This is a slightly bizarre combination of Monster Hunter and a match 3 game, in which you must first hunt down your ingredients and then match them to a given recipe. You are Mina Han, a hopeful young chef, who is hoping to win the local cooking tournament, while indulging in a bit of derring-do.
There are two connected by very different gameplay segments. Firstly, you need to murder various monsters in order to retrive livers, hearts, lungs, the occasional rib and a variety of eyes, noses and other bits. This is achieved by kicking, punching and the casting of various magical spells.
After you've collected the ingredients, you need to combine them in a cooking pot, and produce a tasty meal. This involves playing a match three game with the various elements contained in the ingredients.
Each food contains a certain content of fire, water or earth, as well as the occasional bone or tasty poison. Lining them up turns them into hotter fire, stronger earth and wetter water.
You need to match the requirements of the judges, which can involve having more fire than water, or no earth, or a definite lack of poison. Honestly, pretty much none of them like poison.
It's all set within a plot about the slow decline of the foodstuffs of the world, following both Mina's family and later Thrash, an orc with a troublesome wife. Have to admit though, I'd have preferred a game about Thorn, one of the side characters.
The animation is rather nicely detailed, with some excellent motion, and the character designs are well varied. Voice acting is a bit uninspired, and the minigames tend to be a little repetitive.
Still, a pleasant few hours, even if it ended a bit more abruptly than I expected.
Tagged: Game Action RPG 2D Easy difficulty PC