The Last Alchemist [Review]
The Last Alchemist was a chore to play.
The Last Alchemist. Credit: Vile Monarch / Marvelous
The Last Alchemist is a third-person fantasy crafting game from Vile Monarch and Marvelous. You return to your alchemist mentor’s lab to research a cure for a plague that threatens to kill you. Unfortunately, he’s passed on by the time you return, and now you are the last living alchemist. You must experiment with alchemy to find a cure before it’s too late. The game is currently exclusive to PC and lacks controller support and some key options, so I found myself frustrated.
From Steam:
Master the wonders of alchemy! Solve alchemical puzzles by transforming and combining Essences. Craft items, tools and machines. Explore the enchanting world, gather peculiar resources, and befriend the Agari, adorable mushroom folk who will help you find the cure for your mysterious disease.
The Last Alchemist. Credit: Vile Monarch / Marvelous
Harvest resources to build up your lab, extract essences from items, and fuse them to make discoveries on your path to a cure. You’ll work with the Agari, mushroom people who live in the valley by your castle. You don’t just combine materials; you solve puzzles to connect materials in the alchemy system correctly. Essences must be combined in a specific way, requiring trial and error.
The developers made some unfortunate design choices, such as needing to manually unequip tools to move at full speed or failing to implement basic inventory management automation like item stacking. There is simply no consideration for quality-of-life features. Aside from a rushed production, there is no excuse because the way the game controls and operates makes it miserable to play. Another detail is that the onscreen text is very small, and there are no options to make it larger. Story and dialogue are not voiced, so this was irritating, to say the least.
The Last Alchemist. Credit: Vile Monarch / Marvelous
The Last Alchemist does not support controllers. I generally find playing games using a controller much more comfortable, hooked up to my TV if possible. To make the game playable with the controller, I made a custom Steam input template with submenus to accommodate all the needed functions, which was a chore. Of course, my kludged-together controller setup makes the game even clunkier than it already is.
Aside from a lackluster UI, the game’s visuals are good. It has a nice Pixar-like style but with a painterly quality to its textures. I like the design of the game’s mushroom people. The whole thing is visually charming.
While I found The Last Alchemist's concept interesting on paper, its execution as a game is lacking. I didn’t want to spend any more time with the game than I had to. There are far better cozy crafting games out there, so I can’t recommend this one for any reason.
The Last Alchemist is available for PC on Steam.
Overall Score: 3/10
Played on: Steam Deck
