How Close is This To Original Game

[DarkHawkGames [42C]]

I'm thinking about picking this game up, I was a huge fan of the original Cook Serve Delicious, I just want to know before I buy how close the gameplay is to the real game. I understand the cooking is similar, but I mean the aspect of running your own restaurant. Is that still the main focus of the game?

[Toad]

It isn't, really. At original release, your own restaurant was practically an after-thought with most of the focus being on the Chef-4-Hire mode. After updates, the mode for your own restaurant was improved, but it's still not as good as the first game's. You can decorate it, but actually running it just doesn't seem as satisfying as before, and still doesn't feel like the main focus of CSD2.

[Angrybutcher]

There's quite a lot more to 2. What really got me the first few attempts, was the drastically changed control system. That said, I've had more consistent perfect days in 2 than I did in 1.

[NEU-NEU]

The gameplay has a lot more to it than the 1st one. Here you have side/holding stations. You have to prepare stuffs even before customers show up. Some are required to make the dish, some are optionnal to improve the dish (which means a bonus tip). It's fun because it makes you think ahead and can be a problem whenever you run out of something during a rush hour :D

You have your own restaurant with your own menus, but you can also work in other themed restaurants for challenges in addition to grant you money, levels and bonus unlocks.

It's fun, really. Plus it has all the little improvements brought in the original, notably the multiplayer mode.

I am nowhere in the game, but i think it's only lacking some kind of progression/story mode with the cooking challenges from TV shows and ninjas :D

[Lupiressmoon]

Both games are fun but they're very different from each other.

[Moon Mind]

CSD2 introduces grind to the game; the Chef for Hire mode challenges you to earn a gold medal with a perfect day at each level (there are usually 10 or more) of over two dozen restaurants, and to try them over and over until you do. You don't actually have to earn gold unless you're hunting achievements, but it's pretty clearly set up as a goal. Although I do like the progression through different restaurants as a way to get gradually familiar with different categories and sets of foods, it makes it a whole lot more frustrating to screw up your perfect day with one wrong order, compared to the original CSD where you just march on regardless instead of having the haunting option to go back and fix the mistakes of your fumbling fingers. Also in exchange for having WAAAAY more foods to choose from, you can't upgrade them anymore; you get all the variations at once. So the selection is much wider, but it's also shallower.

Holding stations are a very cool new layer of strategy; they let you have dishes waiting ready to hand to the customers without having to prepare servings one-by-one, making the larger numbers of prep/order stations much easier to handle, but you have to ensure that you have enough quantity ready (and still fresh enough to serve) in your limited Holding Stations when the customers arrive. Controlling customers' patience with plentiful sides (which also use Holding Stations) also adds to the strategies you have for keeping things manageable.

The main menu is kind of terrible, the tools for decorating your restaurant are kind of terrible, and the fact that there's grind now is a bit sad. It was definitely part of the charm of the original how fun and intuitively everything flowed together, and that's missing from the new one.

However, inside each day, where you're taking on food orders and frantically managing chores, that golden nugget of intense task management gameplay is definitely still there and might be even better than in CSD1. That's my two cents. Hopefully it helps inform your decision.