Recent reviews by Ssafjee

This game's roots are a simple farming game, where you spend your produce on cooking contests. The strongest part however is the writing. The story from zero to hero is at times charming, hilarious or witty, with the highest peaks teaching the player profound life lessons. If you can stomach some frustrating game mechanics, I'd recommend Epic Chef based just on the story.

There is zero time pressure. Zest, the playable character, may take as long to work on the farm as he wants to, since time stops at 2 a.m. Main and side quests do not progress without the player and cannot fail. Losing a major cooking battle restarts the day. Buildings can be torn down and rebuild indefinitely often. Which makes this game overall quite cozy.

Still, there are a couple of things that I found detremental to my experience, where fishing probably was the most annoying. You catch fish in a minigame where you have to keep your cursor inside an oscillating block. Which fish you'll get is random, of course. This is the exact same minigame for fishing as in sooo many other titles, too, that it is very hard for me to stay focused. Yet, especially the end-game fish are such a powerful and valuable ingredient, that I could not ignore it.

Second to fishing is collecting products from your lifestock. As long as you provide food, your (whimsical) cattle will just drop their stuff somewhere on the ground at any point in time of the day. While that is manageable with only few animals, at the end-game you've got lifestock that is bigger than most of the farm buildings. They're always in your way and obstructing your view. The products may be laying anywhere, including clipped into buildings, that I came to resent this daily task.

Lastly I want to mention that the cooking battles sadly lack all tension. They're more of a puzzle than a skill based challenge. The game does not disclose what ingredients your opponent used and the points they score is exactly the same every time. So I would just take some trash into the first battle and scout what bars I needed to clear, come up with a strategy, including sauces if needed, and usually win by a landslide on the second try. The cooking minigame could have made this much more interesting. What dish Zest cooks is largely determined by the chosen three ingredients and their individual synergies. The controls offer too little precision to favor or filter the flavors. Aroma matters only in the contests to decide which player is judged first, which in turn factors into the utility of sauces. And what nominally deepens the strategic possibilities, is renedered mute, because the judges may have some very restrictive tastes.

All in all, I still had a good time playing through. A replay though will be too samey, since I already know the story.

After playing the demo, I'm hopeful towards the full remake. Compared to the prequel, many things have improved. Most importantly for me: the combat. This demo has just one skill improvement, but that hints at what I'd wish for. Skills shouldn't be a stat bonus or a method to gatekeep equipment. Instead, like in this demo as well as the original Gothic 1, the fighting prowess of Nyra actually is raised. At first, he will hold a single handed weapon in both hands, swing slow once and take considerable time before attacking again. With the next skill level though, Nyra recovers much faster from swings and can chain multiple attacks. There is no more forced lock-on for enimies, so fighting more than one opponent is more managable.

What bugged me the most was, as for many others here, that a lit torch cannot be stowed away, looting animation is far to slow and spotting loot in the entivornment is difficult.
Two things I have not seen criticized: I'd request a sensitivity option for the mouse and the option to rebind controls (dodging is probably the second most important combat action, and it is bound to Alt *shiver*).
And while the graphics do look good indeed, my first impression was, that I'm looking through a spyglass, thanks to the black gradient on the screen border.

I haven't played many dating sims and usually avoid viual novel style games. But I'm glad I gave Love Esquire a chance!

The game starts of very humorous and tropy. You, as the sad excuse of a protagonist, become a squire to a knight thanks to "unusual" circumstances. On the day of your enlistment your mentor also breaks the news that you're going to serve in a war in 4 months time. This immediately sets your prioties straight: Get laid before you potentially die on a battlefield! Fate presents you with five young women you may hook up with, which is where the tropes come in... Chose between your energetic sister Amelie - not related by blood - the local rowdy Vel, the very princess of your home country Beatrice, the princess of a foreign country turned ambassador Kamala and lastly the introverted nurse Giselle. Over the course of the game, you're free to court any of the girls by talking to them regularly about various topics and handing them gifts. However, never forget the upcoming war and keep training your body, mind and charisma, in order to live up to your knight's expectations, too. Will you manage to get a happy ending with the girl of your dreams and safe the kingdom (because, for some reason, the outcome solely depends on your decisions)?

Enough with the sales talk, here are a couple of things I want to say about it:

So far I've only "completed" one girl's arc and I'm very surprised by how different the three possible endings for Vel are. Each of the girls have a "romantic", "friendship" and "bad" ending while you can get only one ending per play-through. If you want to see all scenes, then be prepared to invest a lot of time, despite NG+ (new game plus) features, that are unlocked after you've reached the war for the first time. I don't regret it so far, but still, the lead up to the meaningful branches of the story is long. In my opinion it might have been better to let the player decide at the end which girl they want to propose to, instead of simply cutting the campaign short once you've gathered enough affection with one woman, no matter how far you've progressed in time. Due to that mechanic, which end you achieved is determined by which answers you gave on four crucial events in the storyline of your precious. Which means, if you want a different ending you always have to replay the entire game to pick the other options. Of course, you can safe time by keeping save games at the appropriate stages, but that requires a lot of forethought.

Getting through each story line (for the first time) is very much a joy. The most important scenes are animated in parts. But still, the majority of the encounters are combinations of the same character "model" with varying facial expressions, which are admittedly charming to see and always match the mood of the discussion very well. Though I wished for more than the day-to-day outfit and the obligatory swim suit as the only two clothing variations.

Each important character has high quality voice over, that breaths live into the characters splendidly. Sadly, towards the end of the story, there are frequent mishaps. Often the normalization of the volume isn't right and one of the persons is either very loud (Squire shouts way too much) or too quiet (again Squire sometimes suddenly starts whispering). Here and there the voice filter for Mathilda is missing, too, which breaks immersion for that character (no further context to not spoil anything).

The expeditions into the forest together with your knight in order to earn some cash for (better) gifts is turn based tactics, out of all things, where you are giving commands to Squire only, not knight Hugh, since you're the support. The fights stay interesting because you have to balance offence, defence and looting. In other words, loot as much as you can while keeping Hugh alive. Though experienced tactics players will find an optimal approach quickly.

Don't expect too much nudity here. In fact, without mods, you will have a hard time getting aroused by the imagery. You will need to fill in the blanks the game doesn't show you explicitly with your imagination. And only the "romantic" endings will have the intim pay-off. Nothing before that should offend anyone too much.

Lastly, none of the girls really speak to my personal preferences (neither their visuals nor character types), so I only keep playing because of the strength of the story telling, which should give you an impression on the quality on offer! So let me rephrase the game's intro a bit: Who cares about the world or the girls?! You came for the story!

EDIT: Because of the feedback given for this statement, it seems necessary to say that it isn't a review, as I'm not criticising all the game's features. I'm only complaining about one specific mechanic. To some people this might be of interest, while it for others is meaningless or even incomprehensible. Download and play the demo to this game, in order to figure your own opinion. Most certainly, I don't want folks to shun the game just because I don't like it!


So, I uninstalled the game immediately after learning that your character - and of course your enemies - may summon illusions of a minion. The illusion costs no mana but "works" in exactly the same way a real minion would. The only drawback is, that mages may cast disbelieve on any minion in order to destroy it immediately. This will consume the only chance to cast a spell in your turn, if the minion was real, otherwise a second spell may be cast. In principle, this mechanic sounds interesting. However, as the opponent you have no other means of identifying an illusion besides casting disbelieve, while the summoner of the illusion gets full benefit of the regular minion.

In the tutorial mission where this concept was taught to me, I summoned an illusionary Pegasus, mounted it, flew to the enemy mage and attacked him with a summoned bow, killing him in turn 5, practically cheesing the lecture. I'm terrified of how this mechanic will distort regular missions, which is why I did not play them.

A hidden object game like many others. Progress and continuous play are hindered by an energy bar. Everything can be bought with cash in the ingame shop.