Great game!

VA-11 Hall-A is a bartending game that focuses primarily on progressing the story through dialogue and mixing drinks for different customers. It’s most similar in genre to a visual novel / mixing sim and is developed by Sukeban Games and published by Ysbryd Games, PLAYISM. It released back in Jun 21 of 2016. I had no history with this title except from hearing about all of the glowing reviews from friends who did have experience with it. I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about and wasn’t expecting anything too revolutionary as I’ve played mixology games before, kind of like Coffee Talk, which is another title that I really enjoyed.

The plot focuses on a woman bartending at a local dive within a far flung future cyberpunk-esq city. Here she engages with and speaks with various different patrons that impart on her the difficulties of life and the goings and happenings of the city outside. You’ll learn more about these characters and become more engaged in the world as you mix drinks to their satisfaction and progress the narrative. The story is quite compelling and explores various themes of culture and civilization. Government, religion, politics, ethics, and morals are all explored through dialogue. The length of this title is well paced, and I would say very suited for the scope and breadth of the story.

Core gameplay focuses on clicking through dialogue and mixing drinks to customers satisfaction. You have different ingredients that you can add to drinks and this will impact the kinds of drinks that you can make for customers. You’ll become more familiar with the menu as time goes on and may even memorize some of the ingredients to make regular recurring drinks that patrons will ask for. There are also hidden menu drinks that you can mix that will impact the outcome of certain dialogue sequences as well as achievements and endings for the story. I will say it’s a satisfying gameplay loop and there’s nothing that sticks out about it as a drag. Controls are fine and can be interacted with through either clicking or on the keyboard. I would say using the keyboard is far superior as it is faster, but I don’t think this title does a very good job of relaying to you the player that the keyboard is an option, so be aware of that. There is no difficulty setting to the game, just the one experience. It neither gets more or less difficult, there is no time crunch or goal, just mixing drinks. It’s a very chill experience.

The visual style of this title is very anime. Characters are cute, kawaii, grizzled, buff, smooth, and more. It’s hyper stylized and the art design fits the style quite well. It’s not off-putting, but does have a look to it. There isn’t really any animation but there is movement to imply reactions, and there’s a good amount of detail within the characters and background itself. The background rarely, if ever changes, so there’s not going to be much to look at there, which is fine since the characters themselves are the focus of the experience. The game runs well, and I didn’t have any performance issues.

The soundtrack is quite good, although it’s not anything I haven’t heard before within a cyberpunk game. It complements the theme well, and has a pixelation vibe which is shockingly accurate to the vision here. There’s no voice acting within the game, just text sounds, so it’s up to your imagination as to how the characters sound.

There is no variety within your environment. It’s the same bar every single day. There’s no exploration in the world, only exploration through dialogue. This can be repetitive depending on your expectations. This isn’t really an action packed experience here. Immersion occurs entirely through what the other characters relay to you, so you’ll have to pay close attention to what they are saying and have some level of social awareness to pick up on various cues that happen.

This is actually a somewhat lengthy experience, average gameplay time lasting around 11 hours, roughly 18 if you want to 100% it, although it only took me around 15 to do so. There’s not really any “endgame” content, and replayability is limited to achievement hunting or exploring various mystery drink options. There’s a lot here to chew on though, and if you’re interested in an involved narratively driven story then this is for you.

Final verdict is 5/5. This is for anyone that enjoys dialogue/click heavy story experiences, similar to Coffee Talk (almost one in the same actually). I probably won’t ever play this again, but I am excited to see the sequel that they are apparently working on. There’s also a Va-11 Hall-A addition to the popular TTRPG Cyberpunk Red that might be worth checking out if that’s your thing.

Nice music but boring chatter. As with these type of games go... YMMV.

Heck I'm a teetotaler myself.

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