✅ Beautiful art style.
Visually, the game is stunning, with hand-drawn, anime-inspired graphics that are vibrant and reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's enchanting art style. Each character, monster, dish, and background is meticulously designed, adding to the game's charm and making for a whimsical and alive fantasy world.

✅ Unique cooking and combat system
The main gameplay loop successfully blends two very different gaming genres, requiring you to hunt monsters for ingredients and then prepare culinary creations. I found gameplay to be fast-paced but engaging as you have to balance combat with cooking and making sure that you time it all well (particularly in matches where you need to serve 3 judges).

✅ Lovely soundtrack along with fully-voiced dialogue.
The voice acting was excellent and brought the different characters to life with distinct and memorable performances. The music soundtrack also complements the gameplay well, being more dynamic during combat and then more lighthearted during cooking or story scenes.

✅ Many extra modes beyond the main story.
Beyond the main campaign, there are also extra modes that add more replayability to the game, including daily cook-offs, free-play mode, and other mini-games from the main campaign.

⛔ Combat needs to be a bit more refined.
My biggest gripe is with the combat which I feel wasn't executed well. The controls are quite clunky on keyboard and I would often press the wrong keys and do the wrong action or drop ingredients which was frustrating to get used to. The player's movement is also floaty and lacks weight when attacking monsters, which makes combat feel less intense.

⛔ Shallow main story.
The main story started off well but became a bit shallow and underdeveloped by the end, with less tension and a lot of resolutions made off-screen after the final chapter. One chapter near the end was also a bit random where you play as a different character and it felt quite out of place with the main story and plot line.

⛔ Most of the unique characters are underdeveloped.
Many NPCs like Leonid were only used as cooking battle opponents or judges and I feel like there could've been side-stories or B plots to flesh out these characters (besides the one chapter where you play as another character).

Altogether, Battle Chef Brigade is a unique game that blends side-scrolling hack-and-slash with match-3 puzzles. The art, voice acting, and innovative concept are the highlights in my opinion, but I think there's a lot to be desired in terms of fleshing out and refining the combat. This game was a Humble Choice offer for me so I'd recommend giving it a shot if it's on sale.

A rare mashup of complex match-3 and combat, all under time pressure. It certainly won't be for everyone as puzzles and time pressure don't usually go together well.

The story is enjoyable and the game introduces new cooking mechanics at good pace to keep the game moving.

I'm not sure when this turned up in my steam backlog, but I'm glad I took the time to check it out.

is good