Your character will just do things without indication to the player of what's going on until it's brought up in the conversation. "Thanks" is as good as it gets and then you really get the feeling that what little you do has very little impact on the whole. Do you like to put WAY too much Karmotrine? Well that's fine, booze away! But know that it will have no affect on the conversation or your relationship with the character in front of you. When you get to serve a drink it is straightforward and easy to pull off, which isn't bad but without any payoff it feels pointless. It's a visual novel for the most part which isn't necessarily bad but it did fall below my expectations of what I thought the game would be based on looking at the website some years ago. The game we have here is cool mostly because I love the art, but it's severely lacking in meaningful choices and gameplay. It seemed like it was going to be a bit more tongue in cheek to have characters come in with a story and then have the robot bartender be like "Hm, what drink goes with sadness?" or "They seem to have something on their mind, better spike their drink so they can get it off their chest." It gave me the impression that it would be a bit more gameplay driven in terms of choices to let someone be and not get involved or to be heavily involved in terms of getting their gossip/drama. No drunken dialogue (save for a few secret drunken dialogues) That aspect mostly only plays in if you need to leave it out completely for the rare occasion that someone doesn't want alcohol. Then the question would come about if that is even okay to do even with the best intentions? (A la Kim who is calmed by a drink but then sleeps in from her job the next day, but is unavoidable in the story now.) There seemed to be a greater focus on shmoozing and boozing as I think a remnant of the system is still in the game with the ability to crank up the booze when a drink calls for "Optional Karmotrine" but there is 0 effect on the characters. There was an acknowledgement of it being about getting to know strangers and that the player would have to approach people differently in asking the right questions or getting them drunk to open up. However being an AI that doesn't experience emotions in the same way and without a fear of death he would have a hard time offering advice so he'd try to help in the best way he knows: Bartending. I remember reading the little synopsis, looking at the art and what I've been playing seems very different from what it was originally conceived as.īefore (As I recall) you were going to be a male Lilim bartender that people would come in and dump their emotional problems on. I remember a while back when I stumbled across the webpage for this game. If that sounds off putting to you, I'd say pass. Overall I would suggest you can give this game a try if you understand it is a "visual novel" much more than a "game", and if you can tolerate the game being light, quirky, and somewhat immature. I could then "reset" the drink and remake it without any negative consequences. If I by chance threw in the wrong amount of an ingredient, the drink would show it was incorrect before I served it. In fact, I felt absolutely no pressure from the bartending aspect of the game. On to the "gameplay" elements: I felt it was a strange decision to not give any incentives to make drinks fast or to make them without reviewing the recipe book. I understand that this is largely related to personal taste, but this game is first and foremost a visual novel (and the story and writing are the main points to review). There was an excess of seemingly out of place immature sexual comments. I found myself skipping over conversations related to "lore" as the world felt relatively uninspired and irrelevant to the interactions in the bar. Perhaps I am older than the target audience, but I felt the writing was fairly boring. My biggest complaint would be the writing. Those positives being noted, I felt there was missed potential. I like the concept of a bartender simulator. I'm somewhat sad to give this game a negative review, as it genuinely has charm to it. I completed this game and while there are positive and negative aspects to this game, I will have to give it a thumbs down.
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