Pikachu315111
Ranting & Raving!
So I'm filling out the Curry Dex cause it's something to do in the post game and, while I've yet to fully grasp what I need to do (I sometimes get Silver but usually end up with Bronze, no clue what the game wants me to do other then connect to other players... but that's not required to complete the Curry Dex), I've come to like two things about the Curry mechanic:
1. The appearance. Ever heard the term "food porn"? It's a term used to describe when an artist draws a picture of food so good it makes you hungry and want to eat it. And I think the artists assigned to draw the curry got the "food porn" down good. And that's something to say because, while they have normal easy to draw dishes like so:
(Sausage, Juicy, Bean Medly, & Plenty-of-Potato)
The dishes that I think really shines are a bit of the outlandish ones. While for some of these they could have just had chopped up the ingredient and mixed it into the curry they did with the above, instead they tried to take different approaches:
With the Bread, Smoked-Tail, and Leek they just slapped the main ingredient on top of the curry. And while a bit funny how brazen that is, it does also give the artist a chance to actually show the the seasoning on the bread, the roasted scales on the Slowpoke's tail, and got the cooked leek to that brown color which shows its cooked but still looks flavorful.
When it comes to the Apple, Boiled-Egg, and Tropical it's interesting how they combined the strange ingredient with the curry. For the apple and tropical (aka banana) it's actually the medium dishes that I feel shows this off better as the large dishes is mostly just a whole apple and banana on top of the curry. BTW, another kudos to the art team for actually creating three different images for each curry, you could even say the small amount (which is only big enough to fit on a single spoon) are impressive all on their own for how they simplified the curry's unique appearance down to a spoonful size. But back to the curry being discussed, once again instead of mixing the odd fruit combinations with the curry they do a middle ground of cutting them up but leaving them separate and even decorating the dish with them. Meanwhile the egg is just funny how it's more the main dish and they just piled curry above and around it, lol.
For Cheese-Covered, Whipped-Cream, and Decorative I like how they progressed the design from the small spoonful to the large stacked plate, especially with the Decorative. With the small spoonfuls it's just a dab of cheese & whipped cream; the decorative it's a tiny Eevee and Pikachu face. Going to the medium serving the cheese looks like it's a slice of cheese cake, whipped cream got fancy with the presentation, and for decorative it's a more detailed Eevee and Pikachu in the curry. Finally the large full plates go all out: the cheese gives you an entire cheese cake with a slice missing (probably the slice used for the medium serving), the whipped cream make the curry into a cake topped with a Alcremie decor, and decorative makes two mounds with the top molded to look like Eevee and Pikachu. With these three you can tell the artist was having fun seeing what crazy design they could do.
If there was one curry I'd have to call out for being lazy it would be the Instant-Noodle. Like the medium serving is fine as it's a nicely drawn cup of instant noodles with curry poured into it... but then we get the large serving and it's just the medium serving cup copy & pasted size times. Yes, the blobs of curry are slightly different for each cup and you can see the spices and noodles are also mixed around, but 80% of the image is the copy & pasted cup. Surely they could have been more creative like having the large serving is a mound of curry with a cup flipped upside down with the noodles pouring out from under it. Also where did you get the other 5 noodle cups?
2. The descriptions. Now they could have just copy & pasted the flavor text for each curry, and they sort of did that with the normal curry. However to my shock all the other unique curries have a unique description for each flavor! And with the curry not changing appearance no matter what flavor you make, this little detail in my book makes up for that. And also not all the descriptions are positive, while plenty are and somehow are able to say the curry tastes good no matter the flavor, read the descriptions for the Fast-Food, Whipped-Cream, Decorative, and Instant-Noodle descriptions. For the Fast-Food and Instant-Noodle they lambaste them, pointing out how the fast-food's oil ruins any flavor combination and the instant-noodles become only a step above junk food with additional flavors. Whipped-Cream gets off a bit better though the Sweet once pretty much says what the others are dancing around: you've made the curry into a sweet dessert. And Decorative is strongly implied to be style over substance and the only likable one is the Sweet one and only by younger kids (which is surprising the one that's based on Pikachu and Eevee is heavily criticized like that). They really put thought into how the different flavors would interact with the main ingredient and effect the taste of the curry thus letting the player able to imagine what it tastes like instead of having to assume from the image. Great job to the description writing team!
1. The appearance. Ever heard the term "food porn"? It's a term used to describe when an artist draws a picture of food so good it makes you hungry and want to eat it. And I think the artists assigned to draw the curry got the "food porn" down good. And that's something to say because, while they have normal easy to draw dishes like so:
(Sausage, Juicy, Bean Medly, & Plenty-of-Potato)
The dishes that I think really shines are a bit of the outlandish ones. While for some of these they could have just had chopped up the ingredient and mixed it into the curry they did with the above, instead they tried to take different approaches:
With the Bread, Smoked-Tail, and Leek they just slapped the main ingredient on top of the curry. And while a bit funny how brazen that is, it does also give the artist a chance to actually show the the seasoning on the bread, the roasted scales on the Slowpoke's tail, and got the cooked leek to that brown color which shows its cooked but still looks flavorful.
When it comes to the Apple, Boiled-Egg, and Tropical it's interesting how they combined the strange ingredient with the curry. For the apple and tropical (aka banana) it's actually the medium dishes that I feel shows this off better as the large dishes is mostly just a whole apple and banana on top of the curry. BTW, another kudos to the art team for actually creating three different images for each curry, you could even say the small amount (which is only big enough to fit on a single spoon) are impressive all on their own for how they simplified the curry's unique appearance down to a spoonful size. But back to the curry being discussed, once again instead of mixing the odd fruit combinations with the curry they do a middle ground of cutting them up but leaving them separate and even decorating the dish with them. Meanwhile the egg is just funny how it's more the main dish and they just piled curry above and around it, lol.
For Cheese-Covered, Whipped-Cream, and Decorative I like how they progressed the design from the small spoonful to the large stacked plate, especially with the Decorative. With the small spoonfuls it's just a dab of cheese & whipped cream; the decorative it's a tiny Eevee and Pikachu face. Going to the medium serving the cheese looks like it's a slice of cheese cake, whipped cream got fancy with the presentation, and for decorative it's a more detailed Eevee and Pikachu in the curry. Finally the large full plates go all out: the cheese gives you an entire cheese cake with a slice missing (probably the slice used for the medium serving), the whipped cream make the curry into a cake topped with a Alcremie decor, and decorative makes two mounds with the top molded to look like Eevee and Pikachu. With these three you can tell the artist was having fun seeing what crazy design they could do.
If there was one curry I'd have to call out for being lazy it would be the Instant-Noodle. Like the medium serving is fine as it's a nicely drawn cup of instant noodles with curry poured into it... but then we get the large serving and it's just the medium serving cup copy & pasted size times. Yes, the blobs of curry are slightly different for each cup and you can see the spices and noodles are also mixed around, but 80% of the image is the copy & pasted cup. Surely they could have been more creative like having the large serving is a mound of curry with a cup flipped upside down with the noodles pouring out from under it. Also where did you get the other 5 noodle cups?
2. The descriptions. Now they could have just copy & pasted the flavor text for each curry, and they sort of did that with the normal curry. However to my shock all the other unique curries have a unique description for each flavor! And with the curry not changing appearance no matter what flavor you make, this little detail in my book makes up for that. And also not all the descriptions are positive, while plenty are and somehow are able to say the curry tastes good no matter the flavor, read the descriptions for the Fast-Food, Whipped-Cream, Decorative, and Instant-Noodle descriptions. For the Fast-Food and Instant-Noodle they lambaste them, pointing out how the fast-food's oil ruins any flavor combination and the instant-noodles become only a step above junk food with additional flavors. Whipped-Cream gets off a bit better though the Sweet once pretty much says what the others are dancing around: you've made the curry into a sweet dessert. And Decorative is strongly implied to be style over substance and the only likable one is the Sweet one and only by younger kids (which is surprising the one that's based on Pikachu and Eevee is heavily criticized like that). They really put thought into how the different flavors would interact with the main ingredient and effect the taste of the curry thus letting the player able to imagine what it tastes like instead of having to assume from the image. Great job to the description writing team!