4/5 ★ – 3dbd3's review of Cuisineer.

This was a very cute cozy game, 4 out of 5 stars. TLDR: while it did annoy me more towards the end game, the game is still fun at the core. The cute art style and good soundtrack make for a very cozy experience with decent combat mechanics. Full review: I played this game very close to when I just finished Moonlighter. Both games are similar in terms of game style. both have you explore a dungeon to farm materials and use said materials in another side of the game. In this game, you explore dungeons to get food ingredients so that during another day you run a restaurant and gain income. the income is used to upgrade your item such as weapons, armor, inventory, and restaurant as well as purchasing furniture and other things for your restaurant. I quite enjoyed the themes of each dungeon, and i liked the different elements you had to watch for in each one, like the hazards and enemy types. The other side of the game is running the restaurant. At the beginning of the game it wasn't too difficult to run, as I quite like this style of game. running a shop is what made me like Moonlighter in the first place. Things i liked: I liked the different weapons and fighting styles, although there wasn't much, but the enchantment system makes building your fighting style fun and engaging. I was able to see what effects I could apply to my weapons and armor to kinda 'combo' each other. As i said before, the restaurant game play was very fun and engaging. although it was mostly just run to point A and press x, the later sections of the game got very engaging, especially during rush hours. The combat was fun and I liked exploring dungeons for items. The art style is amazing and i loved how cute everything was. The cozy soundtrack fit the game perfectly and even during major fights, it made me feel engaged. I also liked how it had a bit of LGBTQ+ representation, and didn't really shove it down your throat. it made it feel natural and not forced unlike other media. The Things i didn't like(aka the stone and wood rant): oh boy Resource Farming. In the earlier parts of the game, it isn't as prevalent. Most crafts and upgrades are reasonable with whats needed. However, In the late stage of the game, you need a LOT of resources to not only run your restaurant, but also to upgrade and craft items. To put this into perspective, you had 40 slots in your inventory when it is upgraded to the max. you could only fit about 30 stone into a slot. one dungeon raid focusing on just getting stone would lend me about 6-7 slots full so about 360 stone or so. Near the end game i would need 180 stone JUST to upgrade 1 thing. That meant if i wanted to have a lot of things upgraded like, weapons, armor, my restaurant, crafting furniture, upgrading kitchenware, I would have to gather basic materials like stone and wood. the game does introduce higher rarity woods and stones which work fine with scaling, yet you still need a ♥♥♥♥ tone of basic wood and stone to craft/upgrade things. it meant a LOT of grinding just to get those basic materials. Similar to the above problem, when your restaurant gets bigger and more popular, you learn more advance recipes and get much more service. this meant that i would spend 3 in game days (about an hour and a half) just gathering ingredients, just for them all to be used in one work day. it meant more grinding for multiple ingredients ALONG with grinding for stone and wood. I understand that's part of the game, but it wasn't as big an issue near the start of the game. If i could make a couple changes, i would either increase the stack size of wood and stone to be 60-100 rather than 30 to reduce how much inventory space it takes as the increase in space would not injure the gameplay because the loss of the items are still there. i would then increase the drop amount of wood and stone in later dungeons to help with the influx in demand for said items. the second idea, which is the better idea, is to remove the use of basic wood and stone in later upgrades in general. we already had higher rarity stone and wood to use, so rather than use that in tangent with basic wood and stone, just use the respected rarity needed for the upgrade. ...sorry that just REALLY bugged me in the end game. other things i didnt like: Upgrading my weapons didn't ever feel worth it. It would cost a lot of gold and resources just to increase the damage by a couple points, and even then i didn't notice a significant increase to damage. Armor was fine, as it increased Health I think i got really lucky with dungeon drops, as i got some good armor and weapons that worked well together with their enchantments. as a result i never utilized the brewing mechanic to make custom enchantments. Not Really bad but I thought to mention I didn't like how the smith and brewer took a whole day to complete a task. normally I felt fine as it was an excuse to just run the restaurant, however near the end of the game, i had items i really wanted to just upgrade all my stuff and had to wait a LONG time just to fully upgrade everything. This next one isn't a jab at the game, just my thoughts and it my review so deal with it. I'm not a huge fan of Rougelike games and elements. This game isnt a rougelike, its a dungeon crawling and store management game with rougelike elements. I didnt enjoy those elements. I don't like dying and losing all of my items and having to restart a half hour of progress. This game wasn't too bad with it, but it did iff me a bit. This game didn't feel like it ended, it kinda just stopped giving me quests to do and i assumed it was over based on the story, but there never was a 'The End' moment. It felt weird Final Thoughts: While I did write much more on the bad, I still absolutely loved this game, it was a joy to play and I can't get over how much I loved this art style. The characters are all very charming and fun. The dungeons were fun and the restaurant was even better. I loved the freedom of customization in the game.