Classic: Ore no Ryomi 2

By: Guest Reviewer

On: June 4th, 2009

[This is a guest review by Duckmeister.]

Ore no Ryomi 2, by Mr. Chubigans (Sandbox of God, ShellBlast), is a cooking/restaurant simulator that places you in the role of an entrepreneur chef who opened his new restaurant. The game is based upon the fantastically successful Ore No Ryouri cooking game series in Japan. Depending on the time of day and your advertising, you will get customers who order various foods on your menu, and as they wait in line, you can take their orders and are placed in a fast-paced minigame which resembles cooking that food. For instance, an order of beer involves you filling the glass to order (half-full, overflowing), or an order of fries involves you dipping the fries in the deep-fryer for the perfect amount of time.

Based on how well you do in the minigames, you get money for every order that is completed. You can use that money to advertise (get more customers), buy foods (add more items on the menu), add items (like televisions which increase customer patience), or even game-changing upgrades like a delivery system that completely changes your business model. Ore No Ryomi 2 provides a great risk vs. reward system.

A “round” in the game takes place over the course of the day, and during that day you have to regularly run the garbage disposal, wash dishes, put out kitchen fires, and prevent robberies. Each of these minigames distracts you from your goal of getting food to your customers, and provides a great “beat the clock” element to an already intense game. If you decide to skip these minigames you are penalized, both monetarily (getting robbed) and in other ways, decreasing the efficiency of your kitchen even more. Plus, if you skip enough of these your Health Rating goes down and the Health Inspector fines you heavily.

The game is really polished, and you can tell the amount of work that was put into it. If you take the time to do something, like the read various news stories, you’ll really start to see the immense charm of such a game. The artwork is great, and seeing the expressions on each person’s face and experiencing the quirkiness (maybe Japanese-ness?) of the game really draws you in. Plus, there are challenges that are totally optional, which is great. For instance, if you get all perfect orders in a day you get an extra $200, but it’s not something that’s stuck in your face or even portrayed as some sort of achievement. And because it’s presented that way, you really get a great rush of satisfaction when you receive that $200 after all of your hard work.

I really recommend this game, so try it out!

TIGdb: Entry for Ore no Ryomi 2