Food Fantasy takes two genres that would be familiar to mobile gamers, namely the restaurant management simulator and RPG, to concoct a rather interesting concept, which is apt, given its theme on food.

Boot up the game for the first time and you will be presented to rather light-hearted story in which you get to self insert as one of the numerous avatars available to you. Once you decide who (or what) you want to play as, you will be guided along rather lengthy tutorial by your story companion to complete a series of objectives before you are left to your own devices.

Assemble your team of five Food Souls (or summons), each of which have their own abilities. Some are best suited for combat, while others are more proficient taking on a support role. There are those better off in the kitchen, but more on that later. Being a gacha game at its core, the way to summon new Foods Soul is to either use in-game resources or resorting to premium currency, the latter which will of course grant you access to the better summons.

You are given a few of such Food Souls with appropriate names such as Hawthorne and Sandwich, two of which have restaurant specific abilities, while Milk and Tom Yum are combat ready summons. Speaking of combat, Food Fantasy does not exactly break the mold here. Battles take place in real time, and can be sped up later on. Food Souls will fight without requiring any prompts, although you are occasionally presented the opportunity to inflict critical attacks on the bosses. There are also special attacks and abilities which are on cooldown, so use them at your discretion. Stages in which you have won and easily be repeated again with the Sweep function if you plan to just farm the drops on it.

The time you spend in Food Fantasy is equally split between the combat portions and restaurant management, which we will now get into. Resources which you gain on the battlefield are used for managing your eatery as ingredients. The gold you earn here go back into running your business, while customer tips can be used on shards to boost certain Food Souls. Restaurant management here is mostly automated as well, and your chef will constantly be prepping dishes to be served to customers. As your restaurant gains fame, you will be able to increase the number of seating and staff you have.

At any given time, you are only able to serve two dishes which you will have to prepare in advance while you go off doing other things such as farming for more ingredients. Do an eye on your Food Soul however, as if their Freshness are depleted, you will not be able to use them until they are sufficiently rested. Preparing the dishes themselves is fairly elementary, as you will be given a detailed list as to what you need. You will be making the same dish many times too as it is the only way of improving it. Creating new dishes however is less simple, although you will be given some hints as to what to put together. There is some trial and error involved here, but if you choose not to waste time and resources, you can always look up the recipe externally.

Between going on an adventure and running your restaurant, you are never left without anything to do. However, if you so choose, there are hard mode stages that offer unique rewards and challenges which you may wish to attempt. Specific day Trials and Catacombs also present new ways for you to utilise your team as some strategy is needed in assembling them.

At first glance, it is easy to dismiss Food Fantasy as a game designed for the anime enthusiast, but there is a lot here on offer that just about any casual gamer can pick up. The RPG and restaurant management aspects of the game are equally fleshed out and have much depth to them.