BattleJuice Alchemist Preview

Recently, I had the pleasure of trying out one of the titles coming to Steam Next Fest — BattleJuice Alchemist. While I'm not the biggest fan of ARPGs (they're a bit clunky for me and oftentimes too complex), I decided to give this one a try because of its awesome graphic style and setting!

In BattleJuice, you play as an alchemist, and your main weapon is all the potions you can throw at the enemy. It is your job to go around the wilderness that was once New England, meet people, get quests, and learn to craft more and more items and flasks so you may advance even further! It really works like most ARPGs do, though there is an emphasis on needing to pay attention to what the NPCs say, as oftentimes, the dialogue holds important key points. 

Upon booting the game up, I was pleasantly surprised by two things: you can customise your character (even choosing their gender and name), and the music has a nice, mellow, 80’s-feeling vibe. While the character creator isn't anything to write home about, I really enjoyed the styles you can choose from!

As I said before, I'm not a big fan of the genre because it's too complex, so much so that I find most of the games stressful instead of fun. This is especially true for particularly difficult ones, such as Grim Dawn, where there are so many build options that it's overwhelming... and punishing. Thankfully, I found that BattleJuice is rather forgiving, as you can even change your Attribute distribution at any time, and death doesn't come with a penalty! This really opened up the possibility for me to enjoy the experience without getting anxious about experimenting, which was fantastic. 

That being said, at first, I wasn't the biggest fan of the combat; it felt a bit cumbersome to have to drink a Liquid Flask every time I used a potion, like having to reload after every shot. The clunkiness only felt worse because I didn't — and still really don't — understand the combat entirely, as the Liquid and Juice mechanics feel a bit confusing. Thankfully, the more I levelled up and the higher-quality equipment I found, the less I struggled with the combat despite not really grasping it all that well. After a certain point, I knew enough by intuition that I was destroying groups of enemies without batting an eye! 

Still, the combat is really the only part I couldn't understand, as the crafting system and the quests were all very newcomer-friendly, offering hints for everyone who needs a hand. Even the rituals, which is a feature that allows you to perform an incantation after sacrificing some items to the fire, seemed more difficult and daunting than they actually were. Just paying some decent attention to the hints and mission provides enough information for you to easily chant the right words!

I think it bodes the game well that I don't usually like the genre, but I enjoyed walking around, throwing potions, and causing all sorts of disasters. One of my favourite features is being able to get materials by creatively interacting with the environment, such as being able to get Wood and Ash by burning down the forest; this made it fun to go get any items I was missing to craft equipment or flasks! That being said, I’m not sure how commonplace this will be in the full release. 

BattleJuice Alchemist does a great job at making a usually difficult and daunting genre accessible by offering hints, proper explanations, and an informative design. Even the randomly generated deck-building aspect of the combat wasn't too punishing and just added a layer of strategy to the game. Truthfully speaking, the only thing I really struggled with grasping was the Juice and Liquid concepts, so if you like ARPGs, I recommend trying the tutorial out.