Cusineer Review

A mechanic often incorporated into video games that isn’t capitalized on enough is cooking. It’s frequently been included in RPGs to create health and stat-boosting items, but unless you’re playing Cooking Mama, it's not really a central aspect of the gaming experience. So finding a game like Cuisineer, a dungeon delver and shop management hybrid focused on running a restaurant, I was thrilled to try it out!

Feeling like a combination of Recettear, Overcooked, and the Mystery Dungeon series, Cuisineer is a great beginner-friendly game that provides a vibrant and fun experience where you run your restaurant and explore to cook more. It’s an action RPG balanced with a simulation minigame that takes the fun of finding loot and turns it into its own core gameplay loop that keeps you coming back for one more dungeon crawl.

Iron Chef

The exploration part of Cuisineer is easy to grasp: like the Mystery Dungeon series, dungeons are procedurally generated with multiple floors to traverse, with your map filling out as you go. Scattered heavily throughout each dungeon are enemy monsters that feel straight out of the Toriko anime and various resource nodes, all of which are there to farm for ingredients or building materials. You’ll have to be careful of traps and hazards in your path, but you can wisely manipulate them to damage monsters if you plan things correctly.

Combat is where things get fun. Your repertoire of fighting options comes down to two weapons, healing items, and a dash for dodging. While this is technically all you get, the simplicity is appreciated and feels good to play with. Attacking feels like it has weight behind it, and it’s fun to learn how monsters move and attack and how to counter them. Beyond just dodging attacks, you can use the dash to cross short gaps to escape enemies you’re not prepared for, or (my favorite method) quickly escape a trap you lured monsters toward so they get hurt instead of you.

Now here’s where things get more complex, in a good way. You have a variety of food and utensil-based weapons to choose from, each with its own playstyles, and these weapons can have various effects on them that can alter attacks and movements. I personally had fun with a burn build that let me scorch enemies when I dashed around and made explosions when I swung my spatula. Even better, you can change out your gear whenever you want inside the dungeon, letting you adapt to the monsters you're facing. Combat doesn’t pause while you’re doing this though, so being in a safe place or weighing the risks of getting hurt is crucial. The same goes for deciding when to leave; you can exit a dungeon at any point, but doing so takes several precious seconds, and you lose a lot of collected resources if you’re knocked out.

There is one gripe I have in dungeons, and that’s that combat can get very visually busy with certain abilities. Things get very close range at times and there are a lot of attacks with bright coloring and special effects. Combine this with small character sizes, and it can become difficult to actually see the combat, only knowing you’re hitting monsters when the amount of damage you deal pops up. A lot of action RPG fans might be used to this, but it can be a lot to track.

A Day at the Market

When you’re not out exploring dungeons and ingredient hunting, you’re spending time in town, and it's a bright and charming town to be in. Of course, you have your stores to purchase items and upgrades from, but the town itself feels alive and vibrant. The cast of characters you meet are all filled with their own unique flair and look adorable in Cuisineer’s art style. It’s not as fleshed out as say Stardew Valley, but I grew more fond of the townsfolk as the game kept going.

There’s a calendar system in the game that dictates the townspeople’s schedules. Certain ingredients may become popular on a given day, and the birthdays of the people in town will be listed as well. Different merchants will be available on different days, so you must coordinate your dungeon-delving and restaurant management properly if you’re looking to catch a particular seller. I was not very good at paying attention to this and wound up waiting several days to upgrade my restaurant while the carpenter was having his day off. Fortunately, there’s no deadline to worry about, so you can take your time and get to your next task when you’re ready.

The townspeople don’t just provide polite conversation and set dressing though. Each one has their own side quests for you to accomplish that will see you heading back into the dungeon or reaching certain goals in your restaurant. This may mean ingredient collecting, preparing certain dishes, fighting bosses, and other tasks. While I haven’t finished all the side quests, the vast majority, if not all of them, provide you with a new recipe to serve guests at the restaurant.

Speaking of that restaurant…

The Meat and Potatoes

The whole reason you’re here is to keep a restaurant from going under! As Pom, it’s your job to save your family’s once-thriving restaurant from falling into the hands of debt collectors. And how else are you going to do that but by running the restaurant yourself!

Any day of the week, you can open your restaurant to raise funds to clear your debt and fund your adventures. Customers steadily come in, place their orders, and then pay you for their meals, just like any restaurant. Simple enough, but the complexities set it immediately when you realize everything is on a timer, particularly customer patience. There are several different types of customers, each with their own willingness to wait, how fast they move and eat, and how much they pay. Complicating things further is food prep, which uses one of four cooking stations and all have different cooking times.

Managing your restaurant soon becomes a race to serve your customers as efficiently as possible without them leaving impatiently. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to help ease your workflow and keep your customers happy. Save for a couple of items, everything in your restaurant is moveable and customizable, so you can place tables and workstations however you like to maximize customer space and speed up food prep. You can upgrade your business as well to give you more space for customers and your kitchen so you can make more money each business day.

However, the best way to customize your store is with furniture and decorations. Not only do they add the stylistic flair you want in your restaurant, they can also affect what kinds of customers come to visit. Struggling with lots of customers? Add decorations that attract customers who take their time and have more patience. Feeling like you don’t make enough money? Get better quality furniture that attracts the richer patrons to dine, even if you have to maybe rush more with cooking.

Everyone Can Cook In Cusineer

I mean it when I say this game is for everyone. It has solid controls that are simple to learn, a warm and inviting setting with a charming cast of characters, great customization options, and a dynamic and fun combat and restaurant management system. If anything feels too overwhelming, there’s a difficulty slider built in to help you find the right level of spice to work with. I think that if someone who likes action RPGs who wants to experiment with simulation games will be very happy here, and vice versa. It’s an interesting blend of genres that will satisfy many, except perhaps those who want a very in-depth experience of just an action rpg or just a simulation game.

There’s plenty to love and explore in Cuisineer, and I had a great time playing it. It’s out on nearly every current console, so you can enjoy casually on your computer, TV, or bringing it with out on the Nintendo Switch. This is worth the full price tag to purchase, and now with a new content update coming in January 2025, it’s a great time to give the game a try. So get out there, fight your ingredients, and serve up some tasty meals!