Platform: PC
Developer: Trinket Studios
Publisher: Adult Swim Games
Release Date: November 21st, 2017
Genre: Action / Adventure / Role-Playing / Puzzle
Nerd Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Reviewed by Kikopaff
An ingredient is only as extraordinary as the chef who wields it, and Trinket Studios have cooked up a flavorful dish with their Iron Chef-inspired Battle Chef Brigade. This fusion of puzzler, platformer and RPG experience takes on the culinary arts, with a style reminiscent of shonen anime and Lord of the Rings. It’s undeniably bizarre, but its weirdness is what makes Battle Chef Brigade hold its charm. Much like the fire in the chefs’ hearts, the spirit of Battle Chef Brigade burns ever brighter – welcome to one of the most invigorating exhibitions of culinary excellence.
A century ago, mythical beasts raged across Victusia, decimating farms and humanity. The legendary King Heinrich and Chef Robuchon (a clear homage to Michelin star chef, Joël Robuchon) defeated the monsters and together, built the finest culinary institution the world has ever seen. The prominent institution attracts our protagonist, Mina Han, aka the Iron Stomach, a village girl who hopes to enter Victusia’s culinary academy and become a Brigade. Mina is your underdog and is easily relatable. She grows bored of cooking the same recipes for her family’s restaurant and dreams of running away, entering a world of wild recipes and culinary glory. Her innocent rebellion doesn’t cause any concern; you actually want her to achieve her dreams, and Battle Chef Brigade quickly shows you how attainable and fun the goal looks. The story spans across six chapters where you play as Mina for a majority of the gameplay, but you do get an opportunity later in the story to play as Thrash, a gentle, good-natured orc that somehow reminds me of Thrall from World of Warcraft, but if he was a little more hipster.
The characters you meet in Battle Chef Brigade are whimsical, fun and fantastically created. Whether it’s their medieval races (elves, dwarves and necromancers) or the flamboyant and dramatic host, Kamin (who is obviously a parody of Takeshi Kaga, the original host of the Iron Chef TV series). Outlandish hairstyles, personalities galore, pretty colour palettes across their wardrobes – you will never feel bored as you interact with people around you. The voice acting remains authentic and believable, suiting each character’s personality and you can gauge what sort of life they live by simply listening to them speak. The world of Battle Chef Brigade is small, contained within the Colosseum or the Town, occasionally returning to your home village. But the size of its world never becomes an issue as you’re far too engrossed in hilarious dialogue and getting into the politics that exist between different characters. The hand-drawn animations and orchestral ambience within Battle Chef Brigade‘s soundtrack are wonderfully immersive, and a style that I wish could one day become its own anime/television series. It’s a quirky combination of strange and traditional, but one that works really well.
The story is primarily linear and the plot thickens as you complete odd jobs each day to earn some coin and challenge fellow competitors to cook-offs. A typical cook-off involves a judge who has a taste preference ranging from Earth, Fire or Water, a huge giveaway if you want to earn as many points as you can. There is also the main ingredient that you must creatively include in your dish. As the timer ticks, you gain ingredients by going out into the world to slay monsters. There are bizarre and comical beasts to kill and each corpse leaves behind various raw ingredients. Caranha plants are a rich source of green orbs, whereas butchering dragons or boars can give you fresh meat, meaning red orbs are guaranteed. As you brawl and gather ingredients back to your kitchen, the game switches from 2D action platformer to a match-3 Bejeweled-inspired puzzle. As you pick and choose which ingredients to throw into the pan, they convert into coloured orbs. Switching between the orbs to create a sequence of three, upgrades your dish and transforms basic ingredients into delicious meals. The more improved your orbs are, the better quality your dish is and the more points you’ll earn.
Battle Chef Brigade‘s recipe designs are absurd. But in a delicious way, aesthetically. As much as you wouldn’t want to eat stir-fried caranha stomach, its hand-drawn art design makes your hunger grumble, and you find your appetite growing as more and more unique dishes are laid out before you. It’s an exciting part of your gameplay and your curiosity never dies, as each orb combines to create a new recipe you’ve never cooked before. Seeing your opponent’s dishes also feels inspiring and genuinely nerve-wracking as you hear the judges comment on the exotic flavours and textures that they bring to the surface. All game mechanics aside, if you enjoy watching TV shows like Iron Chef or MasterChef, and are drawn to the drama behind judges suspensefully chewing on meals to slowly… reveal… their… thoughts… you’ll certainly feel the tension in Battle Chef Brigade. Often, I was biting my nails hoping for a good comment and experienced both sides of the spectrum. It’s an honest frustration when the judges didn’t quite relate to the dish you manically prepared, but it’s also an absolute thrill when your dish is deemed as one of the greatest they’ve had in the competition.
Combat in the world of Battle Chef Brigade is fluid and straightforward, and you have a selection of basic, knife-slashing attacks or blowing out whirlwinds to knock the breath out of your opponent. Taking down creatures around you is exciting, as you learn which beast gives specific ingredients. There are three random zones to explore, so there is a variety of monsters, weather types and aesthetics to enjoy. As you play more cooking challenges, you start to remember which beasts to slay in order to be more efficient with your time limit and if you’re looking for specific ingredients. There are also treasure chests lying around, containing other various ingredients to use. Monsters also cleverly interact with your environment. You may have slashed at a nearby bush that gives you berries, but strange cycloptic-birds fly around and steal ingredients lying on the ground. Oh, and they will eat them. So what starts off as a quick hack-and-slash also becomes a hilarious chase as you try and capture the creatures who are stealing your goods.
You can also visit trainers within the town for odd jobs to help you earn more money to buy upgrades at the shop, or use it as practice and learn new mechanics that you encounter during your cook-offs. Trainers are split into three categories: puzzles, hunting and cooking. Puzzles will suit the player who enjoys the Bejeweled life. You’ll be given a series of puzzles to crack, as you try to gain a certain number of points as you switch between different orbs. There are unique challenges such as poisonous blobs, where if you rotate them too much, they’ll explode and destroy nearby orbs. Hunting remains out in the battlefield where you hack and slash more creatures, as well as learn new combinations you can use to better efficiently navigate the platforms around you. Cooking is very similar to puzzles, except you’re given patterns that you’re required to replicate as quickly as you can. But gradually, these odd jobs don’t add anything new and start to feel more like a purposeless grind. You’ll quickly realise that there’s no real reason to complete these, as playing the cook-offs feels more fun. It is a good chance to gain some more coin for the shop if you’re in need of a new item, but that’s all it ever feels like it’s really for.
The shop does provide a variety of items, ranging from combat tools, extra ingredients and cookware upgrades. There are combat items which give you extra satchel slots to carry more ingredients or special upgrades for your weapon. Extra ingredients include sauces, where it conveniently replaces an orb with a different colour, especially helpful when you’ve made some errors in your cooking. Cookware ranges from different pans and slow-cookers, however, I was content with the elemental pans that I purchased and never felt like I really needed to buy anything else. There were more often than not items that didn’t seem worth the purchase because they didn’t add any meaningful changes to your gameplay. You could easily complete the game without ever buying anything. I wish the store offered more meaningful choices to add to your experience.
Battle Chef Brigade doesn’t stop at its plot, even if the story itself is quite satisfying to follow. You can choose to play the game in normal or hard mode, where hard jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire, as opponents make better dishes, monsters are tougher and your hunts are timed. There are also daily challenges with randomised settings, as well as other mini-games that are similar to the training you encounter in the game’s town. But upon finishing the game’s campaign, I didn’t feel like I really needed to revisit anything else and was satisfied with the story experience alone. It helps that the plot is believable, with interesting tropes in the end.
Battle Chef Brigade is a bizarre, fun and quirky fusion of various game genres, and attempts to execute unique experiences. Its recipes are the icing of the cake, leaving you wanting to cook more and more dishes to see what else the game’s pantry has to offer. Its visually aesthetic world and compelling story-telling is a satisfying and memorable journey, with plenty of homages and parodies to laugh at. Although its cookware items and mini-training games never feel quite as meaningful as the broader world, Battle Chef Brigade certainly turns up the heat. If you’re a fan of RPG or cooking games, Battle Chef Brigade is a foodie festival you’ll want to visit and taste. Vive la Brigade!
Written by Kikopaff
Kikopaff is an avid fan of comics, slurps many bowls of ramen, and lives in the Land Down Under. When she’s not writing about video games, she is playing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI or buried in a Terry Pratchett book. She also loves cooking up a storm in her kitchen.
