Culina: Hands in the Kitchen

I love the concept - I really do. The issue was I personally couldn't immerse myself 100% because the only option is to be a male protagonist. In saying that, it's a good game it really is - worth trying.

So, I liked this game, but I can understand a lot of the criticisms expressed in more negative reviews. So, let's lead this with a few caveats: 1) I helped back this game on Kickstarter. 2) The game is definitely not just an otome game like its prequel, The Spirit Of Cooking, if you were expecting that. 3) The additional restaurant management content is -not- easy to excel at, which in some ways actually makes it kind of accurate to actual restauranting? But yeah, that can be quite the turn-off; it took me three runs to get a not-bad ending. That said, I had an okay time once I got the hang of things, though even my best run came up nearly $1000 and several not-quite-established-enough social connections short of getting the actual good ending. There's just a lot to juggle and not much room for creativity if you're looking to excel; my recommendation is sticking to just a few dishes rather than trying to do some of everything, and make sure you've got stuff in as many price brackets as possible to make sure everyone's at least paying. I probably could've marked cheaper things up more, too, but it didn't feel right to me. As for the dating side, the choices made regarding that are both kind of impressive and frequently infuriating. You see, the character you're playing as is much less a blank slate than a lot of other otome protagonists; he's got his own motivations and drives and, frankly, is kind of a selfish jerk. This can lead to some nasty surprises when you find out the hard way that you don't have as much say in his interactions as you may have expected, and even nuked a dating path I was pursuing when I was nearly finished. [spoiler]Long story short, a phone call I would've apologized for and ended if it were me turned into a hissy fit on the protagonist's part, and... yeah.[/spoiler] I appreciate the extra... flavor? added by the choice to make him more of a character, but at the same time, most people will want to slap him pretty frequently through their playthroughs. So yeah. Culina has its issues and in many ways can come off as antagonistic toward the player at times, but if you're willing to fight through that and learn how to navigate your avatar's manbaby issues, there's some worthwhile times to be had. Also, kudos for having at least one (maybe two? I'm not sure where fully pursuing the route with [spoiler]your culinary school roommate-slash-produce guy[/spoiler] ends up) same-sex romantic route(s?) in the game, though it would've been nice not to be locked in as a presumably cishet guy right out of the gate.

I wish there was a middling rating, because that's about what this game is. In essence, it's a visual novel with dating sim and cooking sim smashed into one, which is right up my genre alley. Unfortunately, there are problems with both elements. Cooking: There isn't a lot of room for creativity here. Customers will either buy or not buy your products, and this metric determines whether you can advance past the weekly markers or not (there are four weeks total). At the end of the fourth week a food critic shows up who you are supposed to be able to impress. There are various ingredients you can combine in a multitude of ways, which would be fun if it mattered at all. It turns out there is, in fact, one right answer for each combo. The visual indicators as to which is more healthy, higher quality, etc, can be completely disregarded. If you combine lamb with cloves, people will pay $30 for it. That's the "correct" answer. Any other combo won't sell at a profit margin or won't sell at all. However, there's also a location where you can otherwise drive traffic to your restaurant. You can buy advertising, purchase tables or additional servers to increase the number of people you can seat, or "study" to increase your skills in certain metrics. The study tool is a complete waste of time and has no impact on anything, but the others are useful. The most frustrating thing, though, is finally getting to the end where the food critic shows up and finding out that your cooking skills have zero impact on how the game determines your success or failure. Dating: The most frustrating element of all. You can only interact with the various dating options if you happen to get a prompt that allows you to talk with them, and these seem few and far between. I got lucky and made it most of the way through the sub plot with the girl who works at the meat counter only to have it end abruptly with no apparent way to contact her again. I can't visit and chat her up, give her presents, call her, text her, nothing. There seems to be some sort of invisible in game trigger that allows you to up your friendship rating with various characters and it's not clear at all as to how to make that happen. Most frustratingly of all, the game actively punishes you for not becoming friends with everyone in the game. When the food critic shows up at the end, your victory is determined by whether or not you've made friends with the vegetable guy, the meat girl and the spice vendor. Despite visiting all of these people at every part of every single day for an entire run, I was only able to make friends with the meat girl and therefore flunked the food critics examination of my food. None of the training or work I did to up my skills as a chef mattered at all. Its cute, the art is cute, but the game is frankly frustrating to play.

A lot of love went into this game, that's obvious. Fairly easy to get the grasp of - you use time to talk with people, learn things, improve your restaurant. It's a visual novel mixed in with an inventory management style game - worth giving a go if you're into those types of games.