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chuckroSiela and her sister own and operate Kamerina's Bar, but the nefarious Gustav, owner of the most popular restaurant in town, wants to buy them out and shut it down. Siela vows to make her restaurant so popular that Gustav can’t touch them. But that requires the freshest ingredients from all the local monster-infested dungeons. Can she really do it?
It’s a KEMCO jrpg, but the twist to this is that your real goal is to run a successful restaurant, and the dungeon-crawling is just to collect food items to cook and serve. Also, you don’t level up from fighting monsters (though fighting does unlock skills), you level up from eating the things you cook—and more expensive items generally give more XP. So you need to strike a balance between improving your characters and improving your restaurant (and getting more money in the process).
There’s a free version of the game (with IAP) called Adventure Bar Story Lite that I had tried a while ago. The Humble Bundle version is the full version of the game, with all of the pleasant speed-ups enabled. The fact that the monster drops are so much more plentiful (and I think the dungeons are more well-stocked, also) and you start with a ton of cash makes the game eminently more playable, because it eliminates an early "starvation" period. It’s still a really long game and it’s still possible to screw yourself, but you’ve effectively got a running start and it makes the game overall more fun.
I found guessing recipes from hints and logical combinations more fun than the dungeon crawling and grinding for ingredients, which isn’t surprising. But it is a decent balance of the two. There aren’t many dungeons and none of them are super-long (a dozen in total), but that makes each “day” in-game manageable: You can only go to one location per day, including the other towns, so you need to choose wisely based on what ingredients you need and if you think you can get through a harder dungeon with your characters intact.
Certain ingredients are much more useful than others—anything you can turn into another ingredient (flour->bread->bread crumbs, or pork->gelatin, ham, bacon or sausage) you can never have too much of, because all your best recipes use it in some form and if you reach your limit, you can just turn it into other ingredients. You can also never have too much salt or too many eggs. Mushrooms, on the other hand, irritate me. Most of the recipes they figure into require other, costlier ingredients (such as the annoying-to-make Sea Broth) but you find them freakin’ everywhere.
Various forms of croquettes are generally high-value items to both sell and eat; and once you get access to Garuda Eggs, Garbonera is a great go-to. Later in the game, you can level up your characters pretty quickly with the more expensive drinks, which provide very little satiety (you have a 99 satiety limit each day). Once the desert city is unlocked, you can make Pineapple Juice and Tequila for relatively cheap. Royal Iced Tea requires both Ice and Otts Water, but once you need to heavily grind for places like the desert, those are easy to collect.
The battle system is standard turn-based, with a grid that’s only good for determining spell effect areas. There isn’t that much variety to the skills or strategy to the battles, and once you’ve cleared an area and upgraded your equipment, you can safely go back and hit “Auto” for every battle. Buffs and debuffs aren’t terribly useful, though the attack buff Flame Rage makes boss battles go faster. Enemies have elemental strengths and weaknesses and many of the stronger weapons have elemental properties, so you do occasionally need to plan for where you’re going and equip accordingly. The bosses often have the “mountain of HP” problem, where even after you figure out the holding pattern and kill off their minions, you’ll be there another ten minutes attacking and healing until they die.
The translation is serviceable and has occasional errors, though nothing particularly absurd and funny. The story is the standard “making friends and saving the bar” routine you’d expect. There are a bunch of side events, including hidden paths, cooking contests and plot nibbles with your characters; though there aren’t any dungeon puzzles or true minigames.
Overall: This is more of a casual/simulation game than a true rpg, but it blends both game styles pretty well. Might be worth a go if you like that sort of thing.
It’s a KEMCO jrpg, but the twist to this is that your real goal is to run a successful restaurant, and the dungeon-crawling is just to collect food items to cook and serve. Also, you don’t level up from fighting monsters (though fighting does unlock skills), you level up from eating the things you cook—and more expensive items generally give more XP. So you need to strike a balance between improving your characters and improving your restaurant (and getting more money in the process).
There’s a free version of the game (with IAP) called Adventure Bar Story Lite that I had tried a while ago. The Humble Bundle version is the full version of the game, with all of the pleasant speed-ups enabled. The fact that the monster drops are so much more plentiful (and I think the dungeons are more well-stocked, also) and you start with a ton of cash makes the game eminently more playable, because it eliminates an early "starvation" period. It’s still a really long game and it’s still possible to screw yourself, but you’ve effectively got a running start and it makes the game overall more fun.
I found guessing recipes from hints and logical combinations more fun than the dungeon crawling and grinding for ingredients, which isn’t surprising. But it is a decent balance of the two. There aren’t many dungeons and none of them are super-long (a dozen in total), but that makes each “day” in-game manageable: You can only go to one location per day, including the other towns, so you need to choose wisely based on what ingredients you need and if you think you can get through a harder dungeon with your characters intact.
Certain ingredients are much more useful than others—anything you can turn into another ingredient (flour->bread->bread crumbs, or pork->gelatin, ham, bacon or sausage) you can never have too much of, because all your best recipes use it in some form and if you reach your limit, you can just turn it into other ingredients. You can also never have too much salt or too many eggs. Mushrooms, on the other hand, irritate me. Most of the recipes they figure into require other, costlier ingredients (such as the annoying-to-make Sea Broth) but you find them freakin’ everywhere.
Various forms of croquettes are generally high-value items to both sell and eat; and once you get access to Garuda Eggs, Garbonera is a great go-to. Later in the game, you can level up your characters pretty quickly with the more expensive drinks, which provide very little satiety (you have a 99 satiety limit each day). Once the desert city is unlocked, you can make Pineapple Juice and Tequila for relatively cheap. Royal Iced Tea requires both Ice and Otts Water, but once you need to heavily grind for places like the desert, those are easy to collect.
The battle system is standard turn-based, with a grid that’s only good for determining spell effect areas. There isn’t that much variety to the skills or strategy to the battles, and once you’ve cleared an area and upgraded your equipment, you can safely go back and hit “Auto” for every battle. Buffs and debuffs aren’t terribly useful, though the attack buff Flame Rage makes boss battles go faster. Enemies have elemental strengths and weaknesses and many of the stronger weapons have elemental properties, so you do occasionally need to plan for where you’re going and equip accordingly. The bosses often have the “mountain of HP” problem, where even after you figure out the holding pattern and kill off their minions, you’ll be there another ten minutes attacking and healing until they die.
The translation is serviceable and has occasional errors, though nothing particularly absurd and funny. The story is the standard “making friends and saving the bar” routine you’d expect. There are a bunch of side events, including hidden paths, cooking contests and plot nibbles with your characters; though there aren’t any dungeon puzzles or true minigames.
Overall: This is more of a casual/simulation game than a true rpg, but it blends both game styles pretty well. Might be worth a go if you like that sort of thing.
