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Epic Chef

Epic Chef

Take to the island of Ambrosia to simmer, sauté, and serve your way to culinary fame.

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Considering the popularity of life sim games and cooking games, the fact that the two don't frequently cross paths is quite surprising. Sure, games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons allows you to cook, but this is really just a minor feature in a grander product. Infinigon Games has noticed this and has created a game that both doubles-down on life sim aspects but also presents a formidable cooking experience, where growing ingredients and preparing a dish is just one part of a deeper culinary adventure. That very title is Epic Chef.

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Set on the island of Ambrosia, this cuisine-based game sees players take up the shoes of a new resident, as they find their footing in this chef's paradise. Upon landing on Ambrosia's golden shores, you are given a plot of land and a house that is claimed to be haunted, and are then basically let loose into the world to make a name for yourself by tending your land, growing crops, raising livestock, and then using the ingredients you've grown/raised to compete in a variety of Master Chef-like competitions to rise through the ranks as the most successful chef on the island.

For the most part, and in the spirit of transparency, Epic Chef plays like a traditional life-sim game, meaning you have to complete a variety of basic tasks, such as tilling land and harvesting crops. If a game like Animal Crossing doesn't take your fancy, Epic Chef will probably struggle to hold your attention as well, as this title features an abundance of these kinds of tasks. While there is a deep wealth of variety in what kind of tasks Epic Chef will have you doing, I found that it lacked that therapeutic nature that Animal Crossing excels in, and at times the life-sim aspect failed to draw me in at all.

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This is why the culinary aspect is of the utmost importance. Epic Chef's cooking experience is quite one-dimensional in its design, in that this isn't a Cooking Mama style of gameplay. You don't get to cut ingredients up, prepare them in unique ways, and do so using a variety of arcade mechanics. But the reason for this is because it plays more like a strategy title. When cooking, you simply have to add three ingredients to a dish, stir and toss them around to stop them from burning and to induce a higher aroma stat (which we'll get to in a moment), to ultimately see how the ingredients combine to produce a dish with varying levels of Sophistication, Vigor and Spirit - which are values that determine how well your dishes score.

Epic ChefEpic Chef

Epic Chef has tons of ingredient combinations and dishes available to cook, meaning you have to experiment and try things out to see how different items combine and mash together. For the most part, this can be done with a degree of common sense, for example tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots all work quite well together, whereas crabs and rats don't exactly make for the most appetising meal. The catch with this system, and the reason why it has quite a lot of depth, is that certain ingredients will provide a significant bonus amount of stats if you add them/use them in specific ways, such as dropping in a carrot at the start of a dish, or adding a Ghostato to a dish that already has rice in the pan.

This culinary system only gets more and more complex as you continue your adventure through Ambrosia, as sauces (which change how a critic judges a dish) and special ingredients that require special extra effort to grow/create them (alike the aforementioned Ghostato) come into play.

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You might be wondering why this system is of such a major importance, and that comes down to the Master Chef-like battles, which require you to study your opponent and then proceed to create a dish that will outperform them in the eyes of a critic. It's a system that on the surface is quite simple, i.e. the mechanics in the fight are no different from regular cooking (aside from aroma actually mattering as that will determine which dish a judge tastes first), but it's the strategy and how you look to handle an opponent that turns this life-sim title into quite a unique and formidable strategy experience.

Epic Chef
Epic ChefEpic Chef

But despite the cooking aspect being rather impressive, and the storyline that it is tied to being quite humorous and daft, I still often found myself a little bored in the downtime. The life-sim aspects can be dull and monotonous and there are a lot of occasions where I found myself just killing time so that ingredients would finish growing or so that I could continue with a quest. And this isn't helped by the fact that there are times where the game can be a little rough around the edges, for example, if you plant an apple tree near to a rock, the apples that fall off the tree might get stuck on top of the rock, making them impossible to grab.

It is worth also mentioning that despite its cutesy visual style, there's not all that much hand-holding in Epic Chef. You will be expected to trial-and-error your way through cooking and navigating the island, so don't expect a frictionless experience where you can switch off and just cruise through the game, because you will get stuck sometimes.

With all of this being said, I did really enjoy my time with Epic Chef. This is a title that is largely fun and unique and will likely resonate with the life-sim fanbase. It isn't perfect, but it has plenty of depth and variety that keeps it fresh, even if it can be a little monotonous to play at times. But, if you're looking for a title to drop a few hours into here and there, to have a relaxed and stress free gaming session, then it's hard to say you'd go wrong with what Infinigon Games has created, because Epic Chef ticks a lot of those boxes.

Epic Chef
Epic ChefEpic ChefEpic Chef
06 Gamereactor UK
6 / 10
+
Cooking system is diverse. Narrative is humorous and fun. Looks great.
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Life-sim aspects can be a little dull. Cooking mechanic is quite hands-off. Little rough around the edges.
overall score
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Epic Chef

REVIEW. Written by Ben Lyons

Take to the island of Ambrosia to simmer, sauté, and serve your way to culinary fame.



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