When I’m not busy playing the latest video games, I’m probably obsessing over food. I absolutely love cooking and eating new meals, and a curvaceous body like mine takes a lot of work. Food is obviously important for a whole lot of physical reasons, but it’s also a powerful force for good in other ways. Certain meals can fill you with nostalgia for times gone by, or can boost your mood when life is giving you a kicking. Dosa Divas is an RPG all about the power of food, and it hit me right in the feels.
Sisters Samara and Amari left home years ago, but are now returning for a family meetup. This would be fine if when they left they hadn’t abandoned the family restaurant, leaving their business minded sister in charge of everything. Now as they return they find the local area unrecognisable. The capitalist machine has destroyed the beautiful nature, and the people now only eat ready meals. It turns out this is entirely the fault of the sister you left behind, who used food for evil. Now it’s up to this delightful duo to overthrow this tyrant, with the help of their magical food truck mech of course.
The story of Dosa Divas is probably my favourite part of the game. There’s a whole lot of heart in all its characters, and so many of the seemingly evil bosses you face have only fallen from grace because of the trauma of the past. There’s suffering aplenty in this world, and getting to soothe the pain by cooking childhood favourites just feels lovely.
Before you can find the hungry folks to feed though, you’ll have to get through various grunts and goons in turn-based combat. I was delighted to see these battles feature timing based button presses, which can boost the damage you deal or help you guard against hits (sometimes entirely). Each character also has a range of special attacks that require different button presses to maximise damage, which is a nice added bit of variety.
There’s more to the combat than just hitting A at the right time too. You can boost attacks to deal bonus actions or hit more times, in an ode to the wonderful Octopath Traveller. There are also weaknesses to take advantage of, but instead of elemental tags these are flavour profiles. There’s just something very satisfying about taking someone down with an excessively sour ball of energy.
In most RPGs you get stronger by leveling up or buying new gear. While the leveling is a big part of boosting stats in Dosa Divas (with a lot of free choice in how to do so) you get new skills by helping people. Every area you come across is struggling in a fight against processed foods, and by smashing up posters and drilling through barricades you can help folks have a better life and gain some new attacks in the process. It’s a fun loop that encourages you to really explore and smash as much as possible, while feeding people of course.
So often throughout Dosa Divas you’ll find a selection of sad and struggling people in need of a hot meal, and as long as you’ve got the ingredients you can cook it for them. To make the best meals possible you’ll have to do well in various cooking minigames, and prove yourself to be a real Cooking Mama. These are a lot of fun, with games where you need to chop veggies by hitting a button when a meter enters a certain area, a balancing minigame for frying, and of course a delicate mixing minigame for making those tasty fillings. These are just a lovely change of pace from the fighting, and are perfect for this culinary caper.
I really enjoyed my time with Dosa Divas, but a couple of elements hold it back from RPG greatness. The timing based combat while fun just isn’t that intuitive with the button presses, and to compensate for this you’ll see obvious white crosses when you’re supposed to hit the button. You can still be too early or too late though even if you nail the timing when the cross is there, so it almost makes the situation a bit worse. The loop of going to new places to help out starts to get a bit thin as you progress too, which is a shame because it really works for the theme of the game.
Dosa Divas is an endearing RPG, with all the comfort of a home cooked meal. The characters and their foibles are just so charming, and the fantastical foodie world they live in is so very unique. The combat is stellar too for the most part, and if you’re looking for a cosy RPG to spice up your life then this one might just satisfy your hunger.
