![]() ![]() It’s that little extra mile to making VA-11 Hall-A seem cozy when your regular is feeling down and you know exactly which cocktail is going to help them perk up. ![]() Things works best when you’re given the option to serve something the customers don’t know they want, or are apprehensive about ordering. Overall, mixing drinks is a simple but effective way to add personality to the proceedings. This translates to being unable to remember what people are ordering, which isn’t too difficult to deal with if you’re paying attention, but can lead to a slippery slope of no money if you aren’t willing to load save. Goofing up an order means no tips and no bonus from Boss at the end of the night, and a lack of cash means Jill’s going to be distracted the next day, thinking about her own problems instead of her customers’. In theory, there’s nothing stopping you from giving people the wrong drink entirely, but Jill has bills to pay and things to buy. Most of the time the bar patrons order specific drinks, but light puzzle elements come into play when the orders are stuff like “something sweet” or “bitter but not too bitter”. More importantly, it keeps you paying attention obnoxiously long visual novels like Fate/Stay Night can go for hours without having any choices, but everyone visiting Valhalla pounds them back like a frat party, meaning you’re mixing a drink at least every few minutes. It’s nothing terribly complex, amounting to checking recipes on a monitor, dragging ingredients into the shaker, and maybe adding ice or shaking longer than usual. However, instead of making arbitrary choices, you mix drinks. ![]() VA-11 Hall-A is a visual novel at its core, which means the player’s main way of interacting is by clicking to make the text scroll forward. It isn’t as though the plot is difficult to follow without those, but I could see players being confused when Jill’s internal monologue refers to “last Friday” if they haven’t played the Prologue. As far as I know, these are only available if you purchase the game via itch.io rather than Steam or Humble. If I have any real problem with the story, it’s that it liberally refers to the pre-release Prologue and Demo, which take place during the weekend before the main game proper begins. You can’t fix anyone’s troubles, but maybe you can help them take that first step. The story is those conversations, irreverent and heartfelt and honest in a way that can only happen with the closest friends or with the assistance of a few drinks. All she can do as a bartender is have conversations and serve drinks, create a safe place for her patrons to relax and talk about their problems. There’s plenty going on in the hellhole that is Glitch City, and while the big picture is often important, it isn’t always everyone’s got their own issues, including Jill. In lieu of a large, overarching plot, VA-11 Hall-A is comprised of several relatively small character-focused arcs, not all of which necessarily have big payoffs at the end. They’re all juuust cliché enough to feel comfortable while original enough to stay engaging, which is the proper balance needed for the atmosphere VA-11 Hall-A aims to achieve. Some are regulars, some are random weirdos who wander inside, and all of them need a fucking drink – in this world, who doesn’t? Your customers run the gamut of cyberpunk (and anime visual novel) archetypes, including a friendly hacker (big-boobed glasses girl), a peppy robot sex-worker (looks 12, acts 24), a grizzled mercenary (grizzled mercenary), and a gene-spliced philanthropist (cat-eared ojou), among others. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and VA-11 Hall-A is all about capturing that feeling.Īs Jill, a bartender at the eponymous dive, you chat and serve drinks to various colorful characters who populate the aforementioned cyberpunk dystopia. Just being outdoors invites the possibility of being mugged or murdered. Basic necessities are prohibitively expensive, and the gap between the haves and have-nots only widens with each passing day. A corrupt Big Brother watches through nanomachines in the very air people breathe. It’s 207X A.D., and Glitch City is a cyberpunk dystopia. VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC) ![]()
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