Game Review: Coffee Talk

I don't usually play visual novels--if you look back through the visual novel tag, you'll find only two other examples of games. It's not because I don't like them conceptually or anything, since I've had the install discs for Ever 17 sitting on my hard drive through four computers and I keep telling myself that someday, someday, I'll get it to. And someday, I will! I got to this one first, though, for three reasons. The first is that sashagee told me about it and said it was probably the kind of game I would like, I think because the sequel was advertised to her on Playstation when she was browsing through sale games. The second is that the background is full of fantasy races, with a line about how the "elves have left the forest to build their startups" right in the intro, though that ended up grating on me in the end for reasons I'll get into. The third is that the playtime on HLTB was around five hours and I was running out of time in the month. Even though I intended to play it two weekends ago, and didn't, and then I intended to play it last weekend, and didn't...

Well, I started it on Tuesday and finished it on Friday after about five hours or so. At least an hour of that involved Laila sitting on my lap, wanting to see the game with the "chairs" or the "blue dresses." That makes me feel like I'll probably be playing more visual novels in the future.

… Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name.

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