Dosa Divas Review – Food Delivery From The Heart

Dosa Divas is a cooking turn-based RPG developed and published by Outerloop Games. A corporation hell bent on complete food domination is taking over towns and forcing people to eat instant meals. It’s been a long time since anyone ate any home-cooked meals made with real care. Travel through towns in your mobile spirit-mech, battle capitalism and feed those who need it. Your efforts slowly bring hope back to people, giving them the motivation to fight back against injustice.

The story follows two sisters, Samara and Amani journeying in their spirit-mech known as Goddess. Amani has returned from a years-long journey and Samara is happy to have her sister back in their hometown. However, much has changed since Amani has arrived, with home-cooked food non-existent and towns forced into slave labor. Lina, the third sister, is running a successful corporation that outlaws cooking. Samara and Amani team up to bring down Lina’s corporation and bring freshly-cooked food back to their hometown.

On the surface, Dosa Divas takes humorous shots at capitalism by showing the cruelty of Lina’s corporation. You empathize with the people who are struggling and wonder how the situation could get that bad. Rallying the town against Lina seems like the sensible decision, especially as you learn what her capitalist reign is doing to people. Giving people a taste of a freshly-cooked meal instead of a food tube instills a feeling of pride.

Things get more complex as you progress as the sisters’ backstories are revealed. Lina’s motivations aren’t completely unfounded while Samara and Amani aren’t the perfect sisters. While Lina’s actions continue to drive the story, themes of resentment and forgiveness become more dominant. It adds nuance to the story and hits strong emotional tones as everyone finds a way to properly reconnect with each other.

However, the themes in the story’s first half clash with those in the second half. They are not incompatible, but they compete with each other for attention. It’s easy to forget the initial battle against capitalism once the story’s second half begins. Some plot points also feel forced because they don’t have as much time to develop. If the story was longer, the themes could develop more instead of leaving a rushed conclusion.

Gameplay consists of three aspects: finding ingredients, cooking dishes for people, and fighting enemies. You explore three different towns with various ingredients, letting you create mouth-watering dishes. While progressing through the towns, you take the orders of hungry townspeople, cook their desired dish, and deliver it to them – restoring their morale and boosting your reputation. There are always hungry townspeople who need food and you gain resources with every delivery.

Lina’s forces don’t appreciate your efforts to feed the populace and attack you. Combat is turn-based where each side takes turns attacking the other. Samara, Amani, and Goddess can utilize different attack types or “tastes” that enemies are weak to. You must figure out which tastes an enemy is weak to, then exploit that weakness to finish the fight. Enemies won’t stop attacking you, but you can block their attacks to reduce or even negate the damage.

Both cooking and combat rely on precise timings; making the best dishes requires matching button presses or turning a wheel at the exact time. You won’t make it far without blocking attacks at the right time, especially if you don’t bother. It’s a good way of immersing you in the process, making you feel like you are crafting the dishes or protecting your team. Should proper timing evade you, there are accessibility options to help you focus on the story while reducing frustration.

At the beginning, gameplay is exciting. Seeing different dishes come to life is impressive and it’s inspired by real-life dishes even if the ingredients are somewhat fantastical. Targeting weaknesses requires careful analysis and testing, keeping you engaged. As the game continues, this wears you down and becomes repetitive. The focus needed to win battles or cook good food doesn’t match the payoff.

The frequent appearance of hungry people and battles is also tiring to attend to. While you can ignore most battles and cooking opportunities, this significantly cripples your capabilities; feeding people and building your reputation in each town is tied to learning new skills and combat is also the main way of obtaining unique ingredients that can’t be harvested or bought. However, the pace you earn experience, reputation, and ingredients is slow, making gameplay feel repetitive after a while.

It doesn’t help that the second half of the game resorts to artificially extending gameplay length. One instance of this involves being tasked to create four unique dishes to bypass a story gatekeeper, but being given a flimsy reason to do so. Another involves being tasked to create an emergency, but we’re not told that this requires a specific tool. By the time you reach the final stages, it’s tempting to just rush towards the end rather than engage in the game’s core activities.

Dosa Divas attacks capitalism with a sense of humor, but also includes a deeper, grounded story about facing your past. Cooking up different food items is fun and you can experiment with several ingredient combinations. Gameplay becomes repetitive after a while and the latter half of the game drags the length out. The story also rushes some of its plot points, with the resolutions feeling half-baked. Dosa Divas provides a good adventure, but some of its charm may wear off towards the end.

Victor reviewed Dosa Divas on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.