Cuphead - The Delicious Last Course

The Delicious Last Course is not padding. It is Studio MDHR sitting down after years of post-launch quiet and asking what the hardest, most visually ambitious version of Cuphead could look like. The answer arrives on a brand new island, with Chef Saltbaker at the center of it, and a roster of bosses that each feel like the final exam of whatever lesson the base game was teaching. If you bounced off Cuphead because the difficulty felt punishing without payoff, this DLC will not convert you. But if you finished the original and felt that specific hunger for one more round, this feeds it completely. Ms. Chalice is the structural heart of the expansion, and she changes how the game feels to control in ways that matter. She brings a double jump, a dodge roll with invincibility frames, and a ground slam that opens up aggressive play patterns the original characters never had access to. She also carries her own set of charms, which interact with the new weapon slots in ways that reward experimentation. Playing as her is not strictly easier, it is different, and that distinction is worth sitting with. Veterans who want the purist path can still run Cuphead or Mugman through every new encounter. The bosses here are the main event, and they deserve the attention they will get. Each one is multi-phase, hand-animated in that impossible 1930s rubber-hose style Studio MDHR has made their signature, and choreographed with an almost musical logic. There is a chef fight that escalates in ways I would rather not spoil. There is a snow baron who shifts the entire visual register mid-encounter. The hitbox reading, the pattern recognition, the split-second muscle memory the game demands, all of it is tuned tighter than most of what came before. Expect deaths. Expect learning curves that feel steep and then, suddenly, manageable. What impresses me most, from a craft perspective, is the restraint. This is a short DLC. It knows exactly how long it should be. It does not add a hub world, extra dialogue loops, or filler content to justify its existence. You arrive on the island, the art direction signals something special immediately, and then the game asks you to prove yourself. The soundtrack, composed with the same period-accurate big band sensibility as the original, is genuinely worth listening to outside the game. A few of the boss themes are the best work in the entire Cuphead catalog. If there is a caveat, it is the same one that has always followed this series. The skill floor is real. New players should not start here. And the overall runtime, even accounting for the learning-through-death loop, will feel brief to anyone who clears it efficiently. But the density of craft per minute is extraordinary. Studio MDHR built something small and made it count.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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