In Outer Loop’s Dosa Divas, we take pots and pans and mechs and throw them all at enemies. Mostly.
Dosa Divas is charming as hell. With absolutely fantastic characters and setting, it focuses on a family dynamic where traditions and values and beliefs clash with capitalism and progress. The game treats us to hanging onto the The Old offset by the wonders and possibilities of The New, from what we see in village designs to clothing, to the way characters even speak. The game revels in these stark contrasts to drives its points, told through said cooking and fighting.
The game’s story revolves around Amani, who holds her family side very close and just wants to cook, her sister Samara, who is the sort of middle ground, and their sister Lina, who wants to move the family towards a larger enterprise. There’s also a cool robot mech named Goddess for some reason, and she’s bad ass. As the story weaves back and forth, and we discover the true intentions of what’s driving who, we find some great connections to each character that allow the story to be concise and yet also colorful as we get those multiple perspectives. Even the NPCs and enemies we battle have a freshness and liveliness to them that is enjoyable. Ultimately it’s a story about accepting each other and yet knowing when enough is enough, which some of the characters DO NOT WANT TO ADMIT.
Divas has us traversing around towns and villages that have expansive layouts, making them feelm lived in and vibrant. This sentinemet in design expands to the battles, which are also really fun, using both timing based attacks and boosts. The game feels pretty familiar in a lot of those aspects, but that’s welcomed because I WANT it to feel familiar. All too often RPGs will try to top themselves with mechanisms that are complex, but Dosa Divas wants its world to do the talking instead. There’s a color-based system that’s kind of like rock paper scissors in that it determines who specific attacks are more powerful against, and even if we’re powerful we typically can’t defeat an enemy all in one attack, so we have to juggle which of our party is hitting who. It creates a nice bit of strategy that lets battles become dances.
But this is a game about cooking.
The REASON for the cooking is something I’ve personally grown up with: making food for someone means that you care for them, accept them, and share with them. It’s respect. Being from a heavily immigrant family we had and still have giant family dinners, and I love to cook and prepare meals for guests. While Dosa Divas does feature bits of that, it’s ultimately translated into the game in cut scenes and fetch quests, and it’s kind of flat because of it. There are some really nice scenes that take place around food, but then there are also just repetition when it comes to hunting for ingredients. It’s not to mention that the actual cooking aspect is kind of bland and has minimal to actually do with cooking the ingredients in it. It’s just sort of set up as timing based mini games that apply different mechanics each time. They tend to start quickly, so it’s easy to make an early mistake and not get the good enough result that we want.
Cooking issues aside, Dosa Divas is still a fun, enjoyable experience that we can plow through in a weekend. Its great visuals, great characters, and engaing narrative make for a meal that keeps us wanting more, even if the snacks along the way aren’t the most filling.
This review is based on a Nintendo Switch 2 code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. This video first appeared as a part of The SideQuest Live for May 07, 2026.
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