Obsessed With Cooking Competition Shows? Prepare to Fall In Love With Battle Chef Brigade

Battle Chef Brigade is unlike any game I've ever played.

It's a cooking game, but it's not about following a recipe or preparing a pre-planned dish. It's a monster-fighting game, but only because the beasts are critical ingredients for your cooking. It's your favorite high-stakes cooking show achieved by combining colored gems in the kitchen and set in a world full of orcs, dwarves and elves.

(Battle Chef Brigade via Adult Swim Games)

We've been captivated by the concept since we first heard of the game, so we were thrilled when Adult Swim Games provided us with a review code for the Nintendo Switch.

After playing, we're even more enamored with this strange, beautiful world, where warrior chefs are respected above all others. If you're not convinced yet, here are all the ways Battle Chef Brigade is just like your favorite reality cooking competition show.

The Personalities

If you're anything like us, you get super invested in the competitors on reality cooking shows. Within moments, you pick a favorite character to root for, as well as a totally unlikable contestant to sneer at every time they succeed. Your enjoyment of the show may hinge on whether or not your people make it to the end.

Battle Chef Brigade is a lot like that. You'll spend most of the game as Mina Han, a young woman who runs away from home with dreams of joining the Battle Chef Brigade. She's immediately likable, and because you're also playing as her, it's not hard to want to see her succeed. You'll also face off against the funny family man orc, Thrash, a brainy and compassionate winged woman named Kirin, and a rude, grudge-bearing chef named Weiz that you'll want to defeat the second you lay eyes on him. The characters are engaging and well-developed, and part of the fun is seeing who'll make it to the very end.

(Battle Chef Brigade via Adult Swim Games)

 

The Mad Scramble to the Pantry

In many cooking competitions, the round begins with the contestants making a frantic dash toward the pantry area to grab the ingredients they plan to use in their dishes. It's about getting to the ingredients before their competitors do, as well as sizing up the competition to see if their plates will be too similar.

This happens in Battle Chef Brigade, except the pantry is the wilderness just outside the kitchen door. While there are also fruits and vegetables to harvest, there are also monsters to defeat—and they happen to be delicious. Prioritizing your time becomes extremely important, as you only have so much time to hunt and cook. It's fully possible to get so caught up battling a monster that you completely run out of time in the kitchen.

(Battle Chef Brigade via Adult Swim Games)

 

Theme Ingredients

Like any good reality cooking show, each round of cooking in Battle Chef Brigade is all about the theme ingredient. Sometimes, this will mean heading out into the field and gathering enough of a certain kind of berry. Other times, this will mean you'll have to devote time to slaying a dragon in order to collect the components necessary to wow the judges. It's all about using your time wisely and making sure you leave yourself enough time to cook once you've stocked up on each tasty element of the meal. Leaving it out of your dish is a huge no-no.

(Battle Chef Brigade via Adult Swim Games)

 

Impressing the Judges

In any cooking competition, winning is as much about making something delicious as it is about making sure the judges are satisfied with the meal. In Battle Chef Brigade, you prepare one individual dish for each judge, and they're very particular about how they want their meal to taste. When you're cooking, you'll discover that each individual ingredient is made up of three basic elements: fire, water and earth. The judges each have their preferred elements, so it's important to make sure they're well-represented in the dish you serve to them.

(Battle Chef Brigade via Adult Swim Games)

 

The Mouthwatering Food

The most important element of any cooking competition is, obviously, the food. We live for the final moment of a cooking show where the fruits of the contestants' labor is finally revealed to the judges. The appearance of the meal, as well as the judge's comments, should make our stomachs grumble.

The same goes for Battle Chef Brigade, but one interesting element of the game is that you never quite know what you're going to prepare. The outcome does depend on the blend of ingredients you use, but cooking is more about a skillful blend of the elements than it is about producing a specific result. It's a surprise every time, and with each chef cooking their own specialties, Mina's dishes are always quite different than the other contenders'. And even a plate of hydra necks or slime ice cream looks exquisite in the game.

(Battle Chef Brigade via Adult Swim Games)

 

If you're still not sold on Battle Chef Brigade, check out the trailer below. It's available now on the Nintendo Switch for $19.99.

 

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