Hustle Cat is a story about a cat café that is shrouded in mystery, or that's what the summary will tell you. I thought the game would be a light-hearted, fun time. Unfortunately, its poor storytelling and writing left much to be desired.
[b] Art [/b]
I have nothing bad to say about the art. The few backgrounds that I saw looked nice, and the characters were lovely.
[b] Character(s) [/b]
I'll start this by saying that Avery is a horrible protagonist. Usually when a main character has flaws that make them unlikeable, they at least have some redeeming quality about them that I like. This did not happen.
From the little I spent on this (both time and money), I got to know that they are awkward, judgemental, stupid, and refuses to take accountability, which also makes them very immature. Avery has no qualities that make them worthwhile. And I have ended up loving characters who people love to hate.
[b] Music [/b]
The tunes are nice to listen to, but nothing to write home about.
[b] Story [/b]
This is the meat of any Visual Novel. Or it should be. I'm not sure if it's even present here, the plate seems rather empty to me. I feel like the story in this is on par with someone's first draft. You know, where you haven't thought everything through, things jump out at you suddenly, and there is little to no room to breathe.
Now, I didn't get to the actual story of this game. Mainly because I wasn't interested in it. I made choices that left me with an “ending” of Avery having an outburst and running away, which sent me back to the main menu. They could have done [i] so much [/i] with that, but they decided to do nothing. And that told me [i] everything [/i] I needed to know.
[b] Text [/b]
The literature in this is written in a pretentious manner. I should know, I write similarly! Most who read this review will have already noticed this. As such, I think when you have a protagonist who isn't a blank slate, the writing should match that character. It didn't in this case. Despite my dislike for Avery, they did not sound even remotely close to how this was written. And because of that, it clashed horribly.
You may think using words like “ostentatiously”, “positively” before an adjective, and “conspiratorially” makes your writing seem refined. Not if it doesn't match the character! Then it makes your writing appear ridiculous, especially since this is written in first person. I would be more forgiving if the text was in third person. But it isn't, so here we are!
This would have worked way better if Graves was the main character. He already used words that matched this style of writing. In your efforts to show off, you've lost sight of what truly mattered: Consistency.
[b] TL;DR [/b]
Hustle Cat is not as cute or cuddly as one may be led to believe.
