Affogato

A tropey slice of dramedy script forced into the shape of a game with clashing mechanics and false terms. I picked this up for the tower defense and coffee theme. I was disappointed on both fronts and then some. [h1]The short[/h1] I like the designs and art. The voice acting is decent, too. If you like quirky stories with some edge thrown in and pacing puzzles that feel like a top-down version of Lemmings on train tracks, this game may work for you. Do not expect to play a 'reverse tower defense' game. If you want something akin to Coffee Talk or Va-11 Hall-A, look elsewhere. [h1]The Long[/h1] [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game is divided into three major areas of play: [list] [*] Visual Novel style dialogue and binary pass/fail options [*] Roaming around set locations for shopping and social link related things [*] Dungeons, Lemmings-like movement and timing puzzles to exorcise demons and uncover clues [*] Rent [/list] [h3]Visual Novel[/h3] Stories happen at your protagonist. Any choices you get are usually A / B options, where one may cause a character to like you more, and the other does nothing. 'Failing' these answers will lose you some social link points and small additional lines before returning to the main script. You don't get locked out from any special events for these. Making coffee is a fixed event for story advancement. You do not make coffee on the regular. As a coffee shop owner and the sole barista working there. This annoys me. [h3]Roaming[/h3] In the game you have two action slots per day, one for morning, one for night. If the game allows it, you can use each slot to roam and visit shops before deciding what event to pursue to advance time. I say 'if the game allows it' because there will be several times a fixed event takes away one, sometimes both slots you have in a day. Most of these events aren't planned, or something you as the player or Affogato herself chose to do the next day. They happen at you. One of the stand out events taking a whole day from you involves being forced into [spoiler] being a girlfriend-for-rent because a character was suddenly 'asked' to the police station for questioning. Affogato accepts this as something she has to do because her and the NPC in question met for the first time four days ago. There is no play interaction for these events either. Events implying day-long engagement start, fade to black, and return to 'you' when they finish. You have no agency in how they turn out.[/spoiler] [h3]Dungeons[/h3] This is not a 'reverse tower defense' segment as the store page claims. The dungeons you need to beat in it are a Lemmings-style puzzle. You start each one with a set amount of summoning cards from your deck. At the start of a dungeon you'll generally only have enough summoning energy to put down one and build a conga line with the rest. New Lemmings are added as part of the existing line. Initially you have some freedom in the order of cards you play and how you route your way to success. Once some mainline plot advances far enough new mechanics force you into failing up towards a solution. This is especially true for having to avoid "area attacks" for boss fights. You either predict things, or learn the patterns by heart by repeatedly failing. All this makes it feel like anything but a 'reverse tower defense'. [h3]Rent[/h3] As days pass, you have to make sure you have earned enough money for rent. The rent you need for a fully decorated 12-seater café with an attached apartment? 10.000 Yen (~64USD). [h2]Story[/h2] There is no singular story. There is a set-up, sure. You play as the titular Affogato, a helpful witch with a chain of several failed coffee shops that opens a coffee shop in a new town. Hilarity ensues. As a witch, Affogato does her best to banish demons that tricked mortals into making a pact for their soul. She uses her cafe(s) as a front to find and help possessed people. To do this she has to ensure she makes enough money to pay the rent to her landlord, Dr. Handsome Mc Breaks-Confidentiality-On-A-Whim. As you progress in days and meet new characters, main plot and side stories will open up for you. Main story plots are paced and have a set deadline. You have to play main story witch missions to survive rent days. The pay-outs from beating these questlines are the only way to make rent. Which, I guess works with the lore setup about Affogato being a serial failed café owner. As stated before, the story happens at Affogato. Any influence the titular witch has is reactive. The only agency you have as Affogato is engaging in side quests with NPCs by building up their social link. To do so you will need to increase Affogato's three stats: Beauty, Intelligence and Courage. If you don't meet the threshold for an NPC event, you will have to increase your stats (and possibly the social link if you failed dialogues) to start it. Items you can purchase from stores can boost stats (and social links) somewhat. The main way you gain stat increases is through choosing the right dialogue option (50% chances) or spending time in stat-boosting locations, such as: [list] [*] working at your own store (time passes, no coffee making involved), eating pastries, going to a hair salon (Beauty) [*] loitering at a book store. You don't buy anything, just read inside the store (Intelligence) [*] eating spicy food at a restaurant or shouting at nerds in a net-cafe (Courage) [/list] [h2]Whining[/h2] The general set up in the store page gave me the idea the game was going to be related to Coffee Talk or Va-11 Hall-A, both from a narrative and a gameplay mechanic perspective. The coffee making minigame in the previews *and store description* also suggested that coffee-making played a major role in the game. [quote=Affogato] Making a good cup of coffee is the cornerstone of being a barista. To be a truly great barista, however, you need to understand your customers and figure out which brews are perfect for them. Affogato features realistic coffeemaking simulation. Master the art of making great coffee and you can unlock hidden conversations and storylines! [/quote] The only accurate part in this is that the "wrong" coffee makes NPCs sad, and some special option you have to guess makes them extra happy. This can be nonsensical or stereotyping, like [spoiler]giving a catgirl, whose parents basically own a dairy monopoly, an all milk no coffee coffee[/spoiler]. The game tries to be Persona with Madoka-esque lore, but replaces the turn based combat with its on-rails Lemmings puzzles. The latter is not meant as an insult, it is simply how I understand these puzzles. Sadly a puzzle with one fixed "quick time" event reliant solution is not the kind of gameplay I expect from a tower defense, or from a reversion. It tries too many things at once and falls short in a lot of places. The art and voice acting is neat. The game sadly uses most of its mechanics as hurdles more than anything. [h2]TL;DR[/h2] [spoiler]Why check here? The short version is up above.[/spoiler]

Affogato sounded really cool on the surface, but it has the key problem that it's trying to do three different things in a game that essentially has room for any two of them. This game is: -A coffeeshop simulator mostly focused around a minigame in which the player makes the coffee and experiments with ingredients to get the exact right fit for each customer -A visual novel about a witch bonded with a demon trying to get by in the modern world while helping people solve psychological problems with tarot-inspired magic -A reverse tower-defense game where a customizable team of magical warriors attack a demon possessing a human host by selecting party members and paths through the maze before purging the evil influence through a boss monster of sorts Now I want to be clear, all three of these elements are pretty decent - but at any given point the game disallows the player from choosing which to engage with. So for me, I was hoping to get a reverse-TD game set in the minds of coffeeshop patrons in which a story is told through gameplay. But for about 80% of my playtime as of writing, I was instead mixing coffee and failing relationship sim visual novel interactions. Largely these interactions are in the Tokumeki Memorial schedule management style but with very short event windows that the game doesn't initially do much to warn the player about, leading to my experience mostly involving picking something arbitrary thinking that I'd maybe find out what it did and then get to go choose something else, but then being cut off immediately and made to go on to the next thing. My personal preference definitely would have been just playing any one of the three games that this is trying to be separately. Each one is pretty good on its own, but Affogato is constantly more interested in tripping over itself to keep the player from doing whatever thing you're trying to do. I wanted to play the reverse-TD and was happy enough to break the experience up with a visual novel or coffeeshop simulator going on in the background, but I legitimately couldn't get the game to let me actually play the TD segments because I couldn't [i]find[/i] them amid the sea of boring coffee recipes and under-explained VN mechanics. If you like all three of the games this wants to be [i]and[/i] the pace at which it switches between them it's for you. Otherwise probably expect that you might bounce off it the way I did.

说实在的，我很难给出一个好评，这个游戏在库里半道趋势不是没有原因的，如果你想要购入，那么你需要明确他的3个最大缺点 1.文本捧读：难以想象都几几年了，还有这种大粪配音，你能想象你的朋友来你家，你对他说 好久不见，我的朋友，职员奥多尔 你怎么样了，我的好伙伴，天使加里奥 这种神人文本。 更别提配音配那死样 2.剧情平平 你告诉我那个好感度提升了原来一点屁用没有，我不能交往是吗。其他剧情也是有点尬剧的味道 3，美术骑着所有组 对不起我就是这样被美术骗进去的，如果你看美术很好，那就欣赏就好了，别买

哦，我的老火鸡，你这游戏配音一股子翻译味，不过梅菲丝塔配音很可爱，剧情嘛，还是不错的，相信好人有好报

I didn't expect anything as I got the game in a bundle. Lots of visual novel elements but I'm looking for gameplay. This doesn't mean the game has done anything wrong but it's not what I'm looking for.

58块钱路边一条，28块钱中规中矩，5.8直接性价比拉满。

It's alright. I wouldn't recommend the game for its gameplay. The game's story is lengthier than its gameplay depth can hold up. Which the gameplay is some simple real-time (but pauseable) puzzles. The story is okay. The coffee making mechanic is kinda sadly wasted.

The story is okayish, but the combat part is weird, awkward, and not fun. The ability to control your units in particular is really lacking, they move along a path and you can't tell them what to do, just change the path. There's also apparently no NG+ or endgame free roam, which is a big bummer too. Altogether, an inventive and poorly executed game.

This game has got some real persona feels. Apart from the combat. The last hours of the game were really surprising in a good way how the story ended. I can only recommend this game and story for everyone to play it. The only negative i can say is the difficulty of the game. There is no shame for playing it in easy mode.

While I like the gameplay (mostly visual novel), the save system is a problem. It only auto-saves and you have no control over it. Biggest reason for my downvote. There’s an coffee minigame. It fits the theme, but it doesn’t add anything to the gameplay and gets repetitive. Extra: the game name is terrible, hard to find anything about it.