Cuisineer Review – A Flawed Meal

Food is quite-possibly one of the best ways we connect to each other. I mean, the older I get the more I fall in love with cooking. So, when Cuisineer offered me a chance to run a restaurant. Well, I was all over that like white on rice.

Cooking Up a Destiny

Cuisineer focuses on Pom, an adventurer, on her way to her hometown, Paell. She has received a letter from her parents asking to see her one last time before They go off to their final trip in the sky. Well, a pleasure cruise that is, thanks Mom and Dad.

So, while they are off on their cruise to see the world. Pom must take over the family restaurant, Potato Palace. Except, there is one little problem, they sold all the furniture in the store and racked up a large pile of debt to Pom. Who must now pay it all back if she wants to keep the family business. Who said running a restaurant was going to be easy?

Now Let It Simmer

The story outside of the setup is rather light, As Pom simply makes money and pays the debt off. Even her best friend, Biscotti, is only around for a few of these story mission. While you can find her around town talking to her does little for any of the story.

In fact, if an NPC doesn’t have a blue quest marker above their head, then talking to them doesn’t matter. While characters have things that would be common in the farming sim and life sim genre there is no sort of affection that the characters will gain towards Pom. In fact, the only meter that matters is the reputation that only goes up by completing quests and running the restaurant for the day.

Additionally, I noticed that when a character’s birthday did happen they sent Pom something instead. This feels wrong as I was expecting to get to know these characters. Instead, I get glimpses of characterization in their quests. While talking to them yields nothing for the characters or Pom.

This is the same for every character whether they are the rich girl or blacksmith. They all only exist to serve Pom whether it’s recipes, upgrades, or money. Paell is Pom’s oyster for the taking and the townsfolk are all there to serve.

In fact, thinking on it now Pom Never serves any of the townsfolk in her restaurant. Every customer is a generic character that fits an archetype rather than having true individual tastes. So, getting to know the villagers doesn’t affect how well the restaurant does. That is quite possibly the biggest Missed opportunity.

Mixing It Up In The Kitchen

The game play in the kitchen is very basic. Pom will open the restaurant and customers will come in and sit down. After a few seconds they will give their orders to Pom. She will then start cooking, which is an automatic process. Once the food is done it will appear on the serving counter and the customer will get up to grab their food.

In the beginning this process is a little boring due to how much automation is happening in the kitchen. Most of player’s time will be spent queuing up new orders, taking money, and making sure nobody dashes out before paying.

There is a surprising amount of waiting as the busiest times are the lunch and dinner rush. Otherwise, the amount of automation makes running the restaurant feel very repetitive. Of course, once Pom’s reputation goes up and she upgrades the restaurant this changes very fast.

In fact, Once she unlocks the ability to cook three star dishes and above, time management becomes an important skill. As these dishes take more time and can easily bloat a queue if not well managed but can draw a huge profit.

When this happens running the restaurant becomes fun and hectic. So much that I wish that running the restaurant was the main game play loop instead of sharing with the dungeon delving aspect.

Gather Your Ingredients

Dungeon delving is a very important part of running the restaurant. Since, as far as I can tell, no stores sell any ingredients in Paell. Instead, Pom needs to flex her adventuring skills and collect them herself by killing monsters.

Each dungeon has a mixture of common and specific ingredients. Common ingredients are items like flour and rice. while specific ones are seafood from the water dungeon. Delving into any dungeon will end the day forcing players to prioritize which ingredients they are lacking or popular.

This is an interesting issue as the common ingredients will easily outnumber these more specialized ones. So, players will delve in for specific reasons rather than trying to do it all in one. Whether it’s for materials, ingredients, or to beat the boss.

Each floor is randomly generated so each delve will be different. However, the enemy distribution feels more or less the same each time I went into a dungeon. So, I would generally always have about 4 stacks of flour to one or two stacks of the specialized ingredients each.

The issue I have is that each dungeon is the same outside of aesthetics and enemies. Each one was the exact same length and enemy difficulty. Chickens died in the same amount of hits as did a generic enemy that I found in the final dungeon. I died just as much in the first dungeon as I did in the last dungeon.

This does make the dungeons feel repetitive. The dungeons have six floors each and one floor spanning over twenty Rooms. This makes the real limitation be inventory space and health. As with the length it becomes impossible to reach the end of the dungeon without potions and a full inventory.

The most I could explore was two floors before needing to retreat or risk dying and losing all my hard earned ingredients. If I was going in to clear a dungeon I would begin to avoid fights unless I was forced to fight in an arena. Which appear randomly in floors and forces you to kill every enemy in the room before moving on.

This further made the dungeon feel similar to others. There should have been more enemy variety with health and damage to vary up the combat more. Especially with the lack of combo variety that Pom has.

Pom can hold two weapons each with their own unique combo per weapon type. These can be a bomb, throwing plates, rapier, fists, or sword. Each one is a cooking utensil or food item. Really driving home that cooking and fighting are highly linked in the world of Cuisineer.

Some skills in fighting could have helped make combat feel more varied. Allowing players to specialize Pom in combat as she becomes a better chef. As it stands, the dungeons feel repetitive and only done out of necessity.

Get it All Well Done

Cuisineer has a very interesting premise as food brings us together. However, the dungeons feel like the weakest part of the game. While, the restaurant is fun it takes time for it to get into gear. It’s clear that we are supposed to be both an adventurer and a cook but can’t specialize in either.

The biggest help would have been to focus exclusively on the restaurant. That way players can fully commit their time to one activity rather than split it up between two clashing ideals. Cuisineer is a fun time but needed more time in the oven to come out as a five star dish.