An SRPG roguelike dish in want of extra seasoning.
Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook is a recreation made up of many interesting components. It’s a roguelike technique RPG dungeon-crawler with an anime artwork type and crafting mechanics. When you requested me to construct a recreation 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 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. Nonetheless, by way of poor planning and getting misplaced, your character is at dying’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 components.
Shortly after this intro, you construct out the remainder of your social gathering utilizing normal fantasy character courses, 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 combat. The following flooring after that begins a brand new biome. Exploration takes place in roguelike style – you undergo flooring, preventing enemies for so long as you’ll be able to, and when you die you return to flooring one and begin over at stage one, preserving your tools 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 accommodates all of the monsters which might be within the neighborhood. This results in some technique earlier than you even be part of a combat, since you decide what number of enemies you need to combat and might try and get the benefit by sneaking up on them. When you run into an enemy from behind to sneak up on all of them the members in your social gathering can transfer first (nonetheless, 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 abilities, utilizing your positioning to your benefit. The one uncommon menu possibility throughout a combat is Devour. While you defeat an enemy, its physique will nonetheless be within the grid, and if a personality chooses the Devour possibility, it’ll eat that enemy, acquire again some well being, and likewise acquire some abilities for the actual battle it’s in. It’s a neat thought, however because it takes a flip, the well being restoration might be marginal, and since the abilities wouldn’t carry over, I discovered myself not utilizing this as a lot, particularly since this is able to eat any of the gadgets you’d be capable of 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 subject for a fundamental enhance if want be. Nonetheless, it’s nearly at all times a greater possibility to save lots of your gadgets to your relaxation areas between ranges, the place you’ll be able to relaxation to heal on the expense of your starvation and thirst meters, that are additionally always draining. Whereas at camp, you’ll be able to 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 abilities for the remainder of the run. Elements even have a freshness meter earlier than they go dangerous and since all your components are stuff you looted from monsters, totally different meals gadgets can really have an effect on your happiness meter, which briefly lowers your stats. In the end, the cooking mechanic turns into a relentless 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 properly the place you’ll be able to 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’ll be able to optimize your characters primarily based 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 type is a cute chibi anime artwork type that enables for personalisation whilst you create your characters, and the music is repetitive however good. The most important situation with the presentation have been the repetitive voice strains. When every flooring has a number of totally different factors the place you’ll be able to loot monsters or collect gadgets however solely a small handful of strains 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 “may this be?” each time I opened a chest. That mentioned, I do just like the artwork type, and the presentation of among the extra disgusting menu gadgets; there’s even an choice to censor significantly gross gadgets, which is a pleasant contact.
The most important situation with Monster Menu is simply how repetitive each run could be. Every flooring’s map might need a distinct format however roughly the identical enemies. Since you are operating the identical characters you created in the beginning, you’ll be able to’t experiment with totally different courses with out beginning a brand new recreation, so the gameplay always 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 at the very least 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’ll be able to decide up about one other social gathering that aren’t significantly fascinating, actually not sufficient to entice gamers to push forward. The sport additionally had just a few crashes on Change, which was irritating. This solely occurred a handful of instances all through my time with Monster Menu, so it wasn’t a pervasive situation–and the sport does have an autosave characteristic–however it was demoralizing for a recreation 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 might be a superb recreation in right here. In truth, 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 a lot of glorious RPGs previously. 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 enjoying. There are lots 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.