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. In case 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 evaluation).
Made by Nippon Ichi Software program (NIS), makers of video games just like the Disgaea sequence, Monster Menu takes place in a fantasy setting the place your character has gone to discover a dungeon. Nevertheless, by poor planning and getting misplaced, your character is at dying’s door firstly of the sport, with no meals or provides. Finally, you come throughout a useless 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 social gathering utilizing customary fantasy character lessons, arrange a base camp, and discover a procedurally generated dungeon. The dungeon is made up of particular person flooring you could relaxation between, and on the tenth flooring there’s a boss struggle. The following flooring after that begins a brand new biome. Exploration takes place in roguelike vogue – you undergo flooring, preventing enemies for so long as you possibly can, and when you die you return to flooring one and begin over at degree one, conserving your gear with you. You then begin from scratch.
The fight is that of a grid-based SRPG that kinds once you run right into a monster on the map, after which accommodates all of the monsters which can be within the neighborhood. This results in some technique earlier than you even be part of a struggle, since you decide what number of enemies you wish to struggle and may try and get the benefit by sneaking up on them. In case you run into an enemy from behind to sneak up on all of them the members in your social gathering can transfer first (nevertheless, the enemies can do the identical to you). With none benefit, the flip order relies off of velocity. The remainder of fight includes turn-based assaults and expertise, utilizing your positioning to your benefit. The one uncommon menu choice throughout a struggle is Devour. While you defeat an enemy, its physique will nonetheless be within the grid, and if a personality chooses the Devour choice, it would devour that enemy, acquire again some well being, and likewise acquire some expertise for the actual battle it’s in. It’s a neat thought, 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 be capable 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 fundamental increase if want be. Nevertheless, it’s nearly all the time a greater choice to avoid wasting your gadgets on your relaxation areas between ranges, the place you possibly can relaxation to heal on the expense of your starvation and thirst meters, that are additionally continually draining. Whereas at camp, you possibly can cook dinner gadgets primarily based on a wide range of recipes, which not solely make you much less hungry or thirsty but additionally provide you with stat boosts and passive expertise for the remainder of the run. Components even have a freshness meter earlier than they go unhealthy and since all your elements are stuff you looted from monsters, totally different meals gadgets can truly 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 all your characters survive, whereas additionally bettering your stats and dealing with all these meters. There’s additionally a easy crafting mechanic as nicely the place you possibly can 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 nicely you possibly can optimize your characters primarily based off of technique, however in case you are having a troublesome 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 permits for personalisation whilst you create your characters, and the music is repetitive however good. The most important problem with the presentation have been the repetitive voice traces. When every flooring has a number of totally different factors the place you possibly can 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 typically performed the sport on mute, if solely to not hear my character go “might this be?” each time I opened a chest. That mentioned, I do just like the artwork model, and the presentation of a number of the extra disgusting menu gadgets; there’s even an choice to censor notably gross gadgets, which is a pleasant contact.
The most important problem with Monster Menu is simply how repetitive each run might be. Every flooring’s map might need a distinct format however roughly the identical enemies. Since you are operating the identical characters you created firstly, you possibly can’t experiment with totally different lessons with out beginning a brand new sport, so the gameplay continually 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 realized one thing new, understanding a method 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 possibly can choose up about one other social gathering that aren’t notably fascinating, actually not sufficient to entice gamers to push forward. The sport additionally had a number of crashes on Change, which was irritating. This solely occurred a handful of occasions all through my time with Monster Menu, so it wasn’t a pervasive problem–and the sport does have an autosave function–however it 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 superb sport in right here. In reality, 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 glorious RPGs prior to now. It simply looks like they threw in so many techniques, meters, and mechanics that they forgot to place in one thing to compel you to maintain taking part in. There are a lot of 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.