TLDR: Great game haunted by its title, it really hurts it and makes it look like some typical front page slop.

Chef RPG - EA Release ( 2 months in - 8 hours played)

TLDR: 7/10. A succulent and spicy Cooking/Town RPG simulation - Very similar to Stardew Valley but burned with crippling bugs. Don't be fooled by the title...terrible name for a game this good, I think that alone is hurting this title. It comes across as one those cheap knock off "XYZ story" titled games. Needs a rename ASAP!!!

Overview: A great little restaurant simulation with RPG elements and "townsfolk" small town hub. I find myself comparing this title to Stardew Valley as they share very similar game-play loops, aesthetic and feel for sure. There are some things this game does better but does tend to fall in the shadow of that game. Also, below you can read about some performance issues.

Visuals: 7/10 - Graphics are stylized 2D sprites with anime/Asian undertones, imagine mixed Western/Asian vibes like Big Hero 6. Real care was placed on the look of the food sprites in particular, my mouth literally watered at a few of the fake images so you know it's working. Portraits fit the setting, although personally I don't care for a lot of the characters themselves. There's this weird overuse of Cyberpunk/Steampunk look to MOST characters that I find distracting. Many of the female characters look overly masculine and men are overly feminine, which I find distracting to the main vein of the game but others may not notice it.

Sound: 9/10, music fits the ambiance well, there are a couple that feel out of place like the Summer over-world theme but generally are very nice. Sound FX sound extremely similar to SDV, i think it's literally the same pick up "pop" during gathering, but it still works.

Game-play: 7/10, Game-play loops are fun but can be repetitive. They are split into several sections, Restaurant, Gathering, Building, Town management and then Quests within each. Mercifully you can turn off the QTE cooking events during the Restaurant phase after you've cleared a certain score (it's not hard). If you had to do that every time, I probably would have quit. I love games that utilize the yearly calendar system although in its current state, there's not much that happens on different days of the week or month other than shops are closed and seasons change. There's some frustrating elements like chasing down your hunts. Additionally, it took me awhile to understand the menus. There are open and "greyed" out menu slots which for the first 6 or 7 hours I didn't know you could add additional foods to those "greyed" out boxes and have MORE things being sold, which I was overstocking on only cooking 1 appetizer and 1 main dish, once I figured out you can add multiple things, the cooking phase was way more fun. Also, progression seems unbalanced as my social and cooking skills are very low relative to my gathering, like a factor of x3. I think that needs tweaking.

Performance: 4/10. (Note the game is in early access, although that's commonly used to ship low expectations) The game crashes to desktop A LOT when you change area zones. It boots back up fast and auto-saves as it crashes, so its not unplayable when that happens, but very annoying I suspect the crash is tied to the auto-saving. Also, I got to the cave exploration section and encountered a game breaking hard lock during the discovery of the abandoned house. I cannot progress further at this point yet and will need to play around with the time of day potentially? The good side is, it runs smooth and there's no frame drops or wierdness from that end, just a couple boundary issues with animals crossing cliffs when they run away (rare).

End thought: It's a great game, there's lots to do in game for an EA title but needs some bug fixes asap. :cherrypie: