Little Dragons Cafe Review - Dragging On
Test Little Dragons Café - A nice adventure that lacks a bit of caffeineAfter series like Harvest Moon or Rune Factory, Yasuhiro Wada returns to the front of the stage with a brand new IP which wants to be as relaxing as the others, namely Little Dragons Café. The bases of his old creations are still on the program with the management of an establishment, but this time, the adventure takes off with the management of a dragon, which will have to be pampered in order to see it grow properly and let him take us on crazy adventures. So this is a mix between management and exploration game that awaits us here, but this mixture is not as tasty as one might have thought, at least not enough to classify it in the recommendations of the menu.
Raising a dragon is probably not easy, especially when we have a job that keeps us busy all day. However, that’s the role of Rin and Ren, who must be in charge of the Little Dragons Café after an unfortunate event, which forced their mother to stay in bed all day. Luckily for them, a mysterious, stunted old man tells them about the healing secret of their mother’s illness, but that will first require raising a dragon. Rin and Ren take the cute creature under their wing, while managing the cafe, a very complicated situation for two young toddlers. However, they will be able to count on the establishment's staff, consisting of two servers and an orca cook, ready to do anything to make the café work. You quickly get attached to this little team that gives life to the café, and seeing your dragon grow up always has its small effect.
The breeding of the dragon is therefore the common thread of this adventure but it is not necessarily central, because the heart of the story of this Little Dragons Café remains the different customers who come through the door of the establishment. Each more eccentric than the other, like a witch not very gifted in magic or a ghost more than annoying, these customers punctuate the adventure by proposing several mini-scenarios, which hide despite themselves l 'almost total absence of true intrigue. Failing to have an exciting journey, we are delighted to discover the stories of each of them, even if they are ultimately not so many. That said, the totally choppy pace of the adventure is especially slow, to the point that these sketches staging them are the only real reward of the game. Because despite the name of the game, you shouldn't expect to really expect manage a cafe.
On the menu of the day…
What could have been one of the title’s greatest strengths seems to have finally been overlooked during development. The management part of the establishment is in fact very limited, since it is absolutely not possible to personalize the building itself, or to organize the room as we see fit. The only role you will have to play will be to build your menu, choosing ten different dishes that your customers can order. To establish your card, it will therefore be necessary to collect pieces of recipes around the world or via certain dialogues, before having all the parts necessary to reconstitute delicious dishes. Once the recipe is in your pocket, your character puts himself in the kitchen and the kitchen using a fun mini-game of rhythm, but again limited. It improves all the same over the progression by becoming more complex, but unfortunately you have to wait a few hours before that. The higher your score in this mini-game, the more successful the dish will be and the customers will be more likely to be seduced by this dish.
You will have to pay close attention to comments from customers, who rate your dishes like modern food bloggers. If a dish does not win membership, it is better to review its menu or retry the recipe with new ingredients. You can also check the order ranking to see what was ordered the most during the day, so you never run out of ingredients to prepare it. These little things work pretty well and give back interest to coffee management, because the more satisfied the customers, the faster you will progress through the story.
Despite this aspect, it is not you who will cook during the shot, but your chef. Finally, during services, your role is to be a little bit of everything, taking orders, serving and clearing. This is done almost automatically and without thinking, which is a bit disappointing. Because of this, you quickly end up dropping your server role to let your team take care of it for us, even if they are not aces. Between the lazy on duty and the one who is demoralized for nothing, we spend more time playing the role of social assistance so that they can do their job without dragging on. After a few hours, working in the cafe hardly makes any sense, despite the friendly atmosphere that reigns there, especially when you can venture out on the island where the establishment is held.
Picking problems
To manage your food stock well, you will have to survey the island to harvest many ingredients. Between shaking trees, harvesting vegetables or catching fish, you'll have plenty to keep busy before the service starts again. As in the other games of Yasuhiro Wada, the harvest is a peaceful moment that appeals to all those who want a moment of relaxation. Your dragon will also be able to lend a hand by finding meat or digging the ground to obtain rare ingredients. As you can see, your companion will be your best friend, which means that you will have to make sure that he is happy in all circumstances. If he is not rested enough, he will no longer be able to perform certain actions, so be sure to take care of him. It is also possible to cuddle him to cheer him up and to feed him with dishes. These will affect the development of the dragon, since depending on the dishes you give it, it will gradually change color, for example from blue to red, while first going through purple. We would have liked more customization of the dragon, but it's already a good start.
Unfortunately, the whole management of the harvest does not keep its promises. First of all, it is also quite limited, because the entire map is only unlocked fragment by fragment. The first hours of play are then very tedious and we quickly start repeating the same pattern in the same places without stopping, until this calm moment becomes almost irritating. This is like the music playing in the background, which is also pleasant at first listen, but we quickly come close to indigestion at the hundredth.
You then have to wait for a third or even the middle of the game - which translates into dozens of hours - before everything finally opens thanks to your little dragon which finally becomes big. During certain stages of the history, your companion with scales will grow and acquire new capacities like that to burn piles of wood or to destroy them with its tail, thus giving you access to new zones. The best time is when it gets big enough to spread its wings, so you can cross the island from the sky. It is still unfortunate that this does not happen earlier to break the knockout loop of the gameplay, especially since the exploration on foot quickly becomes painful.
Between the problems of collisions, the invisible walls and the latency times, in particular of the jump button, the title accumulates technical problems which are especially seen on Switch, where the framerate plays yo-yo and where clipping is omnipresent. We therefore hope that an update will correct all this, because the title does not seem to display these problems on PlayStation 4. The graphical finding is therefore at half mast but the title is doing with honors on its artistic direction at l 'penciled appearance, which gives it an instantly recognizable leg and a rather irresistible charm.
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