John Boyer

Awful. 20 years wasted, I feel bad for the fans of the old games

I read a couple of poor reviews, which inspired me to finally finish this game because I knew I'd be sad it was over. I actually bought this game sometime in late 2019 on an absolute whim, it was on sale for like $8 in the eShop. I tend to scope out other reviews just so I can verify I'm not buying some random pos, & this game seemed to have mostly good ratings. I was completely blown away! I love visual novels, & VA-11 HALL-A essentially plays out as such. If you're one of those morons that doesn't like games where interactivity is limited & likes to complain about that, I suggest playing a different game genre (like, I dunno, any other game). This is one of the most mature, relatable stories I've ever seen in my life. I was blown away by almost every character, becoming more & more interested in all their stories, all for it to come to a satisfying, bittersweet conclusion. The graphics are a clear shout-out to older games, probably 90's PC games. Mostly well rendered, the art appears as very cohesive pixels that are quite charming. In my opinion, even though everything else about this game is pretty excellent, one other thing stands out: the music. Clearly Michael Kelly (aka Garoad) played the demos or had early access to this title, because he 100% nails the soundtrack. I actually felt like the music in the jukebox for VA-11 HALL-A could've really been music I'd hear at a bar in 50 years. It may seem silly saying it loud, but the music was just that spot on for me. I even listen to the ost's in my free time! I can't recommend this game enough, it's fantastic. I will also point out that the Switch version has touchscreen, which is very responsive. While technically unnecessary, it's very appreciated & I thought it was worth mentioning.

I was convinced to buy this game since it's apparently one of the more highly revered JRPG's on a system that's well known for mostly being a JRPG machine. From what I gathered, this is apparently the 9th entry to "The Legend of Heroes" series. I've heard that while it's better to play these games in order, it's ultimately not legally possible to play them all in English. I was also convinced by other reviewers that it wouldn't be THAT confusing to use the newer, easier to access titles as an entry point... This was inaccurate. Another reason I was initially interested in jumping into a new-to-me Japanese series was that I was under the impression, due to the raving reviews users have given it, that these games lacked "anime tropes" that several Japanese-heavy influenced games have. I jumped into the prologue with high but cautious expectations, for them to basically be immediately shattered. One of the very first things that happened was the protagonist had a "tripping & falling" moment with a blonde girl, where your face ends up nestled between her breasts. Other than that, every single character introduced is the most absolute cringey animoo stereotype that you could possibly think of. This is coming from a big anime & JRPG fan. Most of the dialogue was very boring exposition, the combat was fine I suppose, but nothing a turn based battle system hasn't done before. Perhaps I will return to this review to update it & I'll admit how wrong I was. In fact, I hope that happens. But all I can say is don't always trust other peoples opinions, sometimes you just gotta see for yourself if you like something.

Excellent game. I'm typing the rest of this to achieve the minimum 30 characters to post.