RS2 News (Jan 2018)

It's time for my first monthly moan of 2018 on the topic of Restaurant Story 2. In fairness it's been a fairly active month in the sequel game, with two new cruise events and two batches of goals from Lani.

But we begin with the winter cruise event which kicked off just before my previous news post at the start of December. Although the content available via this challenge wasn't new, it was the first time it had featured in a cruise event, which is more than can be said for most of the cruises in recent times.

Yancy the Yeti was the special guest we were aiming to unlock, and I did so after a four gem spend on the final day to force a restock of Potatoes. Otherwise it was a reasonably comfortable one for me, although as has become customary the wait for Yancy to show his face was less comfortable. I tend to find that a new visitor appears very infrequently early on - that could be because there are now so many special guests, but it could also be an underlying issue in the game's mechanics.

 RS2 News

 02/12/17 December 2017
 04/11/17 November 2017
 14/10/17 October 2017
 09/09/17 September 2017
 12/08/17 August 2017

Anyway, from winter we went straight into festive overdrive with the Christmas cruise event. No need to get too excited though, what with the decor up for grabs all being straight out of 2015. This event was repeated in 2016, so to see it again 12 months on was an extra kick in the teeth.

What really caused me proper disgruntlement was the recipe unearthed at the climax of the cruise. There's nothing wrong with Elfie delivering the special ingredient - Festive Flavouring - or even the fact that seven are needed to cook the Naughty or Nice Cookies. My negativity is directed at the need for three European Butter as an ingredient.

Unlocking of Naughty or Nice Cookies

European Butter is of course the ingredient available exclusively from converting gold stamps at the Farm Fresh Stand, and gold stamps are not all that easy to come by. So to make players put all that effort into completing a 10 day cruise only to then present us with that permanent additional hurdle hurts badly. It's a problem which is growing - there are now several dishes which call for either the butter or the silver stamp sourced Turbinado Sugar, and this is just outright wrong.

With this emerging trend, I've started taking on the three-step goal that comes with each cruise and rewards three gold stamps at its conclusion. As a player who is determined to master every recipe in the game, these goals are now rather invaluable since they are the best yielders of those precious stamp ingredients.

Problem is you need enough of the latest special ingredient to cook the prize recipe within three or four days of finishing the cruise. And as I alluded to with my wait for Yancy earlier, procuring those ingredients in time can be tricky. Who am I kidding - it's virtually impossible. I've read advice that visiting another restaurant and then returning can help ensure the new guest pops up more often, but the fact of the matter is that we shouldn't have to take such measures.

Following that Christmas edition we were given some cruise respite, with Lani landing instead. She's provided two collections of goals in the past month, with the first launching on Christmas Day (oh what a present... not!) and the second appearing this past Tuesday.

Gold stamp goal from Lani's 26th goals

Of course with this increasing reliance on stamp generated ingredients Lani's goals are now looking that bit more appealing. And I say that having suffered preparing 60 Veggie Juices during the first of the two most recent editions. What a monotonous and grinding task! I've played Storm8 games long enough to know that they are absolutely capable of better than this, but in Restaurant Story 2 they seem to take the view that the more tedious something is the better.

Nevertheless I did bag the maximum of two gold stamps and 10 silver stamps across Lani's 26th and 27th goal sets. She still annoys me though...

Last year was polished off with one last cruise, the 22nd of 2017. The New Year cruise event didn't exactly bring anything revolutionary to the table, with the same old format and same old frustration when orders you weren't in a position to complete came up again and again. It's not a problem in the early days, but once you get to the crunch that meter can move so slowly!

My progress really stalled on the last couple of days, and it shows in my total spend to finish the job - 28 quick serves and eight gems were burned in the name of the New Year's Day Mimosa. And the absence of any stamp ingredient in its making ensured I was relieved to have paid up to get hold of it. The sight of a dish dominated by in demand goods such as Sugar, Flour and Cream used to frighten me, but now it's a godsend.

Main page of New Year, New Me! cruise event

Once again I had great trouble waiting for Kasey Cakum to turn up and offload some New Year's Confetti. I finished the cruise early on Monday morning and by the time the three gold stamp goal was expiring on Thursday night he'd visited twice. Just twice. That's pretty pathetic in my opinion, and I'll happily challenge anyone who disagrees. Out went another five gems to obtain the additional confetti needed, with the gold stamps bagged with a quick serve and four minutes left on the goal clock.

However, on a personal note, it's not all been bad news over the past month. On 3rd January trusty Cid dropped by with a Blueprint. The blueprint that allowed me to execute an expansion. The final expansion.

Final expansion requirements

After more than three years I've finally maxed out my restaurant, The Onion Bush, in terms of size. I must admit it's a great moment, and I do feel a real sense of achievement. Now my attention turns to the next upgrade related challenge, with the pantry, restock levels in the Seafood Shop and Fruit Market, and the Street Market all still to reach their respective capacities. I think I'm going to attack the pantry next since extra space will be very handy during cruises, plus I'm only five upgrades away from maxing it anyway.

That almost does it for this month's analysis, although I do have one last titbit to share. I first loaded up Restaurant Story 2 on Christmas Day in 2014, and so on 25th December I reached the three year milestone. And as is customary on that day, I took a screenshot of my place's overview window:

Restaurant Overview of The Onion Bush

I mentioned last month that I'd joined the 900-club in the mastery stakes, but the most telling number here is the recipes learned. Why? Because on the same day in 2016 this figure stood at 283. So in 12 months I learned just 40 new dishes. That shows just how much the game has slowed down, and is backed up by the number of decorations I have - that was 567 a year ago, so only a fraction added. Finally, my activity has fallen significantly. I cooked around 5,500 orders in 2017, which translates to less than 11% of my all-time total.

I'm not surprised by the last of these statistics. After all in the last few months I've stopped bothering with cooking across all my appliances. I've got 72.4 million coins at the time of writing and nothing to spend them on so what's the point? Instead I'm just putting all my resources into those recipes which still require mastery (I'm pretty obsessed with mastery!)

There's no doubt that 2017 was not a vintage year for Restaurant Story 2. Recycling of content and events has been the main cause of this, and the repetition has certainly contributed to the long term impact of next to no community spirit in the game. I can still remember the initial excitement and wonderment when the sequel title was first released, and it's sad to see it falling so flat at this point. Could 2018 see it restored to former glories? I suspect not, but certainly hope otherwise.