There’s a lot to love about developer Trinket Studios’ newest creation, Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe. While the base game actually came out back in November 2017 under the name of Battle Chef Brigade, the free update warrants giving the title a new review. And Trinket Studios definitely hit it out of the park with the deluxe version, correcting many issues that cropped up in and adding fresh, new features to the original cooking and brawling game.
The meat (pun intended) of Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe is the game’s immersive, six-chapter single-player mode. To start players off on the right foot, an off-screen narrator recounts the history of Victusia, the fictitious continent on which the story takes place. The importance of food in Victusian society is readily apparent, as the narrator talks about the annual Battle Chef Brigade Tournament that has taken place each of the last 100 years in Brigade Town, Victusia’s capital city.
After disseminating that background knowledge, Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe drops players into a small restaurant in a town known as Windy City. It is here that they meet Mina Han, the game’s protagonist. Players control Mina, guiding her through a training regimen that includes an introduction to cooking and to combat. Shortly after, Mina drops a major bombshell to her friend Simon: she will be running away from home and participating in this year’s Battle Chef Brigade Tournament in Brigade Town.
The game really takes off once players make it to Brigade Town. Players get to meet memorable characters like Thrash, a hard-hitting orc with a big heart, and Kirin, an intellectual elf with a kind soul. They get to sign up for the tournament and to really explore the nuances of the cooking and fighting mechanics.
Combat entails using either physical moves or magic to take down monsters, which drop pieces that players can cook with. Players need to be wary not to use up all of their health and mana, else they may find themselves sitting ducks for the hordes of monsters that will invariably come at them. The monsters that players need to face off against scale in difficulty very well and, before they know it, players will be facing off against foes like fire-breathing dragons.
After filling their satchels, players need to rush from the combat ground back into the kitchen. They can run right up to the oven and begin to cook using the pieces of monster meat they picked up. Cooking involves emptying up to four monster elements onto an 8-by-8, Tetris-like square. Players can then stir the bits to get three of the same type (for instance, water, fire, and ground) in a row. Doing that brings up the dish’s overall score.
On a given day in Brigade Town, players can talk with NPC’s, complete optional side missions, and challenge NPC’s to official matches in the tournament. That’s a lot of options, and all of them are executed to perfection. The characters all are bursting with personality, the side missions all feel unique, and the matches really test players’ mettle.
There are three different types of side missions that players can engage in: cooking puzzles, hunts, and preparing meals for a fast-food restaurant. All three varieties on the game’s core mechanics really help hone different aspects of players’ skills with the fighting and cooking, introducing them to new combat moves and cooking items that then appear in the matches. Completing side missions earns players in-game currency, which can be spent on items that help players progress through the more difficult chapters.
The tournament matches prove to be surprisingly tense. Players have a set amount of time to hunt down their ingredients, prepare their food, and serve their dishes to the judges. The judges determine which element should be most heavily utilized in a given meal and which animal the dish should be primarily composed of. The meal’s overall score can either be vaulted up or sent plunging down depending on if players listened to the judges’ desires. The matches showcase how the seemingly disparate concepts of cooking and fighting can actually mesh together so well.
Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe includes a great deal of content outside of its single-player mode, which differentiates it from its original version. First is a local multiplayer mode, in which players can customize rules and load outs. This mode was enhanced with the introduction of a new playable character named Ziggy, a necromancer-chef who can summon the undead. There’s also a survival mode, in which players must complete a series of challenges that progresses in difficulty. Free play mode lets players generate new match parameters while playing against the AI, and gallery mode enables players to have access to the beautiful illustration and concept art that becomes available as they rise up in the ranks of the Brigades.
Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe is definitely a game to go out and get. It provides fun, challenging gameplay, an endearing storyline, and lots to do. There aren’t a whole lot of ways that Trinket Studios could have made this game better than it is today.
Rating: 9.5/10
Check Out the Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe Launch Trailer:
Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe is now available on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
PlayStation 4 Review
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Overall Score - 9.5/109.5/10
I'm a recent graduate of Columbia University. Gaming has been a passion of mine my entire life; I enjoy everything from RPGs and FPSs to stealth and narrative-driven games. I love the deeply immersive quality that good video games inherently possess, and am looking forward to highlighting games worthy of acclaim. When I'm not studying or reading, you can catch me playing games like Uncharted, Dishonored, The Witcher 3, and Far Cry.
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