, we spend time on the run, we fight back, we win. There may be twists and turns along the way, but that’s the general direction of like 80% of SRPGs. The wordiness of Triangle Strategy makes it even less appealing to play through, because in just five or so chapters, I’ve had to endure several scenes where the dialogue is just variations of “Why? Why are you doing this? Why would Aefrost do this?” It doesn’t matter why, just fight them already! Urgh, they sound so whiny. Especially since I know and you know that the writers won’t answer that question for another 20 chapters at least.

The gameplay also doesn’t do anything different or exciting. 3D isometric RPGs have always been sluggish to play, particularly the ones where you have to pick a direction to face after attacking. Even after setting the game to Story Mode to make battles easier, the enemies still had too much HP and intelligence. IMO Story Mode should have meant every enemy hanging out within easy reach and going down in one hit, maybe two for the bosses. As it was, I still had to do all the maneuvering and attacking and repositioning, just without any risk or excitement. Just to get to a story that I’m not very excited about. Yeah, I quit.

“Heh. Bite me.”

This isn’t to put down Triangle Strategy for being what it is, mind you. It’s a well-done, very typical example of a political intrigue SRPG, and unlike with Harvestella, I don’t feel like I was tricked into paying for a genre I didn’t want. I thought I wanted an SRPG, I thought I could play one again since it’s been years since I last tried one. It turns out my tastes have changed too much since then. I don’t mind turn-based gaming but the turns must be snappy and the pay-off, i.e. getting to see more of game’s world and story, must be worth it.

If you like tactics/strategy RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, etc. then Triangle Strategy is more of the same and you’ll have a good time with it. For me, I overdosed on the genre and it’s going to take a much longer break and a much more special game to bring me back.

Currently playing: Atelier Marie Remake (eh), Potion Permit (eh, eh).

 

Dropped Harvestella. Just wasn’t feeling it any more (late game spoilers)

Somehow I had a feeling from day one that I wouldn’t finish Harvestella, but I thought it would be the combat that would do me in. It turned out to be the story instead, once they did their big reveal of the mystery behind the world we were on.

Late story spoiler: turns out mankind faced an extinction event on a previous planet, but they put themselves in stasis until their advanced AI (Omens) could find and terraform another planet for them to settle on. That new planet is the one we’re currently on. Only it turns out that new humans sprang up out of nowhere (HOW?!) on this new planet as well, and the planet ain’t big enough for the old gang and the new gang.

I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that, i.e. they’re facing the extinction event again and the Omens want to create a kind of barrier to cover a small area and keep people safe inside while the rest of the planet perishes. This barrier is coincidentally just big enough to hold all the old humans (Cains) or all the new humans (Abels), but not both.

Despite the heavy contrivance, that’s not bad as far as stories go. It’s a new spin on things, even though I know they’ll find a third option that lets everyone survive. And of course a ‘god’ will pop up at some point so that they can go “Mankind needs no gods!” and “We’ll carve a new path with the power of mankind/friendship!” as we beat down the one-winged angel. All par for the course.

Where they lost me was in putting the choice of who would survive on Aria. And everyone just accepting it, like… what? Just because she’s the only Cain awake in the new world doesn’t mean she gets the right to decide who gets to live and who gets to die. Can’t we have a proper discussion on this issue? Can’t we study the data and come to a conclusion together instead of taking the obviously-biased AI’s word for it? Who died and made Aria queen? Not me!

Even worse, she right away decides to sacrifice the whole planet, everyone she ever met, in favor of saving her friends and family. Okay it wasn’t immediate, she actually agonized over it for one whole day, sugoi. And I mean, that’s fair. If you (very stupidly) leave a choice up to someone, you have to accept the risk that they might choose the option you don’t want.

But! When she makes her choice and flies off with Geist to try and kill us all, can you believe how my party reacts? Because I was pissed when I saw that, like “HOLY ****, THIS B*TCH IS TRYING TO KILL US ALL!!!! WTF ARIA?!”🤬 But no, that bunch of sissies was like “Aww, poor Aria. We have to go save her. She’s our friend. Aww.” Like, seriously? You missed the part where she’s planning to murder everyone you ever cared about? We have to go kick her stupid genocidal ass, that’s what we have to go do now.

Random screenshot before I delete my screenshot folder

Right around the same time, the dungeons in Harvestella had gotten boring and samey, all straight corridors and mechanical enemies. The farming season was also Winter, plus I already explained that the farming is a disappointment and might as well not exist in this game. If I’d felt that one or two more big pushes could finish the game, then I would have pressed on a little longer, but I feel like there’s still a long way to go. First we have to find Aria, then hopefully beat the stuffing out of her, then of course affirm our friendship even though she was planning to wipe us all out, then we have to find a third method, then execute it, then fight something or the other… I’m tired, boss.

I started 2026 with an unusual amount of energy and enthusiasm for RPGs. I haven’t felt this gung-ho about playing games for years now, and I’m not going to let Harvestella or any other mediocre game kill that enthusiasm. Unlike with Xenoblade Chronicles X, I got a good save file that I can pick up from in future in case I ever change my mind. I’d rather read ending spoilers and just call it a day, though. Harvestella was a decent game, but it wasn’t quite my thing and it definitely wasn’t what I was hoping for when I picked it up. On to the next game!

Chaos Zero Nightmare – Frustrating experience, or rather lack thereof

What if you wanted to play a mobile game that recently came out… but the developers said no? Chaos Zero Nightmare is the latest game from Supercreative and Smilegate, the same team behind my beloved Epic Seven. I played it from around day three-ish for about two months, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever thought I’d enjoy a card battler. I’ve never seriously played one before, and all my card game knowledge comes from Yu-gi-oh, but now I’m more than a little bit intrigued. I’ve even bought games like Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon to try out one of these days.

I would have loved nothing more than to explore the worlds in Chaos Zero Nightmare some more, leveling up my characters, finding and evolving new cards, and all that other fun stuff people play card RPGs for. Unfortunately the game had three main flaws: 1. Stamina restrictions, 2. Low variety in content, and 3. Rigid builds that killed excitement.

Also a really crappy translation/localization

1. Stamina restrictions right out of 2005

Or whenever it was that developers still thought that letting people play your game for long periods of time was a bad idea. I mean I kind of get that it’s a new game and they don’t want people rushing through and complaining of no content… but then the solution is to launch with more content! Or give players regular stamina infusions so they can check back in throughout the day. Barely a week into the game, I had already started checking in only once a day to do a few dailies, run out of stamina after three or four battles and turn it off again. You know what comes after checking in once a day? Checking in (chaos) zero (nightmare) times, that’s right.

It seems that game developers don’t quite understand the situation they’re in right now. When you release a game in October 2025, you’re not just competing against other games released in 2025: you’re also competing against every other gacha game still running, some of which have had over a decade to add content and find ways to keep their player base busy. So when you say, “Hey, don’t play with those old toys, try these ones instead,” you’d better be sure there’s something substantial in the toy box.

Top tier dialogue 10/10

2. Low variety in content

After a few weeks of not much going on, Chaos Zero Nightmare released its first content patch. This featured a side story with special dungeons offering cards that couldn’t be found anywhere else as well as weekly challenges and achievements. On the plus side, this didn’t require any stamina so we were finally free of restrictions. On the minus side, it turned out to be just running the same dungeon over and over and over again to get good builds to challenge the seasonal content, since you couldn’t use your regular deck builds.

I believe they later relented on that, but don’t quote me because I quit. Instead of injecting new life into CZN, the first patch rather exposed how repetitive the game was, since it was 90% running dungeons, with every dungeon taking at least 15 minutes to complete, usually more. IIRC the developers have promised to add ways to speed up each run, including allowing players to skip cutscenes, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Khalipe my sweet

3. Rigid builds killing excitement

The point of running dungeons (90% of CZN‘s content, as I said) is to build decks. In other words you’re grinding to make your characters stronger, as is typical in gacha games. There are other ways to make them stronger like Memory Fragments (weapons) and Potential (stat boosts), but most of your time is spent trying to get them good skills and artifacts in dungeons. Every character starts with a number of basic cards. They gain and develop more cards and skills through “epiphanies” they have while exploring. For example if they have a card that heals, it can gain an epiphany and become a card that heals and gives 2 AP every time it is used.

Here you see that Hugo’s skill can develop in one of three ways.

So far, so good. Multiple evolution paths for a skill is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the majority of characters in Chaos Zero Nightmare have one, maybe two optimal skill sets. If you don’t get the right epiphanies on that run, you just wasted 15 minutes of your life. Delete save data and try again. I won’t lie and say they’re completely useless without the optimal sets, but they’re pretty close to it, and some like Mei Lin genuinely are worthless without sparking the right epiphanies.

Unfortunately, even if you do spark the right ones, sometimes the game won’t save them at the end of a run… Right, I forgot to mention that the game will not-so-randomly refuse to save some of your skills if they cost too much. Another 15 minutes of your life gone. Then you have to start from zero in the same dungeon using the same skills against the same enemies again because CZN is a roguelite. *facepalm*

Note: All these issues should improve with time

Needless to say, I’ve dropped Chaos Zero Nightmare for now. But it’s only dropped “for now,” not forever. That’s because the game hasn’t been out for even six months yet, and the devs are already showing signs of improving things. For example, right around the time I quit, Supercreative and Smilegate were making save data accounting more transparent so you could know whether all your skills were going to be saved or whether you were over the save limit. They also explained how epiphanies, monster cards, etc. were weighed in the calculations to help increase understanding. TBH this is obviously stuff they should have launched with so I’m not too impressed, but I can tell the game will be very different in two or three years if they keep going at this rate.

Arrrghhh…

In a couple of years, the game roster should grow as well, along with the types of equipment they can use. This should, in theory, create more diversity in teams so I won’t be running Tressa/Hugo or Tressa/Cassius forever. Plus I want to believe that the developers will find ways to shorten dungeon runs, and prepare a greater variety of things to do with the characters. The story hasn’t gone anywhere in the six chapters I played either, so there’s a lot of room to develop that. Not expecting much on that front, though: it’s going to be all Chaos Chaos Chaos forever. After all, if they ever manage to solve the Chaos problem for good, the game will be over.

Aaaanyway, in short, I’m setting Chaos Zero Nightmare aside for now, but I’ll be keeping tabs on the game’s progress so I can hop back in when things finally get interesting. The game shows a lot of progress and I liked using my favorite characters like Mei Lin, Tressa, and Hugo. I’ll play other things for now (almost done with Harvestella, it sucks now) and check back in around the first anniversary.

Harvestella: An ordinary JRPG with a not-very-robust farming minigame tacked on

Cryptic BS go!

Yo! I’m back to report on my progress with Harvestella. One of the reasons why I write several posts on a single game instead of waiting to finish it first is that my opinions and attitudes towards a game can changed drastically as I keep playing, and I want this blog to reflect that. The amount of games trying to skate by with a strong beginning that fizzles out to nothing is too damned high!

I’m still playing Harvestella and getting along fabulously. Level 54, Autumn 30, mucking about in the Orbital Cradle maintenance block. It’s a fine game that hasn’t changed much since I started, but I can’t help feeling deceived by the whole farming thing. It plays a much, much smaller role in the game than I had expected when I bought it. Is it a decent RPG? Yes. But decent RPGs are a dime a dozen, and Harvestella doesn’t do much to stand out. Honestly, I wouldn’t have bought it if not for the farming gimmick, so yeah, I do feel a bit weird about the whole thing.

I’m not the kind of gamer to do challenge runs, but as far as I can tell, you could do a no farming run very easily in this game without feeling much friction. Make juice with wild berries, make Mountain Stir Fry stamina food with mushrooms and wild leafs and you’re good to go. Sidequests give enough money for upgrading your weapons, and you don’t need to worry about other equipment. In fact, the farming could be taken out entirely and the game wouldn’t change.

More cryptic nonsense. Why should they explain themselves to you?

Well, complaining is easy enough, but how would I want Square-Enix to fix this? TBH I think it’s okay to have farming on the side, as “that thing you do when you don’t feel like adventuring that day.” If they want to make a story-heavy JRPG with a farming minigame, there’s nothing wrong with that. But once you name it “Harvestella” and base your marketing on the farming aspect, then the farming must be meaningful, robust and fun to play. Purely for example:

  • It could unlock skills and items or grant stats that make battling and exploration easier.
  • Or you could use the crops in optional weapon and armor recipes.
  • I lowkey dislike Harvest Moon-style relationship building, but you could also use dishes to get closer to major NPCs and get good loot that way.
  • Processing machines should be streamlined and allowed to take items straight from the Storage Box, because they are as annoying as heck.
  • I want a seed maker/more random seed drops so I don’t have to keep running to the grocery store for more seeds.
  • And my farm should be easier to rearrange and decorate, because it is currently ugly as heck. At the very least I should be able to move the trees around.

Those are random suggestions off the top of my head that would keep farming optional, but make it more appealing and rewarding. As it is, I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting time on crops in the morning, and I’ve been growing fewer and fewer crops since Summer.

A character who actually has a nose!!!

The rest of the game… it’s a JRPG all right. Lots of people standing around talking about stuff but never quite explaining themselves. “Could it be… but no, that would be…” OUT WITH IT ALREADY! I estimate I’m about 75% done with Harvestella simply because a character actually explained something to my party instead of telling us we’d find out later. When is later? Why can’t later be now?!

Of course they didn’t tell us everything, that would make too much sense. Instead I’m supposed to head to the Orbital Cradle for more info, but of course for the sake of very obvious padding, we’ve had a breakdown and have to make a long detour through some very boring stages. I believe I said the dungeons in Harvestella weren’t long last time. More fool me, this is getting ridiculous.

Combat is still fine, BTW. I’m still rocking my Mage class and still using Heine and Emo as party members because I can’t be bothered to switch them. I like games where you can grind levels to make up for your laziness and/or lack of skill.

I should be done by the weekend if I keep going at this rate, then I’ll return to spoil the story and give my final thoughts.