[Let's Play] Café Rouge

After posting my "Be My Princess for GREE Let's Play", a lot of you guys requested me to do more of them - so here they are! :) 

I'm only going to do LPs (Let's Play) of Visual Novels that aren't available for play in a completed form, or are released episodically. It's cause I feel there's no point of doing a little demo play through of games that you can all finish by yourselves in one go, right? 

Today's one is titled Café Rouge, and I actually only came across it yesterday by chance. I decided to post it today since the gameplay is still pretty fresh in my mind. This one is COMPLETELY FREE FOR PLAY. Yes, a free otome game! 

In order to play, just google "Café Rouge Visual Novel" in the search bar, and you'll find several websites that are hosting the game. Similarly, you can head on over to the creator's Deviantart and play straight from there. As a prior warning, this game heavily relies on flash so I suggest updating yours before playing. 

Thus far, only five episodes have been released - but the game is updated periodically every 1-2 weeks or so. The latest one is Episode 5 (V), with the next one scheduled for released on August 31st. Overall, I can say I'm fairly impressed with how it's going so far, since I did finish all five episodes in the span of a couple of hours. 

Basically, you play the character Isis, who is your "average American teenager". She happens across the part-time job opening at Cafe Rouge. During the day, it's a normal, quaint cafe and bakery. But when night takes over, it is transformed into a five star restaurant-theater-café, with live stage performances and first class customers arriving in the middle of the night.

As Isis delves deeper into this strange café, she becomes entangled in the mystery of its’ haunted world. It is up to you, whether she will find friends or make enemies, whether she follows fate or makes her own destiny. Or perhaps even in such circumstances... she might find love? 

From the five episodes so far, I can genuinely say that the plot line is very interesting. There's still so many mysteries to be solved surrounding each character, and with every episodic release it brings something new to the table. The three guys I posted above are the possible date-able bachelors (from what I've played so far). 

All the characters are somehow interestingly intertwined with each other, so when playing through - I recommend finding and playing all the character paths, as you might find some new clues to add to the mystery ;) 

To do so, and to emphasise the "episodic release" scheme of things, the creator added the idea of "passwords" to the Visual Novel/Otome Game. It kind of reminds me of X-Note by Zeiva Inc. in that retrospect. Basically when you've finished one episode, depending on what choices you picked - it will provide you with a password to advance onto the next episode/chapter. 

Each of these passwords represent a particular character path, depending on your choices. From what I've seen so far, each episode can have anywhere between 3-5 passwords, which correspond with your decisions and what events you witnessed. I actually think it's a pretty good idea for this Visual Novel, since it's being released in parts. Not only this, but it practically forces you to play it over and over, in order to obtain your passwords ;) 

I can say that I spent a good few hours doing so, since this actually takes longer than you might think because of the cooking aspect of the game. Which of course, brings us on towards our next section. 

I honestly do share a strong love-hate relationship with this aspect of the game. Basically, all you gotta do is follow the instructions using your mouse, and finish over 50% of the bar for each part, before the timer rings. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong. 

It reminds me a lot of Cooking Mama... but so much more difficult and incredibly frustrating. Seeing as how the mouse is all you have to work with, it's already pretty hard to control and complete the tasks. Not to mention the fact that you gotta complete one recipe each episode... and some of them are pretty glitchy. 

The time you get to finish the task is so little, and sometimes it fails you without reason LOL. Which of course leads you to re-doing the cooking aspect... maybe another 5+ times? Like I know for one of them, I completely filled the bar and it said I failed. I pretty much wanted to rage. Seriously.

Can someone please tell me how in the fourth one, that is not a full bar? My least favourite was without a doubt, the mixing bowl and the kneading. Other than the glitches, then I do gotta say in spite of the difficulty - it's pretty challenging and fun. It definitely spices up the game, and is quite a nice bonus. Not to mention the animations were done quite well, and the desserts do look pretty damn delicious <3

Once you've gotten the hang of it, then it's not too hard. It's still do-able, at the very least :) What I really didn't like was that because of the whole "password system", every time you wanted to replay... you had to do these kitchen tasks over and over. It really grated on my nerves after a while, and I sincerely wish that the creator had added some kind of password where if you've finished it once, you can just enter it next time on your replay and skip the kitchen task. 

The art itself, is honestly quite impressive considering an episode is released every 1-2 weeks or so. There's usually around 1 or 2 CGs each episode/chapter, or more depending on which one it is. I feel like the prettiest ones in the game are definitely between Isis and Ron/Ronnie, which is sad considering I'm totally going for Antoine at this point. I feel like he's the most mysterious of the cast, and his path is the most exciting thus far.

Valen isn't so bad, but his personality is far too... shy I suppose? And Ron is your typical nice guy, which I usually tend to avoid like the plague in Visual Novels. With exception to this one, as every path is important in this game. 

I did find that some of the body proportions in the game definitely needed some work here and there. As intense as the scene on the left is, I did feel that her neck seemed a little... too long for her body, and out of place ^_^" Perhaps, it's just me though. Isis on the right seemed a little off to me as well because of the awkward neck angle, but it's not really a big issue considering the game is a free release, and it's being regularly updated. 

Final Thoughts: Overall, then I am enjoying the game. The storyline so far has proven to be very interesting, and I hope that it continues at this pace within the later episodes. I would be so disappointed if it started out well, only to plummet later on ): I did notice that throughout each of the episodes there would be scattered grammatical errors here and there, but they weren't anything extremely obvious. 

The character cast is very interesting, and I absolutely adore them so far. They all have secrets of their own, which is what makes the storyline so great. The mystery is only thickening, and we still haven't really gotten in much detail yet. I do have to say that I wish the other characters were date-able (namely Demian & Chris) since I had been eyeing them from the very beginning. 

Who knows if they'll be date-able later on? We can only hope so haha. The art is pretty good for a free otome game, although as I said before - the proportions need some work. The CGs themselves are quite pretty, and if the game were to ever be released in a final, polished downloadable form - more CGs would be really nice ^_^ 

One of the best things about Cafe Rouge is without a doubt the music and animation cutscenes. It gave me chills at some points, and definitely shocked me more than a little in some scenes. The only other thing that bothered me about Cafe Rouge was the little to no control of the system preferences. 

No save point, no text speed/volume adjustment, CG gallery etc. Zilch. Once again, if it were to ever be released in a download format, this would definitely be one of the things I'd be looking for :) 

Other than that, this is a pretty solid game guys and I recommend that you check it out. For now, I'll be anticipating Episode VI on August 31st! Woo!