Food Fantasy - Mobile Review

Ever thought of having your own restaurant? How about one in a strange world with Spirits and Fallen Angels? What about summoning the aspects of food also known as Food Souls (such as Rice, Milk, Black Tea) to help you fight monsters in order to gather ingredients to serve at your restaurant? Well if this is for you then look no further. Food Fantasy is a unique type of gacha game (or hero collector) from Elex publisher of Clash of Kings that takes a new and fresh twist on the genre.

One of the “wow” factors for this game was its take on managing a restaurant and playing a JRPG at the same time. Not only did I find it exciting that I, as someone who can’t cook, was able to create food so good that lineups would be forming outside the door, but I could also scratch that itch for the single player progression at the same time. This is what makes Food Fantasy stand out as it has two unique parts to make one fully baked experience.

The first is the restaurant, were we need to hire staff to act as the cook and waiters for our customers. This restaurant becomes a “carte blanche” for how we want to develop it everything is left up to the user on how they wish for their restaurant to look and feel. The more ingredients we gather the more we dishes we can start to create. Imagination plays a bit of a factor when making new dishes, but a guide also helps to push us in the right direction. We use our Food Souls to help us act as a cook and waiters to maintain our store while we are out hunting for new ingredients or making deliveries to our clients!

The second is how the JRPG side is handled. As per the usual for a mobile game, the system Food Fantasy uses is energy with a world map that uses a linear choice progression with a 3 star rating system. Once you have achieved 3 stars you can quickplay the same levels for loot without having to replay the entire level. The combat is smooth but also requires a good composition of tanks healers and damage to not be rolled over. Throughout certain fights there are occasions when a monster will have a timer appear on them in several places. These timers need to be pressed on as quickly as possible, the faster we press them the better.

What this does is it interrupts almost a “cast time” before a very strong attack. Most of these attacks will 1 shot your entire party if left unattended. This also is the reason for not having an auto play feature in the game. A fight has special moves that each character can use as long as they have their counter-parts in the fight with them, but there is also spells that we can cast as well once we have built up enough energy.

We have the ability to pick and choose which skills we want through our leveling up and mastery allowing us to aid our food souls in combat. Things such as a damaging fire spell, or a heal, perhaps a defense buff. There are plenty of options to choose from and it comes down to either preference, or having a spell that your team composition may be lacking. These spells each have a cooldown and energy requirement, so do not spend them unwisely using your flames might be ok for dumping energy when at max, who doesn’t love a little bbq. But if it’s a heal or defense, its best to save those for either after a strong attack, or if we fail to interrupt the boss in time.

The Food Souls we summon often have a counter-part to make them stronger. For example we have Milk and Black Tea. By having both of these Souls in our party we activate the special ability that both souls possess. Milk gained an AOE heal and Black Tea unleashed hell on all enemies. There are tons of other combinations such as Chocolate and Coffee or Dorayaki and Sushi. Having the proper combinations can greatly increase your team’s potential in combat.

Most of the time I don’t play any mobile games with sound, but I couldn’t get enough oh how well done the voices were done for this game; even the background music had a nice ring to it. Tons of voice actors were casted to make sure this part was a hit!

Food Fantasy is a lot of fun to play with its great mix of elements. It has food, it’s a JRPG, its got tons of collectable Food Souls and it even has extras to do on your down time waiting for that energy to come back. A game after my own heart. On top of such an awesome game, I also want to give a shout out to the devs for actively requesting and implementing feedback into the released version launched just this last Friday.

If the F2P doesn’t turn this game into a massive pay to win, then it will remain a stellar success!

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Elex
Publisher(s):
Elex
Genre(s):
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Apple iOS

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Marc L.

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Elex - PS4 Review

Elex is a fascinating attempt to blend the likes of an open world RPG with the ideas that so brilliantly make the Soul’s series combat what it is. Shot down from the sky by one of his own, Jax sets out for revenge with nothing more than a bent pipe in the post meteor struck world of Magalan.

I’ll preface this with that I really wanted to enjoy Elex especially since I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it from the first time that I saw it. Finally getting my hands on it though I found myself more concerned with technical issues and balancing as the load times could make Bloodborne look quick and I think I saw them more than actual gameplay as everything is designed to one or two hit kill you even at the very beginning.

Elex is hard but not in a “you have to become better than the system” hard. It’s hard because just about everything is stronger than you and short of role playing your way into level ups, even gaining new abilities to hold onto new weapons is hard. I hate using the word but it’s simply not accessible.

Leveling up gives you access to ten points that can be added into the stat of your choice. Once past thirty however it takes more than a single point in order to add a stat. The issue with this is that some basic, and I really mean basic, weapons cost over thirty strength to wield. Add in constitution and dexterity as other requirements and it could take until you’re level seven in order to use something more than a crappy axe. What do you do in the meantime? Run away from just about everything between you and where you’re going.

I mean it is possible in order to very slowly chip away at an enemy’s health but with them being able to take you out in one hit, the lengthy loading times are not worth it. It becomes just slightly more manageable once you start getting companions to do your dirty work for you but once they fall to the ground you’re in just as much trouble so you’d have been been supporting them with a range weapon. Between ranged and melee however ranged combat is much easier to perform as you don’t need to worry about stamina but instead just how many arrows or bullets you can land into your enemy.

I appreciate what Elex tried to do with it’s stamina integration into the combat system but I feel like it takes it down several notches instead of raising it up. Running, swinging a weapon, blocking and dodging all take various amounts of stamina and once it’s empty or on low it takes a good while for it to regenerate. Enemies are in the same boat as you and you can see the amounts that they have and make use of attacking them when they are at their lowest since they won’t be able to block your attacks and take some damage.

The problem isn’t that there’s stamina involved but that the act of swinging your weapon feels slow and by the time you’ve finally moved into action, you’re dead. Again. It takes some time to get used to how certain enemies act such as “raptors” will pounce forward with swiping claws while other canine like creatures will charge headfirst. Knowing how to react to these creatures is great but if you’ve dodged sometimes even a second too early their re-adjustment of their trajectory will bring them straight to you most likely killing you all over again. If it was just having to deal with slow swing times that would be one thing, but having to deal with slow swing times AND having the stamina left to do it or to dodge, when you’re alone against multiple foes sometimes it’s better to run away and fight another day instead of seeing the lengthily load screen.

Outside of combat however there is plenty to enjoy with wide open and beautiful looking locations to explore and lore to find. Magalan is an interesting space as it showcases the differences of the factions and what they’ve done since the meteor crash quite well making each culture interesting to explore once you’ve managed to get there.

Littered across the world are teleporters that grant you access to quick travel points that can be accessed from the terminal that you can call up on your arm. Even this adds some depth to the world as if you access it in the realm of the Berserkers who will have nothing to do with technology and instead went about the path of magic, they’ll yell at you to put it away as it has no place in their realm. The same can be said about the jetpack that is strapped to your back making exploration quite the interesting experience as if you plan your path out right there’s nothing that can stop you. Well that’s short of being one shotted by something you didn’t even know was there.

If you can find someone who will actually talk to you on your travels, dialog can be fantastic. Banter back and forth between you, your companions and those that you are talking to are all well written and great to listen to as even the voice actors are right on key. The issue is that with all the people that you come across there are many that will walk right on by you giving you nothing more than a “I don’t have time” for you which is unfortunate because of how well crafted it all is.

Topping it all off, Elex is also not without its technical issues. The frame rate will often come crashing down when trying to access and move around your HUD’s map or simply freeze. Running around the world depending on what is lying about will also trigger these effects making you worry that something may be coming to end your life once again while you wait for the engine to catch up. Finally the auto-saving that is amazingly customizable for its time increments will also bring everything to a halt as it triggers making you wonder if the title will come through or if it’s another wonderful blue screen of death.

The basis for Elex is an amazing one but sadly the execution isn't there. Between the technical issues and the steep price of betterment for both self and equipment being so high, you'll be spending more time running away and reloading your previous save than actually enjoying what Magalan could offer Jax.

Game Information

Platform:
Sony PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
Piranha Bytes
Publisher(s):
THQ Nordic
Genre(s):
Action
Adventure
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Microsoft Xbox One
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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