Review: Little Dragon's Cafe [PS4 vers]

[queenzelda]

Oh boy, this game. =_=" If I never play it again, it'll be too soon & that's saying something. First of all let's talk about what's good about it & then we'll get to the reason why at the end of my playing this seemingly cute game, I ended up being sick of it. 

First of all the good: 

The graphics;

In this game are fantastic, it's like playing a living coloring book.

The story;

Revolves around the two twins who's mother who's half dragon, gets ill & the old man (on the left) shows up & advises the twins on what they need to do in order to make their mother better. Over the course of the game, your Cafe evolves into a Cafe Inn & people show up who you help to resolve their issue in under a short amount of chapters & you fix them their set meal to fix them & make them better. You get one guest per chapter, though in game it looks like you could have more then one guest should some one had wanted to stay, but of course only one guest stays.

Some NPC's;

The kid shown on the left is a 'cry baby warrior' & he's really adorable. His story is great, as are most of the NPC guests who show up to your Cafe Inn who end up staying & sorting out the issues they have.

But now.. It's time for the bad.

The LDC Staff

From left to right, the dragon your raising Draco (you can name him what ever), Billy, Ipanema, Luccola, in front of Luccola: the main characters are twins Ren & Rin (you can also rename them). I named the sister character & the brother, you can also control either the boy or girl in game. I choose to play as the girl.

Meet the staff in game who will constantly 'slack' without your presence in the cafe; Billy, Ipanema, & even your own sibling Rin/Ren (depending on which one you decided to play as). You can barely go outside & collect recipe items or ingredients without these guys slacking off in the cafe. There have been times where I've just outright ignored them slacking because I needed to find the rest of a recipe for a story so I could finish it out & go on to the next story.

The World:

Ho boy.. The world is empty outside of monsters that you can hunt, kill, or catch (such as fish & egg birds) in order to get food for your cafe. Not including bushes, rocks & trees where you can also gather ingredients for your cafe. The monsters are also all re-skinned with different colors, nothing new. There's only the Cafe. Characters that came to your Cafe, come from across a bridge that even AFTER the game has ended: you can never cross. It's walled off forever. So you may get past that first bridge, but your never getting across the longer one leading into what I assume is the other towns where the other characters come to your cafe from.

The Cafe itself & how it's run:

=_=" Yea, this is the WORST thing about the game is having to deal with the cafe, every single day. No days off, no way to make the cafe better.. Ugh.. You see, you can only do one thing at a time in the cafe. You can only take either someone's order, 1 plate to be washed, or 1 plate of food to a customer. You can't take more then one, nor can you do more things then the one thing you're doing. If one of the characters decides to slack off while your taking a dish over to be washed, you can't correct them. You have to do it AFTERWARDS. (Ugh.) You can't set certain characters to do certain things, like take orders, take out orders, or even improve your staff so they won't slack, or even hire on more staff to help out the Cafe as it rises in popularity you get more people to show up to eat there. It's very frustrating that you have no control at all over what goes on in the cafe your made to take over in game.

In conclusion: As the cafe's reputation increases the more people shows up to your cafe, yet your staff never increases. The chef does't stop cooking to help when the Cafe gets slammed, & it's usually always up to the rest of the characters to take care of the customers as they show up. Over time, it got to the point where barely 2 hours of gathering ingredients, the staff would start slacking without my character being there to correct their actions. I mean, eventually your able to fly around on a dragon which is awesome.. But the reward isn't really worth it, more so when the final NPC character Dr. Zeff wasn't very enjoyable for me, as he basically reminded me that doing the whole 'robots are superior to humans, but no wait humans are better' story; was better done via Star Trek TNG. =_=" When I first played this title, I was set on giving it a higher number then I ended up at in the end. I blame that entirely on the final NPC character & the fact that the staff started slacking earlier & earlier as the cafe's reputation increased. By the time it was close to the end of the game, it just DRAGGED from one day to the next & I was just ignoring the cafe & going to bed; forget it I'm done! And I am, I'm done with this game. I could get platinum for it, but I don't ever want to look at it ever again, if I do play it again it's only to ride on the dragon. Otherwise, I'm not ever going to play it again.

In the end, I'd say if you want to play this game: get it USED or on SALE. The Switch version also has some very serious performance issues playing it with the Switch in handheld mode. Though one reviewer I watched said to get the PS4 version due to the Switch version being buggy... The PS4 version is probably just as buggy;
 

 

--Final verdict-- 5/10.

Yes, it's cute, yes the dragon flying mechanic is great & the story/graphics are great; but in the end the gameplay mechanics is what got this game such a low score from me. I'd say if you want to play a good Cafe game to look into Disney's Magical World series for the 3DS, cause the way those titles play is WAY better comparatively impo. ~queenzelda

[ShiraNoMai]

Wow, yeah I wildly misinterpreted the game based on appearances. Yikes. Good review!

[queenzelda]

Yea, I even watched some one review it to see if I'd like it & for the story I'm glad I got it, but the Cafe mechanics can burn in h311. If you want a decent experience running a cafe; try the Disney Magical World games for the 3DS, since the cafe mechanic is a lot better in those tittles. More so because you have more control with them then I did with LDC.

[Mr EliteL]

Not being able to handle the staff in some way in the café would be a real let down for me too. There should've been some kind of mechanic like positive interactions with the staff determines how well they perform during work. Instead of relying mostly (like 95% it seems here ) on the player to sort things out for them. Also no day off for the player character? For working in the café. That day off could be for interactions with NPCs, playing with the dragon, collecting ingredients, and/or rest period. Geez, game is a slave worker.

Good review, Queen though. A shame about the mechanics.

[Karo]

So I'm glad you reviewed this Queen because this is one of the few games that I saw was super cute and was interested in playing it, but I heard it wasn't a good game. Your review basically goes into why and it kinda makes me sad, because it seems like it has so much wasted potential it could of been good!

[queenzelda]

I think had you been allowed to take out more plates as the cafe's popularity grew & add onto the staff the people who stayed at the inn cafe after they were helped, might have been nice. Also, maybe if your character helped to encourage the staff not to slack to where eventually you could be out all the time collecting it would've been nice. Heck, add a way to send the goods back via the Dragon who could sniff you out once it finished & came back outside to find where it left you at. I mean improving anything would be great, Heck adding a store I could have gone to in game would have been very much appreciated since getting salt was starting to get kinda scarce towards the end of the game. I was getting more sugar when I needed flipping salt. =_=