REVIEW: BATTLE CHEF BRIGADE (NINTENDO SWITCH)
A delicious blend
All my reviews are spoiler-free. I aim to remain objective, even with the stuff I love, examining the product from all angles to provide you with the best insight I can to better inform you before you invest time or money. I try and be as brief as possible, the goal being for you to get a good idea of what to expect in a short amount of time. Thanks for dropping by!
Ever wondered what you’d get if you threw Final Fantasy, Puyo Puyo Tetris, and Food Network’s ‘Chopped’ together in a blender? Yeah, I hadn’t either. But like some blended power drinks, it sounds terrible on paper, but once you taste it, you can’t get enough. To say Battle Chef Brigade is unique is a sinful understatement. It’s the game nobody asked for and one you never knew you needed in your life until you have it.
WHAT IS IT? The game primarily follows Mina, a young, small-town chef aspiring to join the famed ‘Brigadiers’, an order of warrior chefs who slay monsters to gather their parts as ingredients, then cook them into delectable dishes. But in order to join this prestigious league, she must come out on top of a competitive cooking tournament, ‘dueling’ opponents one on one to please the panel of judges. As things heat up, the narrative even adds some extra spice in the form of some who-dun-it mystery elements when unseen enemies try and sabotage not only the tournament, but the economy as well. For what it’s working with, the game’s story is more decent than you’d think and has a fun sense of self-awareness to toy with without letting it get out of hand. The characters are even better and are brought to life with witty dialogue, a vast majority of which, is voiced by a surprisingly talented cast. A few moments even had me laughing out loud. The game is a solid blend of action platforming and puzzles with a secret sauce of RPG elements to really make it different. But more about that in a moment.
GRAPHICS: The game’s Saturday morning cartoon art-style is easy to fall in love with. It’s an anime come to life and the vibrant colors really pop in both TV and handheld modes. It’s all hand-drawn and the characters have plenty of expressive animations to satisfy but I did find myself wishing there were a few more to further smooth out the running and battle animations.
MUSIC: While it was nothing to write home about, Battle Chef features some pretty solid tunes, most light and subtle to fit the atmosphere of the game. But being a budget indie title, plan on hearing some of the same songs repeated in multiple areas. More would have been nice, but what is here is well done enough that it never felt annoying or monotonous. The music during the cook-off duels does get the blood pumping though which makes that final minute before your dishes hit the judges’ tables as intense as any episode of Iron Chef.
GAMEPLAY: Here’s where we dive in a little more. Exploration of the city where the game is set, along with the combat sequences during duels takes place on a side to side plane and the cook-offs play out using the same pattern: First, run outside to fight monsters and bring their parts back as ingredients for your pantry, then cook them with a very unique style of ‘line up the colors’ puzzles found in the like of mobile games such as Bejeweled. But don’t let that put you off. The system is laced with RPG-style elements that make it truly exciting. Monster parts are categorized into three types of elements: earth, fire, and water. Make a line of three and they combine into one level 2 ingredient. Line up three of those to max it out at a level 3 ingredient. The stronger you make them, the more points your final dish will earn in the judging at the end of the round. It gets deeper still when your cooking pans have special abilities like having to line up fewer ingredients for a level up, or the fact that some ingredients may contain contaminated bits you need to get rid of without damaging the good parts, and more. And as any Food Network fan knows, each round features a key ingredient you must include in your dish or else suffer huge point slashes from the judges. The game does great at slowly introducing you to these concepts but once you find yourself in the thick of it, cooking for three judges each with their own preferences, you’ll be sweating bullets with a fun challenge as your opponent taunts you from the other side of the kitchen. The combat is more than just hack and slash as well as the game employs a simple but effective system of earning cash from working side jobs, then buying more and more advanced magic and melee techniques for faster killing on the field which saves you precious extra seconds you can pour into cooking your dish.
CONCLUSION: I guarantee you’ve never played anything like Battle Chef Brigade before. But if you are an RPG or anime fan, this is a sure-fire win. The story is well presented, the characters and their interactions are fantastic, and the visual art style and voice acting do a great job bringing it all to life. The few shortcomings it has are easy to forgive, especially since it’s an eShop budget title. The $20 is well worth it to take a bite out of this wonderful blend of a gaming dish.