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Serve up monstrous meals in this cooking-themed dungeon crawler - Monster Menu Quick Review

5K View2023-05-23

Monster Menu (NS, PS4, PS5)

Adventure

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PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if you’re a fan of dungeon crawlers. Monster Menu revolves around a group of adventurers that find themselves trapped in a mysterious dungeon. After a while, they start to get hungry, and they’re ravenous enough to put anything—even monster meat— on the menu. This isn’t the first culinary roguelike I’ve played, but its cooking mechanics are surprisingly deep, and the mix of survival gameplay and dungeon-crawling is satisfying. It’s heavy on grinding, and it’s unlikely to win over players that aren’t fans of the genre, but I still found it to be pretty fun.

TIME PLAYED

I spent around seven hours playing Monster Menu on my Nintendo Switch. That gave me plenty of time for cooking and dungeon exploration, but I actually spent most of my time grinding for XP so that I could survive monster attacks. The first floor of the dungeon is pretty easy with a full party, but the difficulty spikes quickly. I’m sure it’s possible to speed through the dungeon, but since dying took me all the way back to the first floor, I preferred to play it safe and take things slow.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Lots of character customization options. Monster Menu lets you build a party of up to four characters, and you can give each party member a unique look. There are eight character templates to choose from, and once I selected a template, I was able to choose their hairstyle, skin tone, outfit color, and more. Left and right eyes have separate color settings, so I could even give my characters heterochromia. The character art was created by Takehito Harada, the character designer for the Disgaea series, so it was really easy to make cute party members.

• Strategic cooking. Dungeon crawling is pretty exhausting, and my party members began to get hungry and thirsty before long. If I was desperate, I could stave off starvation by feeding my characters unprepared ingredients from my inventory, but chowing down on low-quality foods has consequences. Not only did eating raw monster guts make my characters miserable, but it lowered their stats and gave them negative status effects, which made it harder to fight monsters. On the flip side, when I cooked up delicious meals at my base, my characters got powerful stat boosts. Food plays a vital role in strengthening party members, and since ingredients degrade in quality over time, I had to manage my resources carefully to stay alive.

• Satisfying progression. Dying in Monster Menu returned my characters to the first floor and took away all their levels, but I didn’t lose everything. I was able to hold onto my equipment and my recipes, which made it much easier to get back to where I was. Each dungeon floor is pretty short, so once I had some good loot, I could regain lost progress pretty quickly. Once my party was tough enough to beat bosses, I had the option of jumping back to that part of the dungeon at any time. I always felt like I was getting stronger, even when my party was back at level one.

WHAT SUCKS

• It’s pretty repetitive. Monster Menu has a fun gameplay loop, but it’s seriously lacking in variety. The turn-based combat system is fast-paced and fun, but it loses some of its charm when you’re fighting the exact same enemies over and over again. While the character art is fantastic, the dungeons aren’t much to look at, and they feel even more dull when you spend hours looking at the same tilesets. Each floor is randomly generated, but the dungeons aren’t distinct enough for those differences to stand out. A little variety would have gone a long way in a game that’s as grindy as this one.

• Slow start. Monster Menu is all about preparing disgusting-looking dishes, but I had to play for a while to get a good selection of ingredients and recipes. The cooking mechanics are what makes Monster Menu unique, and I wish players could do more with them early on. Searching for resources became a lot more fun once I had access to a wider range of cooking and crafting recipes.

• You’re stuck with your party members. After I played through Monster Menu’s opening, I had the chance to add up to three characters to my party. I chose their classes at random, and after a few battles, I started to wish I’d picked a different lineup. Ultimately, I wound up going back to a previous save file and building a brand-new party. Monster Menu lets you have multiple save files, so I’d recommend testing out a few different classes before you commit to a party.

💬 Will you be cooking up your enemies in Monster Menu, or are you too picky an eater for this dungeon crawler? Let us know in the comments!