An SRPG roguelike dish in want of extra seasoning.
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. Should you requested me to construct a sport out of buzzwords that enchantment to me, Monster Menu would come shut. Nonetheless, it got here out not fairly matching the promise of its profitable 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. Nonetheless, by means of poor planning and getting misplaced, your character is at demise’s door in the beginning 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 normal 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 flooring there’s a boss struggle. The subsequent flooring after that begins a brand new biome. Exploration takes place in roguelike style – you undergo flooring, combating enemies for so long as you may, and when you die you return to flooring one and begin over at degree one, protecting your gear with you. You then begin from scratch.
The fight is that of a grid-based SRPG that types once you run right into a monster on the map, after which incorporates 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 need to struggle and may try and get the benefit by sneaking up on them. Should 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 is predicated off of pace. 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. If you defeat an enemy, its physique will nonetheless be within the grid, and if a personality chooses the Devour choice, it can devour that enemy, achieve again some well being, and likewise achieve some expertise for the actual battle it’s in. It’s a neat thought, however because it takes a flip, the well being restoration could possibly be marginal, and since the talents wouldn’t carry over, I discovered myself not utilizing this as a lot, particularly since this could 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 eat or drink within the area for a fundamental increase if want be. Nonetheless, it’s nearly at all times a greater choice to save lots of your gadgets on 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 prepare dinner gadgets primarily based on a wide range 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 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 ensure your entire characters survive, whereas additionally enhancing your stats and dealing with all these meters. There’s additionally a easy crafting mechanic as effectively 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 effectively you may optimize your characters primarily based off of technique, however if you’re having a tough run you may 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 whilst you create your characters, and the music is repetitive however good. The largest challenge with the presentation have been the repetitive voice traces. When every flooring 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 typically 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 fashion, and the presentation of among the extra disgusting menu gadgets; there’s even an choice to censor notably gross gadgets, which is a pleasant contact.
The largest challenge with Monster Menu is simply how repetitive each run could be. Every flooring’s map might need a special structure however roughly the identical enemies. Since you are working the identical characters you created in 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 barely did I lose feeling like I a minimum of discovered one thing new, understanding a approach 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 decide 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 challenge–and the sport does have an autosave function–nevertheless 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 could possibly be sport in right here. The truth is, if NIS determined to place out a sequel, I may be inclined to test it out as a result of they’ve made numerous glorious RPGs previously. It simply seems 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 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.