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A rogue-like survival RPG cooking sim? | First Impressions - Monster Menu: The Scavenger's Cookbook

Name: A rogue-like survival RPG cooking sim? | First Impressions - Monster Menu: The Scavenger's Cookbook - Monster Menu (NS, PS4, PS5) - TapTap
Uploaded: 2023-05-25T17:56:02+08:00
Duration: 4 min 7 s
Channel: lyndonguitar
Description: Monster Menu (NS, PS4, PS5). Monster Menu: The Scavenger's Cookbook is a game that attempts to blend elements of rogue-like dungeon crawling, survival crafting, cooking si. game review

2K View2023-05-25

Monster Menu: The Scavenger's Cookbook is a game that attempts to blend elements of rogue-like dungeon crawling, survival crafting, cooking sim, and turn-based combat mechanics. It features cel-shaded anime chibi art style and a third person view gameplay.

Monster Menu starts with the player created rookie character in his maiden exploration of what is claimed to be a novice dungeon. However, the character quickly finds himself in a life and death situation, with extreme hunger and dehydration as he is lost in the supposedly novice dungeon. As a last resort, he is forced to eat a part of a dying corpse to survive. Yes, underneath this lighthearted chibi art style, there lies a somewhat gruesome and disgusting premise of monster consumption that permeates throughout the whole game.

After enduring the corpse-eating session, he collapses, and wakes up in a random camp. There, the player is given three more characters to create, then the actual gameplay starts, which centers around progressing in a series of increasingly harder rogue-like dungeons, trying to find the next floor, and all while surviving. By saying survive, you not only need to worry about enemies, but also hunger and dehydration. As the game puts it, you need your calories to survive.

The dungeon crawling involves direct control of characters trying to find the entrance to the next floor, instead of commanding their movements, both during exploration and in combat. All four characters combine into one entity, but they separate during combat when encountering monsters.

The whole combat seems rather rudimentary. You can attack monsters, use items, and depending on your class, use different abilities such as AOE attacks. Some attacks are melee, some are fully ranged, and some have specific distances in which they can attack.

Much of the magic that comes in this game comes in the camp system where the party can rest between dungeons. In this system, players have the ability to craft various items, such as arrows or cooking tools. Additionally, the game features the highly intricate "Monster Menu" system, which enables players to prepare dishes using discovered predefined recipes or engage in experimental cooking by combining random ingredients. This system is a powerful one, and is strongly encouraged for the players to utilize. Apart from providing calories for survival, it can also bestow a range of bonuses to the characters, otherwise unobtainable by other means.

So far, Monster Menu provides a mixed bag of delights and frustrations, making it a game that might appeal to a niche audience with its cooking sim and survival influences, but may fall short of achieving broader appeal.

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