Cook Serve Forever

Respect to the team for taking risks. This is a big leap from the rest of the series - there's more focus on simplicity and polish, and less on hours and hours of replayability.

I found the new gameplay great fun, the story charming, and the music great. I don't want games to take 1000 hours and be my new hobby these days, so this complete 10-hour experience was great, for me.

I honestly don't understand the hate this game is getting. This is coming from someone who have had the pleasure of being part of the CSD community from the very first game when it was first launched.
CSF is definitely using a different formula from its predecessors. This game is meant to be relaxing, hence no complicated keyboard combinations to complete a dish. No station feature as well, just one dish at a time. You pressed the wrong button? You can still get a perfect dish.
Again, this game is SUPPOSED to be just cooking and relaxing. I feel this is more like a visual novel but cooking.
CSF is very fun and rewarding once you get past the voices that keep telling you that this is not fun if you have had played the previous 3. I have, and this is such a fun title in the whole series.
This game is only NOT FUN if you keep comparing CSF with the other CSD. At this point you might want to join the lobsters in the pot and put a lid on yourself.

Welcome to CS:VN - Cook Serve Visual Novel. Enjoy cute art with mostly lacking gameplay mechanics.
Now, I'm playing this game after its 1.0 release, and I don't judge it by previous CSD games I've played. In comparison with those the disappointment would be even bigger.
People reading my reviews know, that above all I value addicting gameplay mechanics that are satisfying to execute. Unfortunately, in CSF those are almost non-existent. I'm totally missing sense of progress in this game. No food upgrades, no menu selection, no additional gameplay mechanics - even a single thing that would add some spice into this fully linear experience. You've pretty much seen it all since the first minutes of the game.
On top of that, the game was entirely designed with controllers in mind, sure, you can use keyboard, but it's visible that it was not the intended way to play it. That alone is not a bad thing, but CSD series was on top of everything else, a typing game, which CSD2 took to extreme, CSD3 striked perfect balance, while CSF ruined it.
Honestly, if it wasn't the massive amount of work put into the art and overall experience, I'd rate this negative. I don't have the guts to do it though - the story is heartwarming, giving a lot of positive vibes, it really pays off - if it wasn't only for those gameplay mechanics that are entirely off here. The combination that CSF includes really doesn't click, see VA-11 Hall-A as a prime example where mixing several genres worked really well instead.
Would I recommend it? Ehh, I really don't know. I don't feel bad playing it, after all I've 100% finished it, so if it was that bad I'd drop it. On the other hand it's also not a title I'd suggest grabbing, especially for its current price, which I believe is overpriced a little considering the content included.
Feeling up for a challenge? Grab CSD, continue with CSD2, and finish with CSD3. Feeling up for a nice storytelling? Grab Life is Strange, The Walking Dead, Sherlock Holmes or something. Want to mix both because you have weird taste? CSF might be a nice experience after all, if you give it a fair shot, ignore its problems and handle its gameplay mechanics like I did - annoying mandatory breaks that require some button mashing during otherwise nice cutscenes. Yes, it's harsh, but it's the best that can be said about the game that missed its point so much that it required a complete rewrite at the end of making it. Sorry Nora, you're the perfect chef, but not in the world they forced you to cook into.
---
If you liked my review, you can find more of them on my profile and on my curator page.

If you are a CSD freak who got hooked on this series by smashing your keyboard to quick-prep lasagna layers and you are coming here for that adrenaline rush...then actually, Cook Serve Forever is probably *not* going to be your favorite game. This is a heartfelt, story-driven game, with less multitasking and time pressure than the prior three games in the series.
However, I found that CSF has its own charms. The story is genuinely endearing, with good characters, funny moments, and competent voice acting. And the new cooking mechanics -- controller-based, where you can multi-task recipe steps by split-braining your left and right hands -- does give a feeling of satisfaction once you get into the groove. (The food also *looks* delicious, so this is highly recommended for fans of well-rendered entrees.)
I ultimately only ended up with ~3 hours on the game because I became about as good as I was going to get at the cooking mechanics, so the main gameplay interaction was just repetition from there to the end of the game. That's the point where I got off this train, but it's not where everyone will get off. If you enjoyed the easier difficulties of the previous CSD games, or if you plan to digest this in small play sessions to relax every evening, then you'll be at home here, and you'll get a nice story to boot.
Boy, am I ready for that remaster of CSD 1, though! Can't wait to get back to slapping down those lasagna layers.

Beware, this is not a traditional "Cook, Serve, Delicious" game, the orders aren't random, it's easier than any other CSD games, and you follow the story of a character through little cutscenes and little discussions during the "cooking challenges", and outside of it.

It's very much a kinetic visual novel (as in you don't make any choices but you follow the story) in essence, mixed with gameplay of having to cook dishes which are multiple series of QTE actions, like cutting stuff with a knife requires you to press LB/R1 16 times, other actions will require other prompts and they're all shared between recipes.

It's not as hard as the other Cook Serve games but will still provide a challenge if you're aiming for 100% accuracy in all locations and all gold medals. The story was good and I really liked the game for what it is, so I whole heartedly recommend it.

This game is a pretty significant departure from the mechanics of the previous CSD games. Overall the game is much simpler and asks for less perfection, so for me it was much chiller and a great wind down game.
The game is mostly story focused (a story I found pretty nice!), following the main character's journey through cooking and the life surrounding it.
The actual mechanics give a bit of the pattern recognition that is familiar to the CSD series, where in different operations take different set keystrokes. This game differs in that the subset of operations is pretty small, but each recipe takes multiple operations and these are divied out between each hand (i.e. each hand does things separately). There's some skill there in getting independence between your hands, but it's not too difficult to push through.
Overall if you want a chiller game with some pretty art and neat story experience that still has some Cook Serve Delicious roots this is a great game.

I haven't played any of the other games in the series, so I can't compare Cook Serve Forever to them. On its own, though, I don't think it's nearly as bad as some of the reviews make it seem.
The art is really great, from the characters and backgrounds to the cutscenes and especially the food. I also loved the soundtrack. The songs had a habit of sticking in my head long after I closed the game- which was only annoying when I would rage quit and the music taunted me afterwards.
The story was better than I expected, and the dialogue was only cheesy about 30% of the time.
The biggest issue is the difficulty. It starts off easy enough, but it gets progressively harder until you're fighting for your life trying to make food. If you're an achievement hunter going for 100%, good luck. I literally had friends over trying to help me out.
I don't think it's worth $30. Around $22 feels more reasonable, but thankfully it goes on sale pretty often.