Epic Chef

A well executed but bland dish. Epic Chef has you take on the role of Zest (Who is totally not Gordon Ramsay) as he finds himself owning a haunted house in a culinary land where battles are settled in the kitchen The core of the game is that of growing crops (Your farm is magical and can literally sprout plants in a day) crafting together crops and ingredients, building up machines and the town whilst battling in culinary challenges. On paper it works quite well but in practice it leads to quite a bit of grind. Especially fishing. This game could be much shorter and streamlined with QoL: as seen in other farming sims such as something to automatically harvest or things that can improve fishing but these do not exist in this game. Heck you're restricted to how much seaweed you can even gather (A key recipe ingredient) which at times can make the game frustrating. The cooking minigame itself is decent. Your ingredients have types and bonuses. By using them in tandem with other ingredients, ingredient types and such you can get bonuses which is the crux of the games strategy in cooking. This makes the cooking battles more strategy than sensical. I wish there was just more to this system as the manner of cooking remains the same. You can add a sauce which adds an effect and you can make your dish more aromatic which affects the order in battles but ultimately the game stays the same from start to finish. Being able to interact more when cooking and expanding the mechanics therein should have been the focus in addition to providing different cooking methods. Heck I'd even take heating up or cooling the pan. Another issue with the game is that the synergies you get from cooking come from levelling up. Levelling up is done by making dishes and eating them which get multipliers based on what you've been doing. Farming and fishing nets blue, chopping trees nets red and crafting nets yellow. Considering the amount of crafting you do, red and blue are in no way balanced with the other two. It's an interesting system but it overcomplicates things with its unbalanced meters. Something I do appreciate about the game is its story and setting. The game seems to have a lot of lore to the point that it feels like it's a sequel to some other game in which various events all happened. The world itself is interesting despite the small amount you generally interact with and the characters and cast are colourful and engaging with lots of varied but generally humorous dialog. It's one of the stronger elements in the game for sure. It also helps to keep the grind from becoming dull to the point of sheer boredom. Part way into the game you also get a restaurant to "run" by which I mean decorate and cook the odd meal for. I feel like this element is also underbaked. You can attract visitors by doing quests and add dishes to the menu to satisfy them which is a juggling act considering the lacking menu space but once you've put in a dish, you rarely need to change it. I think that the restaurant management should have maybe taken the forefront as a way of gaining experience and levelling with cooking dishes adding experience instead of eating your own dishes. It could have been its own minigame but instead just becomes a money farm with minimal effort. It's again a great idea executed somewhat poorly. I also wish you could trade produce and vegetables and make orders either to the restaurant or your farm to expedite getting certain ingredients or fulfilling more orders than what the game limits you too with perhaps bonuses or boons for doing so. For example trading a bunch of tomatoes lowers the demand for tomatoes and therefore makes dishes with tomatoes in less favoured because they're everywhere. Just food for thought though. All in all, I would give the game a mixed review but I lean more negative because the game feels far more grindy than it does fun with a focus on fetch quests and running back and forth to your farm rather than the important and enjoyable parts of the game. I think if the game had a lot more QoL and more mechanically interesting systems it would work quite well but for me it just falls short.

just started but lost one hour of play because nobody explain that game saves only in a bed during night... what a stupid system - I understand that it could make some sense in farming simulators but even there they have implemented quick save alrady. or at least save & quit... story is long, movement slow... you really don;t want to do this again and again.. why there is no autosave after some certain points in story during a day? :-(

Aside from how this game handles saving, this is a cooking game that tries it's hardest to not be a cooking game and more like a cartoon with ridiculous plots that work out in the end. The story is about verbal punching bag and only sane man Zest who "inherits" a haunted mansion and tries to make a living as a cook in the land of Concordia and its colorful and quite frankly concerning residents (seriously the first thing you see in town is a public fist fight). Then a golem crash lands in your pool to teach you how to plant potatoes and then taught how to cook by a weird knight riding a donkey who he insists is a pegasus (or was it a unicorn? I don't really know nor care). If you are wondering what kind of crack you just read, get used to it, cause it gets dumber and crazier by the second. The gameplay is a bit repetitive but it has it's own unique style on how you handle ingredients and the restaurant. The comedy gets better the deeper you get into the story such as trying to take down a giant screaming chicken while the dialogue feels like you can't go 5 minutes without something sounding like a conversation you would hear on Seinfeld; questioning random mundane things like the means behind an random statue while doing something completely unrelated. Also you get to hang out with Jesus. While I admit this game has it's flaws, it is a good game for those who enjoy comedy and it tends to go on very high discounts on occasion.

唐牛才是食神！

Bland, Boring, and a grind. The gameplay is not culinary at all. this is a farm sim with a cooking minigame, nothing more

Діалогі насправді дуже веселі, і це на початку мені прям сподобалося, було відчуття що мені ця гра сподобається, але але Відсутність нормальних пояснень, початок цього біжу туди, побіжи сюди Просто зрозумів що мені не буде цікаво грати в гру де я мушу бігти 10хвилин фіг знає куди

Epic Chef fracasa desgraciadamente en los distintos aspectos que intenta cubrir. Primero, como aventura narrativa con su historia y demás, la historia y los personajes son realmente flojos. Demasiado infantiles y predecibles y aburridos. Luego la jugabilidad, la parte de gestión de la granja y recursos es demasiado simplona como para competir con un juego de gestión de verdad y se vuelve rápidamente tediosa; y en la parte de cocina, es demasiado básico, sin incentivos reales para esforzarse o cuidar las cosas, más que encontrar combinaciones óptimas de los ingredientes y repetir una y otra vez. El progreso por nivel no aporta mucho, y las cosas que se desbloquean meh. Los duelos culinarios también tienden a ser flojos. Gráficamente el juego es muy pobre, así como del mismo modo lo es en términos de sonido. Al menos, eso sí, yo no me encontré con bugs, lo cual es de agradecer. Pero inevitablemente es un juego que no puedo recomendar. Un 4.

The game is fun but reminded that there is some problem with the achievement (add a little zest).

Absolutely hilarious!

游戏很好玩，但是遇到了恶性BUG坏档了，游戏本身炒菜机制有趣，主线流程配置合理，美术也是本人比较喜欢的风格。夏促不到九块钱赶紧买啊九块钱买不了吃亏买不了上当（原价就别买了，不值90块钱）。