Alchemic Jousts
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Alchemic Jousts
A fun game that is hidden behing an awful beginning that may bore to death to some players.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
For such a seemingly bare-bones title, Alchemic Jousts is sure packed to the brim with stuff to do.
Overall the graphics are cute and stylish, the experimentation range is absolutely massive, and finding all combinations will take you many, many hours. The campaign mode is solid with many levels to play on all difficulties. As for trophy hunters, the good news is there is a Platinum trophy for Alchemic Jousts. The bad news is that it’s going to be a very time consuming and challenging Platinum to achieve, so the sooner you get started and the more you practice, the more progress you’ll make towards unlocking it.
There are dozens and dozens of different elemental monsters to discover, and that’s half the joy of the game. The other half is the bright charm and personality of Alchemic Jousts. It’s not the deepest strategy game you’ll ever play, but it’s one of the most charming that you’ll see for some time to come.
I had a lot of fun with Alchemic Jousts, and I definitely recommend it to those of you looking for a fast-paced and entertaining strategy/defense release on PS4. There's a ton of units, boosts and skills to unlock, plenty of battle types to engage in and a ton of trophies to obtain, so you'll definitely spend dozens of hours playing this one.
Truly after spending a few hours with this new title we can figure out that this is not exactly about this, it's not a simple pastime but a title that requires different engagement to be able to play and so you have to go back to thinking of an old cliché: the appearance deceives.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Unfortunately, even with its provisions for variety in the nature of the battles you’ll engage in and the opportunity to discover over 180 different skills, it all ultimately feels about the same so the core loop really needs to be appealing to you to keep grinding through. I give credit to the developer for finding a new way to utilize the base alchemy game model and apply a new concept to it, all with some very cute animations and cool discoveries along the way, but even when you change up the battle modes with some variety their somewhat slow and methodical pacing can feel slow. Granted, there are times when you need to carefully consider what to deploy after your cooldown has expired to try to either defend yourself or try to get a leg up on your opponent, but on the whole the head-to-head portions end up involving quite a bit of waiting. However, if you don’t mind the very casual pace and enjoy relatively light strategy mixed with periodic opportunities for discovery you may find it appealing.
Alchemic Jousts presents a pretty fun logic puzzle in its element combinations. However, it fails at using that as a stepping stone to a full strategy experience, leaving the two systems to fizzle out separately.
