Shokudo Underworld

Shokudo Underworld? It felt like Dango Stand Underworld to me. I really wanted to like this game, I truly did. My tolerance for game mechanics versus atmosphere is usually really high, which is why I like idlers and other causal games. Who doesn't like a relaxing little minigame after a long day? But in the end, a cute atmosphere and art style isn't enough to carry a game, no matter how casual. Pros: Beautiful artstyle, cute music. Very whimsical and charming! Rainbow unicorn puke being one of the ingredients is incredible. Cons: Frustratingly broken leveling and progression. When I figured out that there was very little point to selling recipes outside of ghost dango until later on it kill all motivation for me to continue. True, setting the menu to ghost dango only turned my XP multiplier to 0.5x, but it didn't matter because the XP scaling to gold income ratio is so skewed. At one hour into the game, I had already leveled up to the point where I was starting to run out of recipes to unlock, but was hundreds of gold behind even unlocking the ingredients required to make those recipes. I then turned to dango selling because it was very high gold income with the earliest unlocked ingredient, requiring only ghosts, and it was a single ingredient recipe which meant I could just grab an entire bag full without having to worry about watering any vegetables (automation of watering said vegatables also being locked behind a large amount of gold). Once the realization that all I needed do was sell one singular high priced recipe it took all the wind out of my sails. I feel like they should have added a gold multipler for a diverse menu, or perhaps VIP customers that give a large amount of gold for fulfilling their specific request, which would have spiced up gameplay and alleviated the crippling gold income. Final rating: 3/5, I wished I liked it more.