Which game has the best cooking system?

[Space Satan]

I did not witnessed olde RPGs, like Eye of Beholder and early M&Ms, so maybe oldfags here could shed some light on old cooking systems, if there were any. Because todays anything related with food in RPGs is just a get A and B to prepare Potion C, or eat 1 Food item once "Hungry" status pop up. So far I can remember:
Skyrim
Cooking is worthless - you get only healing and the weakest spell is more powerful that most complex food you can prepare. Some mods tried to fix it by emulating hardcore mode but results are not impressive.
Fallout NV
In theory Hardcore mode should increase value of Survival skill and yes, the most valuable asset was cactus water you can make, but overall cooking was crap and unable to justify serious skill investment.
ADOM
Cooking dwarven children, dragons, demons, undead, men, women, knights, displacer beats, blink dogs, grannies, wizards, EVERYONE! One of the most entertaining systems, as most corpses provided your character with unique bonuses and penalties.
Dwarf Fortress
Wet dream of the perfectionist. After slaughtering one cow you'll get tendons, bones, horns. Everything creature consist of would be there ripe for the cooking, tanning and soap making.

Who can remember cooking skills and interesting food mechanics in other games?

 

[Night Goat]

 

[Gord]

 

[titus]

 

[1451]

In Arx Fatalis the player character would get hungry. There were various recipes, some of which you the player had to discover.

In Lord of the Rings Online cooking was a profession similar to alchemy. Food gave buffs just like potions.

Generally speaking, cooking in games is best represented through alchemy in gameplay terms.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Monster Hunter? You got kitchen with cat chiefs, combining integrents for various results (to go to the field missions stronger/weaker).
Strange but eating meat with milk or some fruits with milk don't made any sick effect. No realism, wut.

 

[Random]

I remember killing chickens in the pen at the Champion's Guild in Runescape to take their freshly plucked corpses and cook them in the range inside all day until I got into the cooking guild and just took grapes there to make wine all day, all so I could grind up my cooking skill to the point that I could cook lobbies and use them on quests (I could already fish them so I was now entirely self-sufficient for food).

Good times.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

I liked that you didn't have to hoard healing potions in Gothic 3 (and two previous games to lesser extend), you could just get a bow and go hunting since cooked food healed your health by percentage and not set amount. Sure, cooking/food system was weak in itself, it was just nice that hunting was actually useful for something.

 

[Fowyr]

Unreal World. Make a roast from your wife and eat it with a pea soup.

For other genres I remember Academagia would be potentially fun if not so broken in crafting department.

as some corpses provided your character with unique bonuses and penalties.

Fixed.

 

[Gregz]

Everquest had a pretty intricate cooking craft system, as did/does WoW.

 

[Damned Registrations]

WoW was indeed pretty good for this: lots of ingredients, recipes had to be learned from books/trainers etc., and food gave buffs that lasted quite a while.

Nethack did it nicely also. Lots of permanent benefits to be gained from eating corpses. Slash'em took it even further with a doppleganger race, which could more reliably transform into creatures you've eaten before (though it was OP as fuck anyways.)

There's an odd dungeon crawler called Ehrgeiz for the playstation that had a nutrion system built into it as well. Diet affected stat gains on level up. Eat nothing but mushrooms and your character would have no magical apptitude, defense or strength, but lots of agility, for example.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Generally speaking, cooking in games is best represented through alchemy in gameplay terms.

This.

The first time I saw cooking in a RPG was in Ultima Underworld where you could "mix" Rotworm Stew. Oddly enough you didn't cook it, only mixed it. Ew.
In the sequel you could make popcorn by using an ear of corn on a lit torch. You could find (or fish) 2 tons of fish, but you couldn't cook one to save your life. And food in the UW had various levels of quality, there was a missed opportunity of complexity missed there... probably on purpose.

The Gothic and Risen series not only allowed you to cook your meat, it was encouraged as it raised the health gain from each piece of meat. There was nothing involved excepting "using" a campfire.

Ultima 7 allowed you to bake bread. IIRC the process was to put flour on a table, add water to the flour to make dough, use a rolling pin on the dough and then put the dough in an oven and wait for a few seconds. You couldn't overbake or burn the bread, though. Bread was just bread once it was ready.

(Ultima 7 also allowed you to get 5 legs of meat from a dead deer, but that's a different story.)

 

[Horus]

God damn! You made me install this game again.

 

[Cyberarmy]

All good examples, I can add Guild Wars 2 to the list. Most of the recipes are alike our and make sense.

 

[Whisky]

No full t-bone steak on it. Shit sucks.

 

[Lancehead]

I liked that you didn't have to hoard healing potions in Gothic 3 (and two previous games to lesser extend), you could just get a bow and go hunting since cooked food healed your health by percentage and not set amount. Sure, cooking/food system was weak in itself, it was just nice that hunting was actually useful for something.

It was too much, though:

Spoiler

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Open a McDonalds?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Didn't Suikoden II have some kind of cooking mini-game? Must've been pretty simplistic though.

You could also argue that any more or less advanced crafting or alchemy system is essentially a cooking system

 

[Dwemer Puzzle Box]

Gothic 1 i 2

Spoiler

 

[rbenchley]

The Tales and Star Ocean games on consoles have pretty good cooking components:

 

[Rahdulan]

Didn't Suikoden II have some kind of cooking mini-game? Must've been pretty simplistic though.

Yeah, Suikoden 2 cooking was pretty good. Shame it was essentially a finite content mini-game because it was tied to a sidestory, but I liked how many types of dishes there were based on ingredient combinations AND they actually had a gameplay use with same dishes having different effects depending on what spice and seasoning was used. It's probably up there with with Star Ocean games.

Honorary mention goes to Vanillaware games where cooking is simple and with added benefits, but always gets me salivating because of the gorgeous artwork.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Jet Jenkins makes the best sushi.