It’s a great time to be a fan of rogue-lite games, with titles like Silent Hope offering up fast action and a bright world while some games combine that action with other premises to keep the game interesting. Silent Hope offered up action RPG gameplay with a lot of different characters to allow different gameplay styles, while Cuisineer changes things up with a food-heavy theme and a bit of management. In a nutshell, it’s a bit like Moonlighter with an isometric viewpoint and an even brighter color palette with a touch of Theme Park blended in thanks to the restaurant customization.
Cuisineer’s premise is an odd one, with Pom getting a letter that her parents have gone on a worldwide trip and have left everything in your care – including the house and their old restaurant, with zero notice to get things sorted out. Thankfully, you’re armed with a spatula and a can-do attitude and it’s time to get to work! With a trusted friend to help out as much as possible, Pom has to go through dungeons and gather ingredients to make meals and use the funds from the restaurant to do things like pay for materials for decoration, tables and chairs and of course, upgrading your makeshift weaponry – with my personal favorite weapon name in any game being featured here in the smackeral.
The core action RPG mechanics are rock-solid, with each weapon having their own pros and cons as well as buffs you can apply to them. It’s possible to take your starting spatula and infuse it with a flame ability to deal out more damage – which can be a real life-saver during either larger-scale battles with a slew of opponents swarming you or during boss fights. You also have a sub-weapon that has more range, but limited uses until it recharges, so there’s a risk/reward element to things. Each weapon also has a super attack that takes a long time to charge up, but can deal out massive damage in a single blow and is a must to save for a boss battle.
The combat is quick and exciting across the board and having multiple different types of weapons to choose from within a single type helps a lot. Going through with a faster, but weaker weapon was my go-to for a while – but then I switched to a slower, far more damaging weapon on the higher floors of a dungeon to help take out swarms faster and do more damage to bosses in a shorter period of time. Blending short and long-range attacks together alongside the trigger-based super attacks keeps things interesting and getting to a new floor generally rewards you with either a health pickup or a fountain to revitalize your HP a bit. The goal is to always minimize damage and having a fast dash to evade makes that mission easier – but not too easy.
The big key to success is properly attacking and evading, because if you just focus on offense, you’ll take too much damage and unlike a lot of dungeon-crawlers, you don’t have to defeat every enemy. The only time you do is when you’re stuck in a locked large environment and have to take out foes to open the gates and move on. Otherwise, the goal is to get a new floor and do so while harvesting materials along the way. Not doing that will make progress in the main quest and side quests much harder because you need to have a lot of materials handy to either build things for the restaurant or buy new gear or upgrades to try out.
Each dungeon floor uses procedural generation to keep the layouts fresh and it’s wise to replay dungeons a lot because that’s how you get ingredients to not only run the restaurant, but take care of side-quests for friends as well. One downside to everything happening so quickly for Pom is that she’s saddled with a massive tax bill that has to be paid off and the only way to earn money is either through the restaurant or the side quests. The great thing with how the game is set up is that you’re never going to have to grind too much to get things – but there is a bit of a grind for materials to keep you glued to the dungeons and the balance of action to restaurant management is a good one.
The management side of things is a lot of fun because the customization aspects are easily put into place with a simple traffic sign setup – if you’re able to place it somewhere, you get a green mark and if you can’t, it’s red, so there’s no real confusion over where anything can go and it’s easy to manipulate things even with just a controller. The in-world clock allows you to choose if you want to do the restaurant portions when it’s busy or not, with the benefit of doing it when it’s lean being that you won’t run out of ingredients – while you will make a lot more money during a rush. There is a risk of running out of things or not having the correct dishes and/or ingredients to please everyone, but as long as the money keeps rolling in, you’ll be just fine. Pom has the support of her entire town to succeed since so many people love her family’s restaurant and it leads to people being forgiving of issues.
There are quality-of-life issues with the game when compared to other dungeon-crawlers. One thing that hurts the overall experience is loading times between rooms in the overworld as that gets old quickly even if the loading isn’t very long. It doesn’t help that the loading screen is the same as the title screen and you see this one piece of art a ton in a single play session – so thankfully, it looks good. There’s a minor issue with the dungeon-crawling where there’s no auto-attack when you hold the button down to deal out damage and that just results in more finger strain over a longer play session unless you have something like an 8bitdo controller with turbo available. It’s far from a game-breaker, but recent games like Silent Hope have had built-in turbo functions and it makes longer play sessions more fun to do and less taxing.
Visually, Cuisneer looks just about perfect for what it’s aiming for. It has a vibrantly-colored world with gorgeous hand-drawn art all over the place. Large character portraits move and give life to the dialogue in ways one doesn’t always get in this genre while animations are smooth enough to look beautiful without taking up so much time that they get in the way of the flow of combat. Each dungeon locale also looks different enough thanks to an ever-evolving set of assets and the many different food-based enemy types are amusing, as are the weapons you can use to take them out.
Musically, it’s a relaxing game across the board with a bit of intensity for combat music – but it’s got a chill vibe throughout the audio. The music never gets too intense, but gets fast enough to keep the blood pumping. For overworld and restaurant gameplay, everything slows down and allows you to keep your wits about you during a busy lunch or dinner rush without falling to pieces. The sound design for different weapon types and especially different effects like fire and lightning help sell that you’re making progress either with a louder effect per blow landed or with the elemental after-effects being heard as well as seen after an attack lands.
Closing Comments:
Cuisineer is a must-play for anyone in the mood for a top-tier dungeon-crawler. The core combat has a lot of variety thanks to its weapon selection and upgrade paths while the dungeons themselves make every repeat playthrough feel different. The only caveat to the combat is the lack of baked-in turbo, but that’s far from a deal-breaker when the game has so much variety with the restaurant management portion of things taking you on an adventure that doesn’t require a ton of button mashing. Cuisineer is a rewarding game to play that looks and sounds great and should be a gem for anyone who loves dungeon-crawlers or who wants to get into them because as a gateway game, I can see it being a hit to those who love simulation games as well thanks to the restaurant management.
