Disclaimer: VN games are not my strong suit - I tend to like them; if they are tagged as cyberpunk I am 100% immediately interested and playing it :)

VA11 HALL-A places us into a typical cyberpunk trope, with its standard beginning and linearity soon to be expected in story telling - a dystopian megacity ran by greedy corporations, a city that is divided into zones for rich and beautiful and then the rest. First zone aka "upper level" is boring as always, clean, fallaciously friendly, beautiful. But our place is in the gutter with its crime, protest marches, riots and weird people. So, a fun place to be.

What differs is the protagonist Jill (she does not like her full name to be published). Jill is not transhumanist or someone with 100% body-mod upgrades. Just a simple tender girl with quite simple life in this dystopian future we're placed to. So we deviate from the main cyberpunkish trope here - saving the world; no, one of our main focuses is just getting to know Jill and her surroundings, background better.

Our protagonist has left her studies in university, basically said f-off world and started working as bartender in a place called VA-11 Hall-A - a dark but cozy bar customers and staff call Valhalla. Such 180-degree, let's call it "nihilist turn" in her life has left Jill in quite sad state financially and she is outright struggling. At least she has one true friend, a "pet" cat called Fore.

Valhalla is a central hub of this game and many narrative paths (plural) evolve here. It's a meeting place for many interesting characters, who typically are carrying the weight of a broken soul, have been or are stuck between corporate gears or just dark alleyway adventurers who have found this bar. As hinted in Dumas' "Twenty Years Later" book of three musketeers - alcohol solves basically all ones problems. This is the main thing Jill has to do, mix drinks and serve them, also listening to the problems of Valhalla's clientele at the same time. So she is their dr. Phil and that's her path - changing the lives of people around her and also her's.

The regulars and passersby are quite-quite colourful. We've got sex workers, gynoids, "bums", office managers, super-stars, a big list of people ending with a corgi. Yeah, a corgi - cool : )
That cute dog is even hired to take a half time job at Valhalla. So due to wide range of patrons, the conversations with them tend to be also very different and mixed like the cocktails; sometimes even too sexual (maybe) for western mindset - boob size and why no jeans under skirt etc... Basically no taboos - and this is actually nice to have in a modern game.

I mentioned plural narratives. Alcohol and also various stages of drunkenness of clients create quite intimate atmosphere between them and Jill. They will drink, tell you about their issues and what's on their mind, they'll leave and when they return, their stories will continue, maybe more reserved in the beginning - they are sober, but each character has their own narrative direction and most interesting of them all is actually Jill's own path.

Mixing drinks. Well in the beginning of the game this is not the easiest thing to do. Every customer has their own favourites, some even wish for random drinks and many times Jill as a good bartender has to understand or even guess what they actually want. It is fortunate that we have a recipe book for drinks and with little practice mixing different cocktails is totally easy, memorable and actually could become also a dull thing to do.

So you mix their drinks, attend to their needs by listening "sad stories", rant, problems at work or side topics. You even have to endure insists to tell about your own (Jill's) life - why she left university behind, why such choices, why she's so grumpy all the time, why why why... and that way you spend your evenings/nights in Valhalla. After "day" is over, you will be scored how well you served your customers and get paid. Time to leave, get back home and pet Fore. Yeah!

Money. As I said earlier, Jill is quite poor. She has to pay hefty rent and if she does not pay it fully in time, this actually matters in narrative's context and you can get bad/negative ending of the game. So you have to be careful with money. But yeah, like always you can also spend it for various trinkets, wallpapers and such... but also OST (this game has a lengthy and quite august soundtrack).

This is not an endless game. The routine of serving drinks or staying at home with Fore, being beer buddies with your boss and getting to know Jill's background better lasts for 19 days. There's Christmas, they call it Mega-Christmas there and also New Year's Eve. So, many various scenes, not only stable Valhalla's artistically well done background to accompany you reading this VN's text. Text is long, striking and never boring. OK, you have to click a lot in this game to forward text. There are many endings, usually you'll get the ending of the client with whom you connected the most, or if you don't pay the rent or...

This is a very good VN game. This is a great game in general. Cyberpunk is just a tasty cherry on top of it all. Highly recommended.

//30-06-2019

Disclaimer: VN games are not my strong suit - I tend to like them; if they are tagged as cyberpunk I am 100% immediately interested and playing it :) VA11 HALL-A places us into a typical cyberpunk trope, with its standard beginning and linearity soon to be expected in story telling - a dystopian megacity ran by greedy corporations, a city that is divided into zones for rich and beautiful and then the rest. First zone aka "upper level" is boring as always, clean, fallaciously friendly, beautiful. But our place is in the gutter with its crime, protest marches, riots and weird people. So, a fun place to be. What differs is the protagonist Jill (she does not like her full name to be published). Jill is not transhumanist or someone with 100% body-mod upgrades. Just a simple tender girl with quite simple life in this dystopian future we're placed to. So we deviate from the main cyberpunkish trope here - saving the world; no, one of our main focuses is just getting to know Jill and her surroundings, background better. Our protagonist has left her studies in university, basically said f-off world and started working as bartender in a place called VA-11 Hall-A - a dark but cozy bar customers and staff call Valhalla. Such 180-degree, let's call it "nihilist turn" in her life has left Jill in quite sad state financially and she is outright struggling. At least she has one true friend, a "pet" cat called Fore. Valhalla is a central hub of this game and many narrative paths (plural) evolve here. It's a meeting place for many interesting characters, who typically are carrying the weight of a broken soul, have been or are stuck between corporate gears or just dark alleyway adventurers who have found this bar. As hinted in Dumas' "Twenty Years Later" book of three musketeers - alcohol solves basically all ones problems. This is the main thing Jill has to do, mix drinks and serve them, also listening to the problems of Valhalla's clientele at the same time. So she is their dr. Phil and that's her path - changing the lives of people around her and also her's. The regulars and passersby are quite-quite colourful. We've got sex workers, gynoids, "bums", office managers, super-stars, a big list of people ending with a corgi. Yeah, a corgi - cool : ) That cute dog is even hired to take a half time job at Valhalla. So due to wide range of patrons, the conversations with them tend to be also very different and mixed like the cocktails; sometimes even too sexual (maybe) for western mindset - boob size and why no jeans under skirt etc... Basically no taboos - and this is actually nice to have in a modern game. I mentioned plural narratives. Alcohol and also various stages of drunkenness of clients create quite intimate atmosphere between them and Jill. They will drink, tell you about their issues and what's on their mind, they'll leave and when they return, their stories will continue, maybe more reserved in the beginning - they are sober, but each character has their own narrative direction and most interesting of them all is actually Jill's own path. Mixing drinks. Well in the beginning of the game this is not the easiest thing to do. Every customer has their own favourites, some even wish for random drinks and many times Jill as a good bartender has to understand or even guess what they actually want. It is fortunate that we have a recipe book for drinks and with little practice mixing different cocktails is totally easy, memorable and actually could become also a dull thing to do. So you mix their drinks, attend to their needs by listening "sad stories", rant, problems at work or side topics. You even have to endure insists to tell about your own (Jill's) life - why she left university behind, why such choices, why she's so grumpy all the time, why why why... and that way you spend your evenings/nights in Valhalla. After "day" is over, you will be scored how well you served your customers and get paid. Time to leave, get back home and pet Fore. Yeah! Money. As I said earlier, Jill is quite poor. She has to pay hefty rent and if she does not pay it fully in time, this actually matters in narrative's context and you can get bad/negative ending of the game. So you have to be careful with money. But yeah, like always you can also spend it for various trinkets, wallpapers and such... but also OST (this game has a lengthy and quite august soundtrack). This is not an endless game. The routine of serving drinks or staying at home with Fore, being beer buddies with your boss and getting to know Jill's background better lasts for 19 days. There's Christmas, they call it Mega-Christmas there and also New Year's Eve. So, many various scenes, not only stable Valhalla's artistically well done background to accompany you reading this VN's text. Text is long, striking and never boring. OK, you have to click a lot in this game to forward text. There are many endings, usually you'll get the ending of the client with whom you connected the most, or if you don't pay the rent or... This is a very good VN game. This is a great game in general. Cyberpunk is just a tasty cherry on top of it all. Highly recommended. //30-06-2019