Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook Evaluate – Evaluate

Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook is a sport made up of many interesting components. It’s a roguelike technique RPG dungeon-crawler with an anime artwork fashion and crafting mechanics. In the event you requested me to construct a sport out of buzzwords that enchantment 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 overview).

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 at the beginning of the sport, with no meals or provides. Finally, 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 elements.

Shortly after this intro, you construct out the remainder of your celebration utilizing commonplace fantasy character lessons, arrange a base camp, and discover a procedurally generated dungeon. The dungeon is made up of particular person flooring which you could 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 may, and when you die you return to ground one and begin over at stage one, preserving your gear with you. You then begin from scratch.

The fight is that of a grid-based SRPG that kinds while you run right into a monster on the map, after which comprises all of the monsters which can be 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 need to battle and may try to get the benefit by sneaking up on them. In the event you run into an enemy from behind to sneak up on all of them the members in your celebration can transfer first (nevertheless, the enemies can do the identical to you). With none benefit, the flip order relies off of pace. The remainder of fight includes turn-based assaults and expertise, utilizing your positioning to your benefit. The one uncommon menu possibility throughout a battle is Devour. Whenever you defeat an enemy, its physique will nonetheless be within the grid, and if a personality chooses the Devour possibility, it is going to 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 is able to devour any of the gadgets you’d have the ability to loot from the enemy.

The meals mechanic doesn’t cease there. The one therapeutic gadgets are meals and water, which you’ll be able to eat or drink within the subject for a primary enhance if want be. Nevertheless, it’s nearly at all times a greater possibility to avoid wasting your gadgets to your relaxation areas between ranges, the place you may relaxation to heal on the expense of your starvation and thirst meters, that are additionally consistently draining. Whereas at camp, you may cook dinner gadgets based mostly on quite a lot of recipes, which not solely make you much less hungry or thirsty but in addition provide you with stat boosts and passive expertise for the remainder of the run. Components even have a freshness meter earlier than they go dangerous and since your entire components are stuff you looted from monsters, totally different meals gadgets can really have an effect on your happiness meter, which quickly lowers your stats. In the end, the cooking mechanic turns into a continuing balancing act the place you are attempting to verify your entire characters survive, whereas additionally enhancing your stats and dealing with all these meters. There’s additionally a easy crafting mechanic as properly the place you may enhance and restore your gadgets. Monster Menu is all about balancing a number of totally different meters and stats which finally ends up turning into a real juggling act, the place if issues are going properly you may optimize your characters based mostly off of technique, however in case you are having a tough run you is likely to be struggling simply to maintain your characters fed.

The presentation is stable – the artwork fashion is a cute chibi anime artwork fashion that permits for personalization when you create your characters, and the music is repetitive however good. The largest subject with the presentation have been the repetitive voice traces. When every ground has a number of totally different factors the place you may loot monsters or collect gadgets 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 “might this be?” each time I opened a chest. That stated, I do just like the artwork fashion, and the presentation of a few of the extra disgusting menu gadgets; there’s even an choice to censor significantly gross gadgets, which is a pleasant contact.

The largest subject with Monster Menu is simply how repetitive each run could be. Every ground’s map might need a unique structure however roughly the identical enemies. Since you are working the identical characters you created at the beginning, you may’t experiment with totally different lessons with out beginning a brand new sport, so the gameplay consistently 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 at the very least 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 may choose up about one other celebration that aren’t significantly fascinating, actually not sufficient to entice gamers to push forward. The sport additionally had a couple of crashes on Swap, which was irritating. This solely occurred a handful of occasions all through my time with Monster Menu, so it wasn’t a pervasive subject–and the sport does have an autosave function–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 great sport in right here. Actually, 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 numerous wonderful RPGs prior to now. It simply appears like they threw in so many techniques, meters, and mechanics that they forgot to place in one thing to compel you to maintain enjoying. There are various higher video games on the market in all the genres that this one borrows from that regardless of fascinating concepts, Monster Menu can’t come collectively to supply a satisfying meal.