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.