VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Title sums it up pretty well. Va-11 HALL-a is really good at making you feel part of its world as a living organism. You have regular clients you learn to know about at a personal level, you have rents and bills to pay, you have your own needs to attend to, and your life can be pretty much summed up to your work. While the choice of being a bartender is a really good idea - and a really clever way to have you deal with a bunch of characters that you would never really see in the same room otherwise - the execution is sadly not as great. While most of the game is spent talking to the characters and living the life of Jill, which is great, the bar-minigame is really a let down. Let me explain more precisely : In most visual novels (Which Va-11 HALL-A is part of), you often listen to dialogue, and are given a few options of dialogue or actions that can affect the story. This allow you to change the story quite significantly, and generally you can draw the flowchart of the game. In Vallhalla, however, you are never met with such choices. Instead, you will use your drink making interface to make the drinks the client wants (or you want to give to your clients). A few times in its story, you will have *special* moments where you can guess what the client really wants instead of what he asks, and that's how you make the "good" or the "bad" choices. There's no penalty to not doing these, although you will be locked from particular endings if you fuck up. While being able to give a special drink when it is context sensitive to do so is quite fun and clever, the number of times you will have to make a lot of drinks that are "direct orders" are boring and menial. Not only that, but there's very little way of failing these - no time constraint exists. You can take an hour to serve that drink, so you can go into your menu and find the recipe without any stress. There's no challenge, which is a disappointment. I recommend this game for the story, but not its gameplay.

I enjoyed mixing drinks from the start to the finish. The fact that mixing them well makes the story progress in one direction (as mixing them badly turns it into anoter), adds a lot of entertainment to the whole game. The characters reminded me of actual people in a canteena, drinking their worries away and dealing with depression (but in a good way), most of the time. I loved how the game put me into one situation and another with every character (some of them I disliked, though others I appreciate). It reminded me of how the world outside a computer really is. The manual was actually pretty helpful, yet I must admit I had no clue about distinguishing mixing from blending, since I've never mixed a cocktail before, but it was very easy and fast to figure it out. I didn't find much use to the in-game-money I gained in-game, though. Most of what I did with it was to pay city's ludicrous (ridiculous) taxes, reminding me of how horrible is to live in a dystopian city, and to pay for the main character's needs. Now, this game has nice graphics. They reminded me of the good old time 90s and late 80s, but with better sound quality (and I loved it). Buying it was worth every penny. I'll happily buy a sequel, the day it gets one.

This is a nice little game that focuses on a more story driven experience than anything else. You'll be mixing and serving drinks to keep the story moving, engaging in casual conversation with the bar patrons. The story alone was enough to make me play to the very end, and I mostly enjoyed it. Granted, there was a few things that rubbed me the wrong way, but hey, it's hardly a deal breaker. The art is great, the music is great, the characters are fun (Dorothy is my favorite), and the story is wonderful... But, there is one little hitch... The meat of the game play, the alcohol mixing thing, is kind of... Basic. I would liked something a little more complicated, maybe with more drinks requiring more steps or something of the sort. It's not that huge of a deal, but something to keep in mind. Overall, I'd recommend picking this one up. It's worth it!

A solid story. The setting is well developed, and if you have snarky friends than the dialogue will seem quite natural and real. There are enough hidden twists and turns to warrant replay value, and the developers built NewGame+ in to help you with that. Grab a drink, get comfortable, and try to relax: even as the world is falling apart around you, VA-11 Hall-A offers a little haven. A respite from the troubles of post-modern times.