I think every gamer should play at least one game like Magical Delicacy a year. A game where there’s no conflict or really anything to worry about. Although there are a few tedious aspects of the game early on, overall Magical Delicacy is a charming experience.
In Magical Delicacy you play as Flora, a fledgeling witch chef who leaves her home and opens up her own shop in the kingdom of Grat. As her abilities grow, she forms bonds with various citizens of the kingdom and ultimately makes life better in a small way.
Magical Delicacy is a platformer with some Metroidvania elements. There is no combat involved however, nor can you die in the game. The game aims to give you a relaxed experience, to the point where you can even adjust the few platforming challenges there are in terms of how difficult they’ll be. The platforming is fairly straightforward but, it’s not the primary goal of the game. The goal of Magical Delicacy is collecting ingredients for various recipes and creating dishes attuned to various characters tastes.
Pros
Immediately noticable is Magical Delicacy’s very strong pixel art. Every thing is colorful and pops right out. I think at night time especially is when certain areas really shine and there’s a strong level of detail from everything to the characters, the various little animals that will be in the background as well as the various ingredients you’ll find on your way. The world, which is inhabited by both humans and anthropomorphic animals are all well designed and no two characters look alike.
Magical Delicacy’s cooking systems are surprisingly in depth but not overtly complicated. There’s dozens of recipes within the game as well 10 different utensils used for cooking overall. These can range from the standard pots and pans to things used to enhance the flavors of your ingredients such as a dehydrator or even an altar used to enchant certain ingredients. These can greatly enhance the quality of your food which becomes necessary as Magical Delicacy goes on as some customers will request their food be of a certain star rating. There’s many recipes to follow but, the game does encourage you to mix and match often. Though this can lead to failed meals… Well it will lead to failed meals. The games menus keeps track of things well and doesn’t feel too overcrowded with anything either.
Magical Delicacy’s cast is also pretty charming overall. Flora herself has a very helpful nature and she legitimately just wants to help people be happier through her cooking. My favorite characters, I’d say however, were a pair of princesses that you make various dishes for. One that is next in line for queen and matures as you go through her arc and her younger sister whom is naturally a carefree kid but also shows to care about her older sister deeply. Another favorite is Flora’s forced roommate Hina whom is occupying her shop before she moves in. She serves as a bit of comic relief.
Cons
This is more of a problem early on but there are aspects of the cooking system that can lead to tedium sometimes. As I mentioned earlier customers each have their own tastes. But some flavors will overpower others completely. So if you make a dish and the customer wants it spicy but another flavor overpowers the spicy ingredients you put in they won’t accept it at all. Although Magical Delicacy lets you buy an item that tells which flavor will be dominant eventually, This can lead to a lot of backtracking at times. Until you unlock the games traversal options as well as the fast travel system can become tedious as you look for the right ingredients. Not all ingredients are found in the shops either. Some are only found in the wild and can take some time that respawn. Thankfully Magical Delicacy does give you markers to mark where certain rare items will grow. And many items can be grown in your yard as well once you find them.
Another issue is that Magical Delicacy may sometimes not get you what you expect when you’re making a dish. For example, there were a couple of occasions where I tried to make certain kinds of sandwiches for customers. Although I used bread, the game will sometimes make the recipe into a salad or snack pack. This lead to a few annoying instances where I had to go back and get an entirely different set of ingredients to avoid this since I didn’t have the recipe for something like what the customer was asking yet.
Another smaller problem is that some dishes can only be cooked under the moonlight. And while the game offers you a option to skip through the night, it doesn’t have the option the option to skip through the day. So if you mess up a moonlight dish, you can possibly find yourself having to wait until it becomes night again to give it another try if you don’t gather the ingredients fast enough.
Final thoughts
Despite the few tedious aspects which become much easier to manage as things go on, I overall enjoyed my time with Magical Delicacy. It was a nice change of pace overall from what I usually play and I found myself having fun with the cooking systems and interacting with the games various characters. If you’re looking for a nice change of pace I’d give the game a shot.
Magical Legacy was reviewed on PC with a code provided by the publisher and releases on the 16th of July on PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One, Series X/S. It is also on launching Day One on GamePass.
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