Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe

Iron Chef style tournament cooking game. Art is beautiful. The many different expressions drawn for the main character really makes her feel alive. Voice acting is pretty good. The writing is decent. The story is simple and nothing out of the ordinary. The main character is pretty fleshed out and interesting along with a few other characters but many of the characters doesn't really have much to them. Story mostly only take place in one area, the capital city. Would have liked to been able to explore more places instead of being stuck in a small stretch of road with 3 mini games. Combat is pretty basic. Functional but doesn't quite stand on its own, especially in parts of the main story where you only have to fight. The main meat of the game is the Iron Chef style tournament where you go out and fight monsters and plants to collect ingredients and run back to cook in a match-3 style mini game to get the highest points in a time limit against another character. There is quite a variety of equipment items each with a different use which change up the game quite a bit. Lacking a versus mode. Can only play as two characters in daily cook-off. Would have liked to been able to play as other characters like the girl with the teapot robot or Kirin with her wings. Only encountered 1 bug where the monsters didn't drop any ingredients for me. Restarting the game fixed it. Cleared main story in 13 hours. Game is pretty challenging and had to redo matches quite a few times. Beautiful game which I enjoyed but would have liked to be able to explore more of the world. A versus multiplayer mode would have been good especially given the theme.

In a world of terrifying monsters, one woman's goal is to kill, gut, and cook them all! This game features a bit of platforming, a bit of match three, and a bit of light rpg (just in terms of loadouts for skills and equipment). Everything is very quick and snappy. The main character, Mina, is in an Iron Chef-style competition, where she must hunt monsters to match the theme ingredient and preferences of the judges. Hunting and cooking are both part of a timed match. You use your skill loadout to attack monsters roaming in one of four-to-five areas. You can arrange your "cooking" loadout to give bonuses for things like hunting all monster types, getting all the part types from a monster type (they are random drops), getting a large number of ingredients, etc. Once you are ready to cook, you carry the ingredients between stations where you can, e.g., "stir" to match three "taste gems" to upgrade them, "debone" by removing gems, "slow cook" to upgrade fragile ingredients, etc. The matches are about 3-7 minutes apiece, bracketed by story bits and a selection of mini games. The campaign is *just* long enough to give a small taste of all the mechanics. I was surprised that there are so many good mechanics used so sparingly. There's no grinding at all! You will have to be picky with the coins you have, as you have no chance to replace them if you regret a purchase. The story is also lean and trim. Things are going on with all the background characters, who each seem to have their own off-screen plot. The campaign takes about 3-5 hours. There is no endless mode, and you only sometimes have access to "practice" areas. There is a daily cook-off, which, on GOG, compares only you to yourself on the leaderboard. Complaints: the game is keyboard or controller only, no mouse; I don't like the animation as much as that in the original demo video; in desperate need of a few cheap expansions. Game source: Kickstarter backer

The game is great. I was on the fence between giving it 4 and 5 stars, but I went with the latter mainly because it has NO RIGHT to be this enjoyable. The game is well executed, with only minor flaws and solid presentation. There are basically two aspects of the game that made me enjoy it so much: 1) Perhaps fittingly for a game about cooking, Battle Chef Brigade is less about the ingredients and more about how they are expertly combined. The game is basically: a story about a young woman, a Match Three game of sorts, and a brawler. None of these would hold much appeal on its own, for me. Separately, they'd be anywhere from mediocre to decent. I wouldn't play any part of the game separately. There are just better games for me. But together, they do reinforce each other. The change of pace between various mechanics keeps things fresh. The various moments complement each other. There's some weird alchemy that makes the whole more than a sum of its parts. I can't explain it. They're just that well-balanced. 2) The feel of the cooking mechanics is amazing, it's one of the best marriages of mechanics and theme I've *ever* seen in a video game. I compare BCB to Guitar Hero, as GH is (I am told) nothing like playing a guitar, but it sure FEELS like it. BCB is nothing like cooking (duh). But mixing ingredients in BCB, rushing from one pan to another, putting something in the oven, seasoning the dish - it all very much FEELS like making a meal, it's the exact same thrill (I cook as a hobby). Every single mechanic is a brilliant little simulation of a real-life "thing". When you chop up an ingredient, it does feel like you're cutting out the inedible parts. When you're waiting for meat to come out of the oven, the anticipation is spot-on. The importance of using the right kitchen utensils, the vegetarian vs meat options, the final touch of adding something on top... it all just clicks. The consistency, logic and variety of the game mechanics makes the game brilliant.

i loved the game it was a fun game that i would play many times, the story is nice and i find it well crafted, the combat is basic but i feel like it works with adding a puzzel element in cooking, this game is by far a fun game and would always love to play it. my problem with it is that while campain is fun and has good rpg elements in it i would of liked a cook off with chosing my own cookware like i did in the story, i feel like it cut back on letting me experiment on the game and while the challenges are nice it feels kinda empty to me since i feel like there is no real reason to go on it and i would perfer to have fun in this world on my own. if they add a freeplay mode where you can choose where to do the fight it might make it more fun and make good practice for some people, hope there will be a follow up with this game cause this game is quite exiting