Kokoro Kitchen is a lovely time-management game without a penalty if things don't work out. You can also decide how hard or easy it is by choosing how many menu items are available each in-game day. Washing 100 dishes by hand is a missable achievement, completion is around 9 to 12h.
Approximate time to 100%: Between 9 and 12 hours, depending on if you use a shortcut trick for all the upgrades or not, you'll find more info at the end of this review.
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don't need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, the one to wish 100 dishes by hand. However, this can also be done at the beginning of the game, so if you bought the dishwasher too soon, you can start a new save and go for this achievement.
Grinding Achievements: The achievements for buying all the upgrades are a bit grindy, but can be cheesed
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option, but no penalties for failing a task either
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: I preferred to play with a gamepad
In Kokoro Kitchen, you wake up in a restaurant that isn't running so well anymore since the chef left. You have no idea how you got there, but the ghost chicken tells you that you can't stay for free and have to work if you want to stay. So it is up to you to get this place up and running again, and even attract some special guests.
This is a time management game in which you take orders from customers, prepare the food, and then deliver the food to their table promptly. However, there are no penalties for missing out on something. So it is okay if you don't serve a customer on time; they will just leave without affecting the gameplay. If you burn something, just throw it away and make a new dish. I really like how low the stakes are in Kokoro Kitchen. You even decide for yourself how many different items are on the menu, which increases the difficulty of that day if there are many items, versus only a few or even just one. The only thing you need to keep in mind with selecting menu items is if they include meat, because if they do, you need to buy that before you open the restaurant.
I love how Kokoro Kitchen slowly introduces more game mechanics, and it is still up to you if you want to add them to your game or not, by deciding which recipes are on the menu that day. There are some ingredients you might want to prepare before you open the restaurant. They can be found in the area just at the bottom of the stairs. However, you only need to make those items once a day, and then you have them the whole day. The same with buying meat, you buy it once and have that type of meat for the entire day, without having to worry if you have enough or not.
During a day, you earn money and experience. The money is used to buy more recipes and farming items. The experience is used to buy upgrades. There are three types of upgrades: upgrades for the farm, the restaurant, or the kitchen. The first thing I saved up for was the "lazy assistant" in the restaurant upgrades, so he would serve out some of the dishes.
I'm very impressed with the Mango Leaf Games team. I found a few bugs while playing through this game before launch. They were able to fix them all within just a few hours. They asked the right questions to understand the bugs I reported and then got to work fixing them. They were lovely and it was a pleasure to help out a little bit by doing the thing I seem always to manage to do... breaking games :P. I can say that everything I reported on has been fixed.
The achievements in Kokoro Kitchen are very straightforward and take around 9 to 12 hours. The only missable achievements are for hand washing 100 dishes, so try to do those before buying a dishwasher. However, if you miss out on it, it is something you do from the start of the game, so doing it on a new save file is very easy. The longest achievements are those for getting all the upgrades. What helps for this is trying to attract those special guests, a new one can appear every 10th day if you helped the previous one. You get hints through the guestbook in your restaurant on what they like. If successful, they will visit the next morning, tell a bit of the story, and give you a bunch of upgrade points. If you go for all the upgrades, it is a bit grindy and a long road. However, if at some point you just save up the experience points, you can then buy the upgrades in the morning and after unlocking the achievement, go to the main menu and return to the game, but spend them on a different section. This way, you don't need all the upgrades at the same time. This is a bit of a cheat around the game, only saving at the end of each day.
I give Kokoro Kitchen 4 out of 5 stars. If you love cozy games, but maybe are scared of time Management games because of the time pressure, please start with Kokoro Kitchen. It is fantastic for seasoned time management players but also for those new to the genre.
4.0