Magical Delicacy Review

What a lovely game. It took quite a while before it clicked but when it did, I fell in love. It has no missable achievements and takes 25h+ to complete.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 25h+
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: There are many guides online and posts on different achievement websites, but not one guide that combines it all. I used this guide to know where to find specific items.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

In Magical Delicacy, you just arrive at a new location where you hope to find more witches, like yourself. To learn from them the skills it takes to be a witch. However you are greeted by someone who will show you your new house, but then tell you you owe the city a bunch of money for that specific house. Does this sound like the plot of a farming sim? Well it isn’t that, it is a Metroidvania without fighting or dying, but gathering and buying lots of ingredients to make dishes for the people around you.

It took me quite a few hours to fall in love with the game. The beginning was so nice, the movement felt good, the platforming was fun, the world looked amazing and a bunch of nice characters to meet. However, after the first tutorial part, I felt lost. The game mechanics didn’t click for me for hours and it took for me to follow a guide for 1/3 of the game to understand it and start to enjoy it without a recipe guide. So which tips do I have for others?
– First is to know that it is normal you’ll have to buy many many ingredients. Some are just not out there in the wilds and you are expected to buy them. For me as a cheapskate in games who mostly doesn’t use any potions in games because I’m afraid I need them for late in the game… this bit me in the *ss… You’re supposed to spend money in Magical Delicacy, not just for upgrades but also ingredients.
– The second thing is that you will earn enough feathers to buy the recipes. I was afraid to buy the wrong one which I didn’t need for quests and others that I needed but then didn’t have the feathers anymore. I’m not sure if you can encounter this problem, but likely not as you’ll have a bunch of quests all at once all the time.
– The third thing that helped me is learning that the story-related quests show a ! in the top right corner. I have no idea why it took me hours to even notice this.
– And last but not least. Tauno, a character that will teach you a second spell sells an item that is called “Notes on Flavor”. This is a lifesaver and helped me to finally let go of the recipe guides, as this one will show you the taste of the end result before making it. Don’t forget to equip it!

So with all those tips out of the way, what do I like about Magical Delicacy? Almost everything after that initial phase!
– The artwork is beautiful and has so many details. Like candles that go out if you run past them.
– So many characters and their background stories.
– It has such an interesting main story that takes a bit of time to develop but gets so interesting that I wanted to see the ending!
However, what I enjoyed most of all is the movement set you get. In typical Metroidvania style, you’ll unlock a bunch of new movements that help you reach new areas of the map. It also came with a bunch of teleport options which made traveling around so much easier. I really enjoyed the second and third movement set you’ll unlock! What is also lovely is that the game comes with settings to remove the gathering/cooking timed minigame in case you don’t enjoy this or have trouble with it.

Achievement-wise the game is so nice. A lot of the achievements unlock with story progression, or for buying all the cooking equipment. There are a bunch of achievements for collecting/using everything. I do recommend copying one of the lists of plantable ingredients and one of all ingredients and deleting those you have planted/used, because that achievement might take a while in the end while you can do already most of it while playing through the game.

I give Magical Delicacy 4 out of 5 stars. If you’re struggling at the beginning, just like me. Please check out my tips above or maybe use a recipe guide in the beginning, just to get the hang of things. It will click at some point, and it is such a lovely game.

This review for Magical Delicacy was written on 23 July 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 26 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.