But before we get to the quiet, we have to deal with some busy. At the time of my last round-up, the Valentine's Day cruise event was in progress, with my uncharacteristic excitement stemming from the promise of the special guest - Frank - delivering Valentine Cards once unlocked. Why was this causing a buzz for me? Because back in February 2015 those Valentine Cards were key to a goal set. They were required to unlock recipes on the Valentine Oven, and I was unable to capture them all before the deadline.
The Heartberry Tart has remained unobtainable throughout the two years since, and yet it remains so. That's because the Valentine Cards produced by the gem making recipe are distinct from the 'Valentine' offered during that quest in 2015.
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| Seasonal Pantry including two types of Valentine Cards |
Cue despair. To my knowledge the Heartberry Tart is the only dish ever to appear in the game which I haven't had access to, and I daresay it is the only recipe I cannot possibly master.
If ever there was something I'd like Storm8 to address in Restaurant Story 2, this is it. How difficult would it be to make the Valentine Cards gathered from cooking the Sweetheart Swiss Roll applicable to unlocking the Heartberry Tart? I'm very upset here! Maybe I'm overreacting and need to get a grip, but I'm not going to stand down - this was a such a let down!
After my heartbreaking Valentine's Day there was the opportunity to put that misery to the back of my mind with the 11th edition of Lani's goals. There's not a great deal to be said about these, with the typical format of three tasks rewarding a gold stamp, three silver stamps and two silver stamps respectively.
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| Three silver stamp goal from 11th set of Lani's goals |
I'm actually edging towards mastery of all of the stamp recipes in the game, with just a few requiring the European Butter still to reach three stars. Once I've done that my previous grumpiness when it comes to Lani and her challenges will return with a vengeance!
Next up was the Festival cruise event. Lots of colour, lots of vibrancy and lots of content we've seen before. It has become standard procedure for the gamemakers to just re-use stuff from the past in cruises, and that was again the case here.
However this time it was particularly displeasing. Not only had all of the prizes awaiting unlocking featured previously, they all did so in a cruise event. The Mardi Gras cruise in 2016 included the likes of the Mardi Gras Jester, meaning that we have actually had this event before, just with a different name and different final prize.
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Main page of Festival cruise event
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On the first instance of this cruise the climatic prize was the visits of Mardi Gras Belle who brought with her Celebration Beads for making King Cake. This time Karmen is the special guest, with his Tropical Fruit contributing to the Tropical Tart. The tart is the 12th gem producer on the Jubilee Oven and the 23rd provider of gems overall. The truth of it is that we've now gone well beyond the threshold at which you can keep up with the sheer number of ingredients coming in. For example I personally have over 1,300 Steak Sauces, and will surely never be able to use them all up.
And that's despite having invested in a second Jubilee Oven. Last month I discussed the belated arrival of the opportunity to purchase an additional Jubilee Oven for gems, but I was still on the fence as to whether it was really worth bothering with. However, with no new stuff to splash my hard-earned gems on, I thought why not! The extra cooker has helped me put some ingredients into mastering those standard dishes which don't yield gems, and mastery stars are my main priority these days.
The Festival cruise was released on the 23rd February, and we've not had anything since. The last two Thursdays have drawn blanks, leaving Restaurant Story 2 in a similar limbo to its predecessor. However the fairer comparison for the sequel title is surely with Bakery Story 2, another of Storm8's 'next generation' games. And the comparison is favourable - I've just learnt today that BS2 has not had any updates since around Christmas, and even then the last few updates featured recycled content - sound familiar?!
RS2 News
04/02/17 February 2017
07/01/17 January 2017
03/12/16 December 2016
05/11/16 November 2016
08/10/16 October 2016
07/01/17 January 2017
03/12/16 December 2016
05/11/16 November 2016
08/10/16 October 2016
The slow down of updates across both of the new age titles leads me to speculate that these games have not performed as well for Storm8 as was anticipated, nor as was required. We've moved into total guesswork here, but I do ponder if the comparative failure of these two is a major contributing factor in the recent lay-offs suffered by the game's developers. If that is the case then they may be the most likely candidates to be dropped from the fleet if such action is necessary. That might sound cruel, but the reality is that this would potentially be good news for dedicated followers of the original games.
That does it for the past month's news. As I've said in earlier posts, I sincerely hope that the apparent disorder at Storm8 Towers is resolved in the near future. Restaurant Story 2 has already haemorrhaged a lot of players over the last few months due to the shortage of brand new decor, and it would be sad to see such a polished looking game pulled. But let's stay positive, it'll all be fine in the end!
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