this game is very chill, and pretty cute! the characters are sweet, and there's some intersecting storylines that satisfied me reasonably with their resolutions. there's some pretty good worldbuilding from the dialogue of the customers and the newspaper at the start of each day that help fill out information about the world. yeah, you can know "vampires drink blood" from experiences with other media, but for different specifics about how werewolves work in this world and the interracial politics, it's a nice touch and i thought it was done well. it's a pretty relaxing experience overall, but it does get into some more 'gritty(?)' topics such as fantasy racism and minorly sexual discussions. the characters are expressive and the art looks decently nice, but the music is pretty lackluster and sometimes distracting. it's just a shuffle playlist of a bunch of chill tunes, so the vibes will sometimes be a little disjointed, such as when characters are having an argument. it's a little silly to have characters effectively yelling at each other while the music is going: mmmm yeahh im so chill im a chill non-memorable instrumental track,,

the drink making is nothing special at all. the drinks that you make based on requests do actually end up affecting the story (mostly just near the end of the game), but i felt like there were some times when there was no way i could reasonably figure out what drink someone wanted me to make. most of the time someone will flat out tell you the three ingredients involved, but there are also some times where someone will ask for a specific drink by name, and if you don't know how to make that, then you're basically shit outta luck. in some cases, not figuring out the correct drink will completely fuck over the storyline for that character, which i can totally get, but it also just feels kinda bad. there's also an endless mode where you just make drinks to people's specifications, but i played about two minutes of it before saying "nope, this is really boring and pointless" and stopping.

i did two playthroughs. for the first, i was just going along blind and trying to figure out all the drinks. for the second, i followed a guide to make sure i got everything right, and ended up with some better results plot-wise for some characters. although i have yet to play it (someday soon, i hope), i would feel remiss to not mention VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (2016). i have no idea how the two compare, and i recognize that this game probably took a lot of inspiration from the former. i personally liked this game, but i can't say whether or not this game holds a candle to VA-11 Hall-A.

I wanted more than a reader / guess the coffee.

You have no control over the dialogue and other than a few hints to coffee orders the dialogue means “nothing” in terms of gameplay.

I was hoping for more of a diner dash - but listen to the customers and help with advice but instead it’s just a game novel and guessing someone’s order based off clues.

I didn’t realize right away the order you made the drink affected what you were making so I had to play twice to get the true ending for the platinum and playing endless took several tries for me to hit the criteria but overall the story was kinda cute and I liked the art and general aesthetic.

I think the developers probably hit the nail on what they intended to make but as a player I just wanted to do more.