Epic Chef Review: Buggy, Bloated, But Strangely Appetizing
While its myriad mechanics and glitches might turn some players off, this wacky farming/cooking/restaurant management game is strangely delectable.
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Epic Chef is, despite its name, hard to call a cooking game at all. Instead, what Infinigon Games and Team17 have created is more like a combination of Stardew Valley and an irreverent cartoon. In spite of some issues with bugs, what’s here remains oddly compelling, resulting in a unique experience that many should give a chance.
The story opens with main character Zest being physically thrown onto a pier by the crew of the ship he had stowed away on. Through dialogue, it is explained that Zest has no money to his name, as he spent the last of it buying the deed to a villa located just outside of Ambrosia, the city he finds himself in. This deal turns out to be a bit too good to be true when said house turns out to be both haunted and cursed. From this point local shenanigans occur and culminate in him not only accidentally becoming a professional chef, but also owning and managing his own fine-dining restaurant.
While Epic Chef’s name suggests a main focus on cooking food, this presumption would only be half right. The goal of many of the game’s story objectives involves preparation necessary for cooking events to take place, and this is the main focus mechanically. Zest’s cursed villa is also enchanted, with soil so infused with energy that plants grow ludicrously quickly in it. Working this land is the primary way that cooking ingredients are attained, whether it’s done by simply picking them fresh out of the ground or by combining multiples together, with the help of different buildable structures. While very little of the farm needs to be tended personally, the limited number of times that plants can be harvested as well as the need to make money will mean that a large chunk of playtime is spent managing it.
It is only once the hurdle of gathering is crossed that any cooking can happen in Epic Chef. Each dish is rated as having a certain amount of Vigor, Spirit, and Sophistication, each of which is represented by a number. Ingredients also have these same ratings and the values of the three foods used are added together to create a total rating for the whole recipe. This is rarely how things go however, as ingredients have different flavor synergies which add to the food’s ratings in different ways. This addition makes room for a lot of experimentation with dishes, as there’s rarely an optimal combination that stays that way for long.
These synergies are learned about through the game’s leveling system. This allows Zest to become a better chef by earning points from doing various downtime activities on his farm and around town which contribute to a multiplier gauge. The next time that he eats one of his dishes, its ratings are multiplied by the corresponding gauge and Zest earns that many experience points.
Together, these mechanics contribute to culinary duels that are found throughout the game’s story. These involve Zest competing with another character to amass a higher number of points based on everything from the food’s general quality to the judge’s changing whims. These fancies can actually be affected through the clever use of certain sauces, which adds an interesting level of complexity to what would seem like a fairly straightforward system.
Besides the generally overwhelming number of interconnected mechanics present, the biggest issues faced when playing Epic Chef were technical. These problems were both wide-ranging and fairly frequent, though the most prevalent were mercifully minor. Harvestable items falling outside of reachable space was frequent but simply more frustrating than game-breaking, but unfortunately, there were very rare times when certain commands both on keyboard or controller would simply stop working without warning or reason. Other varying issues were also present, but these were less frequent and more unpredictable.
For being as strange and bloated as it is, Epic Chef is a very engaging experience. While there are an almost frightening number of different mechanics involved, they all work together in interesting ways to create a very cohesive experience. Some people will like specific aspects of Epic Chef over others, but the way in which they work together means that very few are going to have trouble engaging with the whole, at least on some level.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/epic-chef-game-review/