This review contains spoilers
Cuphead’s promise of additional content was as long-awaited as the base game was years ago. As the whimsical, visually-striking indie title created an inferno of praise and notoriety since its release in 2017, we had forgotten the game’s humble, hellish production that deferred it for so long. Downloadable content for most triple-A developers is churned out within the year the base game is released, sometimes with multiple offerings in the case of Dark Souls III or The Witcher III. The Delicious Last Course was in production for so long that it risked being the first example of DLC with potential “Duke Nukem Forever” syndrome. The developers might as well have used the assets of the DLC to create a sequel, but what they released in that long swath of time only amounts to enough content to supplement the base game. However, this doesn’t mean that I am disappointed, as The Delicious Last Course offers enough to satisfy anyone who has been hankering for more Cuphead content.
Ms. Chalice, a minor character in the base game, seems to be the biggest focal point of the DLC. Cuphead and Mugman are escorted to the fourth isle of Inkwell via a Charon-esque boatman to procure a body for the incorporeal Ms. Chalice to inhabit. A chef on this isle named Saltbaker claims that he can create a body for Ms. Chalice, but only if the porcelain duo retrieve the ingredients by defeating every boss in the isle. A new charm allows the player to play as Ms. Chalice, and she isn’t just a female Cuphead like Mugman is his Luigi. Ms. Chalice can use every weapon the boys can, but she comes with a few quirks of her own. For one, parrying as Ms. Chalice involves dashing into a parryable object instead of simply jumping. Ms. Chalice possesses two new super arts which include a heart that allows her to take a hit of damage like Aku Aku and one where a goddess charges an army of spirits. Her energy beam super art will be more familiar, but it blasts vertically instead of horizontally. Naturally, the charm used to play as Ms. Chalice connotes that any charm formally equipped will be voided, but she can still execute an invisible dash by rolling. Additional perks also include a double jump and four heart points instead of three. Normally, I’d treat Ms. Chalice’s inclusion in Cuphead with stark cynicism and claim that she’s an attempt to cater to the more “casual sensibilities” of girls, but Ms. Chalice is different enough to where a new learning curve is needed to play as her for veteran players like myself.
If the player doesn’t feel comfortable acclimating to the quirks of a new character, the DLC offers plenty for both Cuphead and Mugman. Porkrind’s store is restocked with a smattering of new shots and charms for the boys to have a whack at. Converge is a three-way electric bolt, Twist-Up is like the Spread with less of a solid trajectory, and the Crackshot is like a more powerful version of the Chaser. Out of all of these, the only one I found useful was the Crackshot and have placed it amongst my key shots in my Cuphead repertoire. The most useful new charm is definitely the heart ring which can replenish the player’s HP after successfully parrying a certain amount of times. I mainly stuck with what I was already familiar with, but it’s admirable that the developers included more of these features for the player to experiment with while not deviating too far from familiarity.
Being apprehensive to experiment with the DLC’s new features was not due to being a creature of habit. As proficient as I am with Cuphead now, I cannot forget how this game put me through the gauntlet of pain and suffering upon my first playthrough. I had a feeling that considering Cuphead’s bread and butter are boss battles that the developers would craft some of the game’s most daunting boss fights that make most of the bosses from the base game seem like a cakewalk. Six boss battles await the player on Inkwell Isle IV, and each of them are formidable foes that encompass the full extent of Cuphead’s gameplay. Like the bosses in the base game, each offers a unique theming. Moonshine Mob is a prohibition-themed fight against a recycled, unused spider model and his voguish gang of insects. Mortimer Freeze will shift his frigid form to a snowman, fridge, and a snowflake. Rootin-tootin cowgirl (emphasis on cow) Esther Winchester is the sole biplane battle in the DLC while The Howling Aces uses the theme of dogfighting (emphasis on dog) as an aerial background. Besides the inherent unfamiliarity, the core aspect that makes these bosses more difficult is how amplified the bullet-hell aspects of Cuphead are here. The screens of most of these bosses are more congested than the streets of LA and the player will feel as if they will need the peripheral vision of a fly to see everything zooming around them. Each boss clutters the screen with hazardous objects, but the worst offenders are Glumstone the Giant and Saltbaker once he reveals his insidious intentions with Ms. Chalice’s spirit.
Cranking up the busyness of each boss seems too easy to implement for a simple difficulty increase, but the DLC offers more than this. A ladder descends from the sky on Isle IV to carry Cuphead and Mugman up to a royal-themed mini-boss gauntlet similar to King Dice’s casino-themed cronies. The gimmick with all of these bosses is that the player can only harm them through parrying. Each of these five bosses are as unique to one another as all of the main bosses in the DLC and do not have to be defeated sequentially without dying with King Dice. Defeating these bosses also nets the player some coins to purchase the new items. For some reason, all of the content outside of the five main bosses reminded me of the Chalice Dungeons from Bloodborne in that their hidden location and optional precedence upheld more intrigue to the DLC.
There is a part of me that feels as if we waited too long for more of Cuphead just to receive some paltry DLC, but then that statement feels a bit ungrateful. The developers evidently worked as hard and as diligently on the DLC as they did on the base game, and this shows through the overall quality of the bosses and extra content that is totally unique from the base game. Cuphead’s narrative and gameplay was not open-ended enough to add onto it, but the extra content served a purpose in satiating my hunger for more of this unparalleled gaming experience. I needed to be humbled by Cuphead again after feeling as if I had mastered it after all these years.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/
Ms. Chalice, a minor character in the base game, seems to be the biggest focal point of the DLC. Cuphead and Mugman are escorted to the fourth isle of Inkwell via a Charon-esque boatman to procure a body for the incorporeal Ms. Chalice to inhabit. A chef on this isle named Saltbaker claims that he can create a body for Ms. Chalice, but only if the porcelain duo retrieve the ingredients by defeating every boss in the isle. A new charm allows the player to play as Ms. Chalice, and she isn’t just a female Cuphead like Mugman is his Luigi. Ms. Chalice can use every weapon the boys can, but she comes with a few quirks of her own. For one, parrying as Ms. Chalice involves dashing into a parryable object instead of simply jumping. Ms. Chalice possesses two new super arts which include a heart that allows her to take a hit of damage like Aku Aku and one where a goddess charges an army of spirits. Her energy beam super art will be more familiar, but it blasts vertically instead of horizontally. Naturally, the charm used to play as Ms. Chalice connotes that any charm formally equipped will be voided, but she can still execute an invisible dash by rolling. Additional perks also include a double jump and four heart points instead of three. Normally, I’d treat Ms. Chalice’s inclusion in Cuphead with stark cynicism and claim that she’s an attempt to cater to the more “casual sensibilities” of girls, but Ms. Chalice is different enough to where a new learning curve is needed to play as her for veteran players like myself.
If the player doesn’t feel comfortable acclimating to the quirks of a new character, the DLC offers plenty for both Cuphead and Mugman. Porkrind’s store is restocked with a smattering of new shots and charms for the boys to have a whack at. Converge is a three-way electric bolt, Twist-Up is like the Spread with less of a solid trajectory, and the Crackshot is like a more powerful version of the Chaser. Out of all of these, the only one I found useful was the Crackshot and have placed it amongst my key shots in my Cuphead repertoire. The most useful new charm is definitely the heart ring which can replenish the player’s HP after successfully parrying a certain amount of times. I mainly stuck with what I was already familiar with, but it’s admirable that the developers included more of these features for the player to experiment with while not deviating too far from familiarity.
Being apprehensive to experiment with the DLC’s new features was not due to being a creature of habit. As proficient as I am with Cuphead now, I cannot forget how this game put me through the gauntlet of pain and suffering upon my first playthrough. I had a feeling that considering Cuphead’s bread and butter are boss battles that the developers would craft some of the game’s most daunting boss fights that make most of the bosses from the base game seem like a cakewalk. Six boss battles await the player on Inkwell Isle IV, and each of them are formidable foes that encompass the full extent of Cuphead’s gameplay. Like the bosses in the base game, each offers a unique theming. Moonshine Mob is a prohibition-themed fight against a recycled, unused spider model and his voguish gang of insects. Mortimer Freeze will shift his frigid form to a snowman, fridge, and a snowflake. Rootin-tootin cowgirl (emphasis on cow) Esther Winchester is the sole biplane battle in the DLC while The Howling Aces uses the theme of dogfighting (emphasis on dog) as an aerial background. Besides the inherent unfamiliarity, the core aspect that makes these bosses more difficult is how amplified the bullet-hell aspects of Cuphead are here. The screens of most of these bosses are more congested than the streets of LA and the player will feel as if they will need the peripheral vision of a fly to see everything zooming around them. Each boss clutters the screen with hazardous objects, but the worst offenders are Glumstone the Giant and Saltbaker once he reveals his insidious intentions with Ms. Chalice’s spirit.
Cranking up the busyness of each boss seems too easy to implement for a simple difficulty increase, but the DLC offers more than this. A ladder descends from the sky on Isle IV to carry Cuphead and Mugman up to a royal-themed mini-boss gauntlet similar to King Dice’s casino-themed cronies. The gimmick with all of these bosses is that the player can only harm them through parrying. Each of these five bosses are as unique to one another as all of the main bosses in the DLC and do not have to be defeated sequentially without dying with King Dice. Defeating these bosses also nets the player some coins to purchase the new items. For some reason, all of the content outside of the five main bosses reminded me of the Chalice Dungeons from Bloodborne in that their hidden location and optional precedence upheld more intrigue to the DLC.
There is a part of me that feels as if we waited too long for more of Cuphead just to receive some paltry DLC, but then that statement feels a bit ungrateful. The developers evidently worked as hard and as diligently on the DLC as they did on the base game, and this shows through the overall quality of the bosses and extra content that is totally unique from the base game. Cuphead’s narrative and gameplay was not open-ended enough to add onto it, but the extra content served a purpose in satiating my hunger for more of this unparalleled gaming experience. I needed to be humbled by Cuphead again after feeling as if I had mastered it after all these years.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/