Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook (2023) [PS5] review

Food! It’s an addiction, really, and a lethal one – everybody who eats food eventually dies, but the withdrawal from going cold turkey rarely ends well either. NIS America has decided to plumb the deep philosophical questions this poses with Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook, a roguelike that’s all about staying full. Spoiler alert: staying full means you’re going to be shoving a lot of pretty gross things down the hatch. Don’t tell Gordon Ramsey.

After assembling an adventurer using a surprisingly detailed character-creation system, you’ll find yourself a bit peckish. Well, maybe more than a bit. You’ve been doing your dungeon-exploration thing when one bad turn leads to another and leaves you both starving and at the mercy of monsters. With nary a snack to your name, you’re forced to chow down on monster flesh to keep going…and, well, it does the job. It’s not exactly a gourmet meal, but taking a bite out of baddies just might be enough to see you and the party you’ll assemble through.

Said party will consist of up to four heroes from a mostly-standard set of classes; the Chef is unusual, and given the theme of the game, probably earns a spot in most parties. You’ll take these guys through an expansive procedurally-generated dungeon, collecting loot and battling foes along the way.

Combat is a turn-based tactical affair that takes place on a grid, laid out wherever you encounter opponents. That means it’s possible to swing circumstances in your favor a bit based on where you start a fight. Characters can smack enemies with their weapons or unleash special abilities (though as we’ll see in a second you might want to be a little judicious with the latter), and you’ve got a variety of melee and ranged options for your beast-slaying needs. A properly-balanced, well-equipped team is likely to be more successful, but one of the most important keys to victory is keeping your heroes fed.

See, goodies and gear are readily available and come in tasty randomized forms, allowing you to find that perfectly-rolled legendary sword you’d always hoped for…but vittles tend to be a bit more difficult to come by. As you might expect, keeping everyone fed and watered is a significant concern in a game called Monster Menu. Even beyond the usual hunger and thirst from exploration, your special abilities tend to consume plenty of sustenance, with spellcasters in particular suffering from hunger pangs more often than not. Worse yet, the available chow tends to be a little on the gross side. Get ready to eat some bugs, then get ready to deal with your party’s morale plummeting in a fashion detrimental to combat because they had to eat bugs.

You’re not entirely defenseless against famine, though. Using cooking utensils and ingredients found throughout the dungeon, you can turn those gross bits into something a little more palatable. Maybe it’s easier to eat the bugs if you make a bug-rito or something, for instance, ensuring that your party might be a little less traumatized by their lunch. Your cooking skills end up nearly as important as your prowess in combat, and a juicy monster steak might feel just as rewarding as that legendary sword in the end. Heck, if worst comes to worst, just shove dead monsters into your gullet directly – this is a useful, if morbid, way to keep people going during a long fight.

Worst might come to worst more often than not, because Monster Menu is tough. Your heroes will be hungry and monsters will be hungry for your heroes; bosses in particular are surprisingly mean for such a cutesy game. As is typical for the genre, your recourse is to dust yourself off and try again. Pray for a better dungeon layout, friendlier enemy encounters, more loot and tastier bugs. Maybe you’ll do better next time.

At least you’ll enjoy the colorful nature of the brick wall that is Monster Menu’s difficulty as you repeatedly bash your face into it. This is pretty clearly an offshoot of the 3D engine used for Disgaea 6, so it’s got the same chibi style we’ve come to know and love from those games. Heck, even some of the same monsters show up! Soundwise, Monster Menu owes a lot to Disgaea as well, from the music to your heroes’ barks in combat. A suggestion: make sure you really like your characters’ voices, because you’ll be hearing them a lot.

There’s not a lot of plot here – you’re mostly dungeon-crawling and hoping you can scrounge up enough grub for supper. That’s probably going to have an effect on the kind of player who’s interested in this one, so plot-centric folks take note. On the other hand, if you’re interested in a tough roguelike with an interesting twist on resource scarcity, Monster Menu just might hit the spot.

Special thanks to NIS America for providing us with Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook for this review.

PIXEL PERFECT

Recommended

Review by Cory G.