Café Enchanté (2019)

Completion: 100% (All CG, endings, dictionary entries viewed)

Time to complete: 50ish hours

First and foremost, this game is absolutely RIDDLED with typos, garbled text, weird formatting, etc. It’s pretty bad, like a near-constant issue (mostly the formatting, but also just a lot of grammatical issues). It’s never to the point where you can’t figure out what’s meant to be said, but it was pretty frustrating to see in an Otomate/Design Factory/Aksys release. It’s not like it’s one of the garbo mobile ports that’s on Switch. My favorite example is when the text box was just supposed to say, “But…” and instead said, “Nut…” Really great in the middle of a tense scene.

Order that I played the routes:

Canus → Rindo → Ignis → Il → Misyr (unlocked after completing the other four)

Order that I enjoyed the routes, from most to least:

Il → Misyr → Ignis → Canus → Rindo

Misc. About the Routes: I was honestly really excited about Canus’ considering he’s a Dullahan with just a color-changing wisp for a head, but it ended up letting me down severely. :c Rindo is a middle-aged human (and our MC is 19) and I just had no interest in his route or him from the beginning so I got it out of the way ASAP after Canus’. (I think maybe part of their intent was like, “You’re fine romancing this millennia-old angel boi, WHY NOT A 42-YEAR-OLD HUMAN, HUH, JILL?”) His route had some interesting aspects to it but it was pretty bleh overall.

Ignis’ was WILD (literally, ‘cause he’s a demon beast, get it? …….). Crazy shit going on there.

I loved Il’s route. He’s precious and loves otome games, and I really liked the additional characters Epilogi and Solitus, too.

I was hype for Misyr’s route, and it was great…until the whack-as-fuck ending. Honestly, the bittersweet end or whatever is almost better than the good ending.

There was a lot of interesting lore introduced in the common and LI routes, but I feel like none of the particular worlds got as much development as they could have. Certainly better than some other world-building I’ve seen, but I think part of the reason it all felt a little haphazard is because things would work out too conveniently or because of the atrocious textual errors. One thing I’d definitely like to mention is that, where Bustafellows fell short in its common route introducing major plot points that were thrown to the wayside in the LI routes and then picked up in a tacked-on first ending, this game did not fall victim to that same method. The common route is eight chapters, with five of those chapters focusing on one each of the LIs in a major event (with everyone else present, of course, but one of them kind of takes center stage). This gave you a great chance to see each of them as full characters before even viewing their routes and the true depth of their roles. There is very little by way of Big Plot that you’re left wondering about until you unlock Misyr’s route. The game just isn’t set up to let you down in that way like Bustafellows, which was especially appreciated since I’d picked this game up immediately after it.

Each LI’s route is four chapters (except Misyr’s, which is six), and they were quite long. Where I was fitting nearly two routes into a day with Bustafellows, it took most of a lazy day with me not doing much else to get through a whole route after skipping through the common one (plus various cat and friend-related distractions).

The art is absolutely beautiful. I guess because there are so many locations in this game, they went all out with the backgrounds. Even just within the café itself, there are a lot of different backgrounds. There are also a number of solid songs in the OST, from perfect café-themed tunes to epic battle tracks.

I would say that I enjoyed this one for the most part. I got a lot of laughs out of it, and I really enjoyed learning more about each of the LIs and their worlds in their routes. It would have benefitted from some cleaning up, though, because the spelling/formatting/etc. errors are inexcusable.

I finally started this up last night!

Café Enchanté came out right around the same time as Piofiore Fated Memories, and I really wanted both. However, I picked up PFM first and played through that earlier this year (and was disappointed for the most part) and didn't snag this one until recently. While both had an interesting premise, I feel like this one was more up my alley to begin with, so I'm not totally sure why I went with PFM first. Either way, I've really loved having the Vita as my VN system for so long, and it's still a little weird to be playing major VN releases on Switch. (RIP to my easy, and only, PS Platinums.)

I don't think any other visual novel has made me laugh out loud this much, just an hour into it. One of the dudes is a Dullahan, so when the MC meets all of them (him, a fallen angel, a demon king, and a demon beast), she's particularly put off by him--even though he's honestly the most gentlemanly of them all. Everyone changes into more "human" clothing, but he's still got his helmet on, with this mysterious glowing light underneath. One of the other guys is like, "Oh, that's just computer graphics," and she's like, "I know that's not what it is!!" It caught me off guard and I really got a kick out of it.

The background art is lovelyyyy, and the music so far has been really nice. One of my main complaints about PFM was that there was hardly any narration in between dialogue, which means it wasn't really much of a "story." That's not the case here; the MC describes her surroundings and thoughts, and she seems to have a pretty likeable personality, not flat like some VN MCs can be.

I think I'm really going to like this one.

Spoiler free.

Pros:

• Beautiful art and CG, beautiful!
• Cafe BGM is chill
• loveable characters
• hard working MC
• MC has expressive portraits
• lots of content, long story, each character offers a different world to explore

Cons:

• inconsistent translations, name's have been spelt differently. Also ううis like "whimper" or "hmm" in Japanese, there were many times that this was just directly phonetically translated into "uu". I can't wrap my head around on how this came to be.
• Story is not heavily focused on romance, leans more into world building but it's bad (judging as an avid fantasy novel & manga reader)

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Visual novels don't have any gameplay, so the story has to be engaging. The fluffy slice of life dialogues between characters from different realms in the common route was the best part for me. When it progressed to separate character routes, they all follow the same formula: trying to jerk your tear and making everything epic and dramatic.

I didn't find the world believable. In Harry potter, LOTR, the Marvel universe etc, these worlds offer a (relatively) believable magic/power system. They abide the logic in their universe. Cafe Enchante had me constantly frowning and gasping: "what, how, huh? How does this make any sense???" And when they unravel all the mystery, it just felt contrived. I couldn't engage with the characters and story.

And also because the game incorporated so many fantastical worlds, writers couldn't build them thoroughly. Each world felt super small, probably the size of a metropolitan city, and only revolved around each love interest. Lots of places are just walking distance from the cafe door!

And I guess I can't believe that these guys pretty much never set foot outside cafe Enchante before our heroine came along. They all seem like the curious explorer type, yet they happily stay in a cafe for decades, as if they only live for the plot~

I know the story aspect that I'm critiquing is exactly what a lot of other reviewers really enjoyed, so go read some positive ones to help yourself decide if you want to pick this up.

5 stars for the art, 2 for the story.