Battle Chef Brigade

I'm not really sure what kind of game I was expecting from Battle Chef Brigade based on its Steam page. In hindsight, I guess it's pretty much what was advertised. I find it kind of hard to approach this review for some reason, but I suppose I'll just start describing it.

Battle Chef Brigade's gameplay is rather neatly split into two separate parts. The first is a side-scrolling brawler where you beat up monsters and gather their body parts. The second is a match-3 game where you cook said body parts into dishes. From that short description, you might already notice a little problem. The game is split and doesn't focus on a single aspect of itself, which usually means that instead of achieving one good game, you'd end up with two mediocre ones.
That is, of course, only in theory. In practice... it sadly holds true for this game as well, and the apparently small team Battle Chef Brigade was made with didn't have a positive impact on this aspect either. The combat feels fairly dull and mostly comes down to button mashing save for some larger enemies that actually require you to execute a repetitive combo while withering their health down. As for the match-3 part, the strict time limit which you're always on eliminates any possibility to carefully plan your dishes. And maybe this is just me, but a match-3 is the most unimaginative puzzle you could decide on. Personally, I quite dislike it.

While playing, I never felt like I had enough time, yet I didn't feel like the game was expecting me to be particularly skillful either. Much like running a race, it felt exhausting, yet very mundane with no tricks to somehow get an edge. That wasn't the only part that was rushing me along though, as new game mechanics were being introduced faster than I could really test them out and get comfortable with them. For better or for worse, I ended up being mostly okay with just ignoring nearly every new thing presented to me, and completing all the challenges regardless.

It seems like I'm criticizing the gameplay a tad too much. I haven't said a single positive thing about it, and yet my dozen-or-so hours of playing it weren't pure suffering. For one, it's because there wasn't anything particularly jarring that would make me want to quit outright. So it did a good job of keeping my hopes up, although never quite meeting them. Oh, and despite the individual pieces being rather bad, they're tied together well. It's sad that the gameplay, the most important part of a game, was the weakest part of this one.
So the good parts? Surely one of the first things you notice about this game are its hand-drawn visuals. They're not of superb quality, but they also fill all the practical requirements I would want from them while helping the game stand out. What really surprised me thoguh was the food system. Not the match-3 process of making the food, but the imagery and naming of it. Genuinely makes you hungry, and there's a seemingly infinite number of distinct dishes. A shame that all of that had no impact on the game at all.
The story though? Eh, I didn't feel invested, but it wasn't terrible, and wasn't forcing itself down your throat, so I'd label it a net positive for the game.

Overall, I would say it's a shame that the game's called Battle Chef Brigade, for I feel it could have achieved more if it had instead poured all its effort on those elaborate cooking mechanisms that I really couldn't experience enough. Still, I got a good amount of hours out of this game, out of which none felt wasted, but none also felt genuinely enjoyable. For my final verdict, I would have to refrain from recommending it.