An SRPG roguelike dish in want of extra seasoning.
Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook is a sport made up of many interesting elements. It’s a roguelike technique RPG dungeon-crawler with an anime artwork model and crafting mechanics. If you happen to requested me to construct a sport out of buzzwords that attraction to me, Monster Menu would come shut. Nevertheless, it got here out not fairly matching the promise of its successful idea, a bit half-baked if you’ll (I apologize for any and all meals puns on this evaluate).
Made by Nippon Ichi Software program (NIS), makers of video games just like the Disgaea collection, Monster Menu takes place in a fantasy setting the place your character has gone to discover a dungeon. Nevertheless, via poor planning and getting misplaced, your character is at loss of life’s door firstly of the sport, with no meals or provides. Ultimately, you come throughout a lifeless monster, whose arm you chow down on, regardless of clearly being disgusting. The secret right here is survival utilizing the supplies at hand, which on this case are monster components.
Shortly after this intro, you construct out the remainder of your occasion utilizing commonplace fantasy character lessons, arrange a base camp, and discover a procedurally generated dungeon. The dungeon is made up of particular person flooring that you may relaxation between, and on the tenth ground there’s a boss battle. The following ground after that begins a brand new biome. Exploration takes place in roguelike trend – you undergo flooring, preventing enemies for so long as you’ll be able to, and when you die you return to ground one and begin over at stage one, retaining your gear with you. You then begin from scratch.
The fight is that of a grid-based SRPG that types whenever you run right into a monster on the map, after which accommodates all of the monsters which are within the neighborhood. This results in some technique earlier than you even be a part of a battle, since you decide what number of enemies you wish to battle and may try and get the benefit by sneaking up on them. If you happen to run into an enemy from behind to sneak up on all of them the members in your occasion can transfer first (nonetheless, the enemies can do the identical to you). With none benefit, the flip order relies off of pace. The remainder of fight entails turn-based assaults and expertise, utilizing your positioning to your benefit. The one uncommon menu possibility throughout a battle is Devour. Once you defeat an enemy, its physique will nonetheless be within the grid, and if a personality chooses the Devour possibility, it’ll devour that enemy, achieve again some well being, and in addition achieve some expertise for the actual battle it’s in. It’s a neat concept, however because it takes a flip, the well being restoration may very well be marginal, and since the talents wouldn’t carry over, I discovered myself not utilizing this as a lot, particularly since this might devour any of the objects you’d have the ability to loot from the enemy.
The meals mechanic doesn’t cease there. The one therapeutic objects are meals and water, which you’ll eat or drink within the discipline for a primary increase if want be. Nevertheless, it’s nearly at all times a greater possibility to save lots of your objects to your relaxation areas between ranges, the place you’ll be able to relaxation to heal on the expense of your starvation and thirst meters, that are additionally always draining. Whereas at camp, you’ll be able to prepare dinner objects primarily based on quite a lot of recipes, which not solely make you much less hungry or thirsty but additionally offer you stat boosts and passive expertise for the remainder of the run. Substances even have a freshness meter earlier than they go unhealthy and since your whole elements are stuff you looted from monsters, totally different meals objects can really have an effect on your happiness meter, which briefly lowers your stats. In the end, the cooking mechanic turns into a relentless balancing act the place you are attempting to verify your whole characters survive, whereas additionally bettering your stats and dealing with all these meters. There’s additionally a easy crafting mechanic as properly the place you’ll be able to enhance and restore your objects. Monster Menu is all about balancing a number of totally different meters and stats which finally ends up changing into a real juggling act, the place if issues are going properly you’ll be able to optimize your characters primarily based off of technique, however if you’re having a tough run you is likely to be struggling simply to maintain your characters fed.
The presentation is stable – the artwork model is a cute chibi anime artwork model that enables for personalisation when you create your characters, and the music is repetitive however good. The largest situation with the presentation had been the repetitive voice traces. When every ground has a number of totally different factors the place you’ll be able to loot monsters or collect objects however solely a small handful of traces for that, it will get borderline annoying to the purpose the place I usually performed the sport on mute, if solely to not hear my character go “may this be?” each time I opened a chest. That stated, I do just like the artwork model, and the presentation of among the extra disgusting menu objects; there’s even an choice to censor notably gross objects, which is a pleasant contact.
The largest situation with Monster Menu is simply how repetitive each run will be. Every ground’s map may need a special format however roughly the identical enemies. Since you are working the identical characters you created firstly, you’ll be able to’t experiment with totally different lessons with out beginning a brand new sport, so the gameplay always feels the identical – there isn’t the enjoyment of experimenting with totally different builds that makes me love roguelikes. There isn’t a lot you are able to do to play with builds, and infrequently did I lose feeling like I no less than discovered one thing new, understanding a manner to enhance my technique or gameplay and get just a bit bit additional. In the end, it felt like the one factor driving progress in Monster Menu was getting marginally higher loot, and it’s not a very compelling hook.
Storywise, there may be little or no past the intro as I described earlier and a few notes you’ll be able to choose up about one other occasion that aren’t notably attention-grabbing, actually not sufficient to entice gamers to push forward. The sport additionally had a number of crashes on Swap, which was irritating. This solely occurred a handful of instances all through my time with Monster Menu, so it wasn’t a pervasive situation–and the sport does have an autosave characteristic–but it surely was demoralizing for a sport I used to be already not having fun with very a lot.
Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook is irritating as a result of I really feel like there may very well be a very good sport in right here. In actual fact, if NIS determined to place out a sequel, I is likely to be inclined to test it out as a result of they’ve made a variety of glorious RPGs previously. It simply looks like they threw in so many methods, meters, and mechanics that they forgot to place in one thing to compel you to maintain enjoying. There are lots of higher video games on the market in the entire genres that this one borrows from that regardless of attention-grabbing concepts, Monster Menu can’t come collectively to offer a satisfying meal.
