Magical Delicacy Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · August 21, 2024

Magical Delicacy Review, A wholesome pixel art platformer. Cook magical delicacies from a vast collection of ingredients in your own shop. Explore an unfamiliar town and deliver tasty treats to the townsfolk. Learn new ways to traverse, discover secrets, and experience a unique witchy world.

Magical Delicacy Review Pros:

Beautiful pixel art graphics.
1GB download size.
Graphics settings – UI scale, and control prompt scale sliders.
Gameplay settings – hints on/off, autoplay dialogue, and show dialogue text immediately.
Controller settings – vibration, Invert scrolling, cursor, and scroll sensitivity sliders, and you can remap the controls.
Accessibility options – Easy platforming, skip reaction-based mini-games, disable hold inputs, disable controller button cross, font type (default/open dyslexic/hypereligable), disable dialogue effects, always outline Flora, dim background, and night time brightness slider.
Action adventure gameplay.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
A 2D game world with animated backgrounds and foregrounds.
Fast loading times.
You play as a Witch and get your own shop and you are cooking delicacies for your customers.
Very happy and enchanting soundtrack.
Many memorable characters to meet and interact with.
Earn and learn new recipes but it is possible to just make up your own recipes.
Quests or orders as they call them are pinned on the side of the screen and you can minimize it with a button press.
You can pan the camera around.
Location names pop up as you enter them.
You can play how you want.
Button prompts help you learn the game a lot quicker.
Day and night cycle.
Your journal fills in with characters met, recipes learned, items gathered, quests/orders, etc.
Vendors and other shops let you buy and trade with them.
The map uncovers as you explore and fills in points of interest.
You can rest on benches etc and see the sights.
Handy save and quit option.
Picking berries, flowers and triggers a reaction mini-game. You can turn this off in the options.
A blacksmith can make or sell you new tools and appliances for your kitchen.
You can pet the animals in the game.
There is a sense of general progression with you needing passes and keys to unlock more of the map.
It’s a really nice world you want to explore.
Cooking is a case of grabbing water and getting it into the pot (time-based), then you add any ingredients but you can bring up any recipes and tick off ingredients as you add them.
You have a back garden where you can grow your own plants, they also don’t require any words or care like watering, etc.
Your house/shop is huge and you can pay to expand it.
The bed is used to skip time.
Timing plays a huge part in cooking, you see a bar filling up and you have a small window to grab the pot off the stove to avoid burning it.
Ingredients and dishes have descriptive words like salty, earthy, etc which makes it all a lot easier especially cooking.
Time evaporates as you play this game.
When you finish an order you usually get a breadcrumb to the next part and it has that whole one more go or il just look at that a minute feel.

Magical Delicacy Review Cons:

The first half hour is quite intense with you taking in all the mechanics and controls, exploring, and the constant stream of characters to talk with.
It takes a while to take in everything in terms of cooking and recipe management.
For whatever reason continuing the game wouldn’t load my save, it would always use save slot one default even if nothing was in there.
I continue to struggle to bring up the recipes when cooking and all I could do to make it work was to speak to the order giver to get it to show up on my board.
The day and night cycle only seems to work for cooking and growing for the order givers rarely move during the night.
The map is not ideal and it doesn’t show where you are.

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