Bistro Days

A short and sweet visual novel that is very well done. The dialogue is grounded and well written, the music and art are both nice, and the girls are super cute. Definitely has quite a bit of polish. If you want a cute and wholesome experience, then I would highly recommend this one.

Came for the waifus, stayed for the food.

Boring.

One of the sweetest VNs I've ever played. Surprisingly light on fanservice (not a criticism, a complement). All routes were fun and engrossing and I loved all the girls but my heart belongs to Rose. Only complaint I have is an extremely mild one. I just wish there was more content because I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Bellflower Bistro Big thumbs up from this gay girl.

Gute Visual Novel mit ein paar Dialogoptionen um die Route zu bestimmen, otisch sehr stimmig dargestellte Charaktere und Hintergründe, Leider ist bezüglich der Charaktertiefe eher Standardkost angesagt, die üblichen drei klar abgegrenzten Mädels, jede differenziert aber in Ihrem Klischee verbleibend. Die Story ist nichts weltbewegendes, teilweise vorhersehbar. Alles nicht schlecht, aber auch ohne Alleinstellungsmerkmal im Genre. Die Vertonung ist stellenweise vorhanden und wenn Sie vorhanden ist, dann wirklich gut, d.h. die Stimmen der drei Mädels passen für mich sehr gut zu den Charakteren und was vertont ist macht den Eindruck das man darüber nachgedacht hat wie man dem relevanteren Teil mehr Bedeutung gibt. Technisch ist das Spiel sehr gut, keine Abstürze, keine mir Aufgefallenen Bugs oder Textfehler. Für den Preis und die wahrscheinlich vorhandenen Produktionsressourcen eine wirklich gute und empfehlenswerte Visual Novel in ordentlicher Länge, Aber an die Produktionsqualität der großen japanischen Genrevertreter kommt das Spiel nicht an.

It's such a cute and fun little game. Love the characters and the story! I hope the creators make more visual novel games like this as I just feel so sad that there's no more Bistro Days to play. Definitely my favorite VN game I've ever played.

All the routes are fun, but Lily is best girl.

[h1]Spoiler Free Review![/h1] I'd heard mixed things about Bistro Days, but the nice quality artwork and cute premise drew me in nonetheless. It does have very minor drawbacks, but overall it's a thumbs up from me. Let's dive into why! The artwork is indeed very appealing to look at (especially the food art!). When it comes to the backgrounds, there are various scenes that could have done with a new bespoke background, but instead, the shot simply zooms to a smaller portion of the same one. This doesn't entirely set the scene in some instances, but then as a game dev myself, I completely understand how expensive and time consuming art creation can be, so I can't exactly fault them for getting as much use out of a small bank of content as possible. The backgrounds themselves are lovely and colourful. The sprites are where the artwork really shines - they're detailed, with plenty of facial expressions, and the fact that they all blink independently of each other during conversations adds an extra nice feel to things. There's good use of movement with the sprites too, so it does feel like you're interacting with people as opposed to just looking at a bunch of images. The soundtrack is nice, although a few more pieces would have been great - I found that things got quite repetitive after a while, and there were a couple of emotional scenes that were slightly dampened by the fact that the soundtrack simply continued the jaunty upbeat song it was already playing, instead of transitioning to something more fitting to the mood (but again, possible budget constraints could have contributed). As for the plot and gameplay, the game has a cute premise and does quite well in using the trope of 'super hot girls in your local cafe AND THEY'RE SINGLE' without actually playing into too many overdone tropes. There's no fanservice and no lewdness for the sake of it. The length of the overarching main plotline was great in keeping the game at an enjoyable length (about 7-9 hours) without it dragging on. I wouldn't have wanted too much more. The plot is also great for tying in the events of each girl's route, so everything feels quite natural and well integrated. There are plenty of player choices along the way, so you don't feel like you're spectating for too long. The characters themselves were pretty well balanced too, and played into various stereotypes without doing them too hard - they were still believable characters that you'd enjoy getting to know irl, rather than overblown and overexaggerated like a lot of VN characters are. They also each deal with relatable problems that a lot of people experience, which humanises them even more. I'll spoiler this next part just in case people don't want to hear about the types of endings this game has: [spoiler]I was slightly disappointed to realise that each route essentially only has one ending, so you can't exactly screw anything up - you just get different CGs and dialogue, but the outcome is the same every time. This felt like it took a bit of the excitement and player interactivity out of it, but if you come at it from a perspective of just enjoying a sweet story and not having much impact on what happens, then you'll enjoy it. I definitely still did - it wasn't a dealbreaker.[/spoiler] One snag that sticks in my mind is the skipping function. There is a chunk of narrative that's shared across all three routes, since the main events of the game take place in all of them. However, the ability to skip text stops once you exit the common route and begin a specific girl's route. So even though certain scenes are identical across all three routes, you can't skip them and have to go through them again. You also cannot skip any of the scenes that use the phone, no matter where in the game they are. I actually also encountered Ren'Py error screens quite often when using the phone. It doesn't really disturb gameplay, as the 'ignore' function just puts you right back onto the next line of narrative, so you don't lose anything. It's just a momentary annoyance that comes up somewhat often. Not sure how many others have experienced this, though. Overall, this was a short and sweet experience. It's not the greatest VN I've read, and won't tug super hard at your heartstrings, but it's well thought out, very appealing for the eyes and takes you on a cute little adventure helping dreams come true and finding love along the way! I recommend.

A very sweet visual novel featuring cafes, cooking and cats. Whilst I've only completed one path so far, I can say it's been a very nice story. The graphics are lovely - both characters (which are partially animated) and CGs too There are a few grammatical errors near the start, but they don't distract from anything. Well worth getting and playing, even if it's just for the food.

Sweet and heartwarming game. Very well written, looks and sounds good. Definitely a good purchase!