Restaurant Empire

Okay, this is just my opinion, but even though I usually like this type of game I found this boring and frustrating. I started playing the main quest-based game and got through a few levels before quitting. Part of the problem, I think, is not really understanding the cause and effect of my actions in the game. I'm told to decrease the quality of my food (along with my prices) to please my less demanding tightwad customers, but then get complaints about the poor quality. I install a dumbwaiter to speed up delivery to my second floor, but in spite of hiring extra servers, still have problems getting my food to the customers on time because my chef can't keep up, apparently. The pathfinding is also pretty horrendous - after installing said dumbwaiter and the extra 'porter' to man it, my chef can't get into the kitchen until the first upstairs customer is served because said porter is dawdling in the middle of the kitchen blocking his way to the stove and there is no way to shove him out of the way. I receive complaints about my nasty employees, but there is no way to discipline them other than firing them and trying a new one (and they ALL seem to be extremely anti-social). Even with all these complaints and problems, I always completed the levels the first time through, so perhaps the standards in Paris just aren't that high. Another disappointment came with the chef contests that occassionally are available to compete in. Your chef goes up against 2 others in a cooking contest, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason behind the selection of the winner. During the contest, you can 'help' your chef by playing 3 monotonous and non-food-related mini-games (not even fun, thank you, just click in the right place as fast as you can) in order to help the score. So, anyway, I just feel this game was poorly designed. I find it frustrating because my input is limited to actions that much of the time seem to have little effect. And it could have been so much better.

I honestly found the story ridiculous, but since you don't play these games for the story I will just skip it. Though the worst is seeing the character's uncle willing to move all the way from france to san fran to work as a greengrocer just to let a girl work at a steakhouse for a few weeks - so expect ludicrous plot developments. This game's appeal loses out quick as - especially in the later label you have to choose between having a high star rating and hemorrhaging money or have funds but awful ratings as pathfinding is atrocious for chefs and waiters - chefs will crash into each other, waiters take the long way around things and your restaurants tend to end up looking the same when you're trying to maximize the decor/comfort rating to get those stars. It hurts that space is painfully limited. It does help there's many more byzantine things going on as the necessity of dividers to reduce noise levels (a detail I could never find in the game). The cooking competition was as mentioned in another review, a wasted potential as the minigames where all about fast clicks and I found at least it was too easy to abuse it to get the #1 rating by the time you open your steakhouse, but yet I see no noticeable difference in my restruaunts' star ratings, profits, or customer satisfaction in any place I had high-ranking chefs working at.

I gave it my best shot. I sat down, made sure I had plenty of time to play, and dove in. The interface is atrocious, the dialogue is poorly written, the tutorial is an awkward and uninformative joke, the graphics (especially when designing menus) are awful, the AI sucks, and the worst part? THE CAMERA. The camera is the absolute worst part of this game. It's zoomed way, way in and there's no way to fix it. You can barely see what you're doing, and wind up panning around for the majority of your playtime. Skip it. Play any other sim because this one is a disaster. I wish there was a way to remove games from your shelf on this website...

This game is a classic. Not the best game by any means. But if you never played it new, basically, you wind up building an empire of restaurants in different cities, building through a campaign that has a series of missions related to restaurant performance, or winning cooking tournaments. Pros: -Story is corny as heck, in a good way. A few Dad jokes. But the consistent tone and general silliness reinforces the feel good nature of the game. There's no real drama or stakes, which is the opposite of building a restaurant empire haha. -Graphics have an Early-sims style that has nice nostalgia feel. The games runs pretty well on even a very basic laptop. -Variety in gameplay Cons: -Not a great sim- pathfinding is rough, not a realistic presentation. You eventually learn the limitations of the staff and adapt- where to place things so people don't run into each other. It's the not-so-great legacy aspect- wanting AI.