[Game Review] VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender

Link For Image

Developer: Sukeban Games, Christopher Ortiz
Store Link: PS4, Switch, Steam
Release Date: June 21, 2016

What are visual novels, if not a curated set of dialogues, with the purpose of intertwining you into a narrative of people that explains their entire world to you, the reader. Then there's the occasional mix of fun games in-between, just to keep the ball rolling.

While this game might not have changed the visual novel genre for years to come, it certainly holds a lot as a novelty pick for people who love not only the Cyberpunk genre, but are drawn to the story and characters as well.

VA-11 HALL-A or Valhalla Cyberpunk Bartender as they call it, is an amazing game. The kind that western developers these days have stopped making because of the complete change in the political climate today. And the fact that people are creatively deprived because of the pandemic. While at the time it came, it was kind of glossed over, looking back now in today's time, the game just delivers something that is missing for such a long time.

---

---

Jamie: "One obvious thing I see is that you don't take the use of the word "kill" in your stride the way Gillian does"
Jill: "Am not good with violence"
Jamie: "That's good"

VA-11 HALL-A was made by Venezuelan game developers, Sukeban Games. During development period, Christopher Ortiz, the game director, wanted the story and themes to focus on overcoming struggles that are based on real life and futuristic socio-economical problems. Which involve government control, food shortages, dealing with poverty, etc. Some of this is based on his own personal experiences living in Venezuela as well.

A small studio made this game, which shows that it had only focused on the bar mini-game and the visual novel story. And it shows, the quality can be seen a lot there. Fernando Damas did the writing, while Michael Kelly did the music. The tracks list consist of mostly vaporwave music with some city pop and synthwaves added in. To capture fully the cyberpunk aesthetic.

The game starts in the titular bar known as VA-11 HALL-A(Valhalla). You play as Jill, who is close friends with her boss and puts the male bartender to work on cleaning latrines. In the bar, her only job for the most part is just conversing with patrons in the bar while also serving them drinks.

The game opens up a lot of facets of people as well as establishing world building. Things are pretty bleak in Glitch City where people are fitted with Nanomachines to be tracked and a corrupt enforcement group called White Knights rule the city with an iron fist. A byproduct of the city's neoliberal capitalism and the high standards it tries to maintain. Taking place in the 2070s. Similar to, well, Cyberpunk 2077.

Despite the grim reality, the characters are very colorful and you engage with them in such intelligent dialogue enough to ascertain the kind of people they can be, yet still leave quite a bit of mystery hanging around them. It is as good as any well known visual novels out there, where characters are the main focus of the story. Where the quality is held up by great dialogues, and interesting personalities.

---

---

While throughout, the majority of your time spent playing the game is from making drinks and engaging in dialogues. The game finds ways to make things compelling by subverting the way the mini-game is played. Some patrons will try to trick you into making the wrong drinks. In doing so, wastes the potential of leading to the ending you'd want. There are different endings after all.

Within the bar, before you start taking orders for drinks and chatting up with the customers, you start with a 10 track playlist, chosen from 42 different tracks. You get to preview them before they're picked. Curate well enough to set the kind of mood you want within sessions.

There's a save/load option so that you could retrace back and fix a wrong choice you made prior.

Outside your bar job, in your humble abode, you can keep up on the latest of news and social posts about the ongoings of Glitch City. If that isn't enough, working at the bar also earns you cash. Extra for doing some flawless jobs as well. With these, you purchase ornaments and decor for your room.

Unfortunately, that's just how far the game goes when it comes to having active mechanics to continue playing. The priority comes with the game's story, while the gameplay is just there to not tap on the space bar repeatedly to continue dialogues.

And while I was having a good time, the gameplay with story, however, most of it feels pretty heavy-handed. And you start to feel worn down from continuing to play. Understandably, it's a visual novel, by which in its nature is to continue with dialogues mostly. But interesting visual novels consists of multiple branching paths. This game is somewhat mostly linear, save for a few different outcomes.

While it falls short on the gameplay department, I had a great time embracing what is essentially an eclectic piece of media. The kind of game that'll stick around for a long time.

---