Impressions?

I haven't taken a look at the quick look yet (or the early preview video that I thought was referenced on a podcast), but I decided to take a look tonight after hearing a tweet describing how happy this game felt. My initial impressions:

• Holy balls, this game is charming.
• The art is amazing.
• The voice acting is amazing.
• In the first 3 hours (I only planned on playing for 30 minutes) they varied the match 3 formula more than I've seen in any puzzle-quest style game.
• The real-time hunt-as-you-cook battles meld two game modes together in unexpectedly important ways (the slow cooker is a game-changer.)
• The game is silly as hell, but effectively communicates the feeling of being on Iron Chef while smartly abstracting away the actual cooking bits.
• It's great at teaching a dozen new mechanics (for both combat and cooking) per hour.
• Also, how has there never been a Tetris/Dr. Mario/Match-3 game that let you dump bits between standby wells before? This is awesome.
• Holy balls, this game is charming.

I skipped the recent quick look because the thumbnail didn't appeal to me and I assumed it was a chef-themed fighting game. I couldn't have been more wrong. This and Golf Story are my two 2017 inexpensive indie game picks for most satisfying purchase.

What does everyone else think?

So far I love it, though the combat parts at least feel a bit shallow and easy so far. I did choose Normal.

The puzzle bits are strangely intense, insofar as a kinda twee game like this can get intense. The mechanics are actually pretty novel feeling (to me at least; my match 3 experience isn't that great). It's cool to race the clock and try to squeak in with a winning dish.

The characters largely are really charming, love the art style, story seems a bit hammy but I also want to see where they go. I'm liking it so much I'm fearful it's a bit short, but quality/quantity.

Very pleasantly surprised.

I've thoroughly enjoyed Battle Chef Brigade. I adored it from the moment I first heard about it, but didn't keep up with any updates before it released.

To me it touched me on a lot of the things I love. Iron Chef, charismatic battles, fun characters, and comfy atmosphere. The food art reaches the Studio Ghibli bar of mouth-watering, "I want to eat that" levels. The whole thing is very relaxing and just fun to play and dive in. The impression that sticks with me the most is how earnest it all feels. This feels like a game with a lot of soul and heart behind it; you can tell the developers had a lot of fun and knew exactly what they wanted to deliver. The early comparisons to cooking anime were spot on as I can totally see Adult Swim financing a Battle Chef Brigade anime.

There were only a couple of issues I had that didn't really detract from my experience and is mainly a by-product of my nit-pickiness. Some spoilers because of story bits.

• I wish there was more. I was excited at Chapter 5 because I didn't expect it, but disappointed that the game is actually relatively short. The setting and characters are almost wasted on what some could say is a very short story.
• Ziggy felt underutilized and not explained very well. He has a second form that shows up for one moment and that's it? Let me know more about my sweet ghost boy.
• While not needed, a 2 player experience would've been great. The set-up is ripe for it, with tons of unique characters that could have their own special advantages (the Teatotallers for example has a literal walking robo-oven that could have a unique advantage). Maybe they thought of this before and didn't have the funds for it?
• It's a little easy on normal. I didn't have problems fighting other chefs for a while and I only won most of those encounters because they decided to A) forget the main ingredient, B) not follow the judge's request or C) included poison. This was fine in the beginning since I was getting a hang of the controls and what I needed to prioritize, but towards the end it felt like the game was handing me the win.

But it's really a fantastic game and very relaxing to play. The Switch is easily becoming my "sit back and relax" platform of choice now.

A super game!

It feels unfinished.

I'm very interested in this, but the length concerns me. My go-to is HLTB.com, but there isn't much data there yet. Are we talking about a 4 hour game here? I understand its fairly priced, but the last 20 dollars i spent on the switch has already got my family 20 hours of rocket league haha.

I'm towards the end of the final chapter now and it's a little hard to pin down exactly how long I've played as the Switch won't display that for another 5 days but I think I've spent around 7 hours with it doing all the side activities in between each battle. It feels short only in that I really enjoy the set piece cook offs and wish there were a ton more of those to do rather than the okay puzzle/speed matching boards and the pointlessly easy hunts.

It is a little silly that the back half of the game has been a lot of opponents getting perfect dishes with level 3 gems in every slot but forgetting to include the secret ingredient and losing half their points. I'm not sure if there is actual variation in what they come up with as I've rarely lost and had to rematch but the fights where the opponent didn't lose 200 points off the top were a lot more enjoyable.

Also Thrash's fire sauce and super fire slow cooker are hilarious since the main judge for his chapter always wants pure fire. Starting off every match with 8 level 3 fire gems building up while you go hunt sure took out the guesswork on how to get that dish started.

Overall a really engaging and charming game well worth the $20.

So what I'm hearing is that Ben's statements on the podcast about the game being deceptively long are wildly misinformed?

I'm having a heck of a time pulling the trigger on it. I've started getting more frugal with games, so I think this might end up being a sale purchase down the road.

Would have been nice to have some animations in the background. Also would have been nice if they had actually finished the background graphics.

I was kinda hoping it was by design, the game world was somehow unfinished and they would complete drawing and coloring in the backgrounds as the game and story progressed.

I'd have to agree with @qu0t3

I guess that would depend on what that initial guess would be? Like if you tell me this match 3 game has 7-8 hours of story I might think of it that way too.

But no this is not secretly a huge game.

I actually do think that the choice to not color in some of the art was deliberate. It feels purposeful rather than unfinished.

As for general impressions, holy hell do I love this game. I wasn't gonna pick it up at first but Austin was glowing about this game on Waypoint Radio so I picked it up on steam because it was on sale there....in chapter three and I bought it on switch to be able to bring it with me on the go. First time in awhile that the "so engrossed I didn't realize I was playing for 4 hours and now fuck it's 7am" has happened to me.

I like the lighthearted tone and charm that the game has. The hunting mechanics itself are simple- on normal I've been able to more or less just mash the attack button- but the "challenge" to me is figuring out each map (2 so far) and where all the ingredients are, and what gems they have so that I'm selectively hunting the right ingredients. The match 3 is surprisingly deep once they add mechanics in and is super intense as well; I tend to be overambitious with the time and barely submit my dishes within the time limit. You can also tell the devs love them some food network, they nail the Iron Chef tone of the battles as well.

So glad I picked this up, this leaped into my top 10 games of the year for sure.

If only I didn't also have to finish Mario, NITW, and Nier, and start mario+rabbids and zelda...

Checking back in to say I've beat the game and I didn't cool down on it at all. Loved how they ramped up the challenge and the core loop of hunt->cook->hunt is still fun. The warm tone of the game is great, and despite some criticism of the art as unpolished I continued to think it was great. Also really liked how you could remember how to make certain dishes (not that it mattered) by putting certain ingredients in, and how you can make more complex dishes the more 3 level gems/ingredients get added in. Really wish there was more; I hope they have the opportunity to make DLC or a sequel or something that expands on the core idea because this game is great. There's only a few games per year that really keep my both my attention and love for the game the whole way through, and this year Battle Chef Brigade was one of them.