Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly (PC)

Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is a sequel to the first Coffee Talk, so it will be familiar to returning players. It is a visual novel styled game, with the bulk of its appeal and gameplay on the story. You play as the owner and barista of the coffee shop, Coffee Talk. The shop mainly opens late at night, and this attracts unique interesting characters. There is something about the place that just opens people up where they’re willing to talk and share about their current issues. Usually over the course of the game, they will find a way to resolve those said issues.

The game takes place in a world where different types of people and creatures exist. There are not only humans but also werewolves, banshees, and satyrs, just to name a few. They are effectively a stand-in for the different human races, and it works well here given the added visual variety. The game takes place over fifteen different days. During each day, different customers will come to speak about their own problems. A neat bonus is that there are a lot of returning characters from the first game and since around three in-game years have passed, we get an update on how they are now. Of course, there are new characters, with the main ones, the ones that show up in the cover art, being the satyr Lucas and the banshee Riona.

Just like the original game, this is a chilled and relaxing game. The soothing music and calming tone of the dialogue gives it plenty of charm. The gameplay is limited to satisfying customer orders. You can give them any drink but giving them the correct one will help you get to the best ending for each of their stories. To create a drink, you just need to select three ingredients. There are more ingredients this time around and by extension, there are more new drinks to create. These are all based on real drinks from different countries. This may not be the most engaging or complex gameplay but it is enough. To be honest, determining what the ingredients are for the best drink for the customer is not obvious for a lot of the time.

In addition to creating the drink, you can do a few additional things such as attempting to add latte art on top. Perhaps the biggest addition are key items that you get from customers over the course of the game. Then when you are presenting a drink to another customer, you can decide whether to also give them one of the key items. The effects of doing this range from achievements to being required for certain endings. The game’s graphics also basically look the same, so there’s little improvement there but it is a nice pixel art-style with a lot of detail in the character models.

Unlike the first game, there is a common story thread happening in the background that helps tie all of the days together. It doesn’t feel as aimless like it was meandering to nowhere. On the flipside, the game is all about expressing its own opinions on various matters and can border on being presumptuous in a few instances. Since you play the barista and each day only having a limited number of recurring customers that frequent the shop, each of their stories feel personal. A lot of them are relatable and none are so exaggerated that you feel detached from them.

The game takes around five hours to finish, although that depends on your reading speed. If you manage to get good endings for all the characters, then it will cover off most of their arcs. However, that doesn’t mean that you have seen all that the game has offered. There are different dialogue and story developments if you have given different drinks or forgotten to give them key items at specific points. Furthermore, there are still one or two smaller unresolved teases that you might want to see. Most of the “postgame” is getting these alternate scenes but there is an Endless mode. One part of it allows you to select three ingredients to create different drinks, so you’re free to experiment. The other part is a challenge mode where characters will request specific drinks and you need to produce it within the time limit.

Overall, Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is not only more of what made the first game so good but improves upon it. The structure and storytelling are tighter with clearer objectives and a plot thread that helps tie all the different characters, and days, together. The fact that it only introduces two new main characters while furthering the stories of existing characters is a good choice, so that it is still familiar to returning players, but not be too repetitive either.

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Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? II (2019)

The second season of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is 12 episodes long, plus an OVA. The series is based on the light novel series and is set in a town where gods have their “familia”, basically their followers. These adventurers usually try to explore the dungeon beneath the town. The protagonist is Bell Cranel, who is the sole member of Hestia’s familia. Hestia herself is quite energetic.

The season starts off with trouble for the pair as they draw the attention of Apollo. While expected, this is a feel-good segment where Hestia and Bell are bullied and made fun of. However, it all becomes okay when the friendships and allies that they had made in the previous season steps up to help them and in turn, finally start to make Hestia’s familia more reputable.

Bell is a typical male protagonist with a harem. He naturally attracts others, even though he may be unaware of their affections. While he isn’t completely overpowered, there are plenty of times where he must rely on other people, there are moments where he succeeds due to his sheer beliefs. He’s famous in the town for leveling up quickly. Hestia on the other hand is supposed to be a lovable goddess but she can come off as annoying and childish. If it is anything to do with Bell, she can be overly irrational. She lacks a lot of common sense, and her one tracked mind can be an annoyance in one scene, but then she will display wisdom in another.

The season packs in several story arcs and since it is only 12 episodes long, then you’d know that each arc is rushed. There isn’t enough time to properly develop the plot in each arc, let alone develop the characters and properly justify their motivations. All we usually get is that Bell has the urge to help someone he has met, or to protect his own familia. That isn’t to say that it is not a good enough reason, but the character personalities aren’t more than just surface level.

The season highlights the squabbles between the gods and their familia. Despite being gods, they are generally petty and isn’t much that separates them from the adventurers except showcasing some kind of magic every so often. The season shows how broken the system is with the constant fighting and backstabbing. The other focus of the season is expanding Hestia’ familia with more members. The season ends unspectacularly with another run of the mill trouble caused by Hestia. Again, it is wrapped up too quickly, within two episodes in fact. It’s anticlimactic, although there was one nice-ish scene towards the end which elicit at least a tiny bit of emotion from the viewer.

The animation looks to be solid at first glance but there are a lot of shortcuts taken from reusing scenes to minimizing the onscreen movement. This is particularly noticeable during combat where despite all that is going on, it is incredibly boring. There aren’t any stakes at all. No matter how badly a hit Bell will get, you know that he will overcome and win. Sometimes he will just awaken another power, or he uses his trusty (and overused) firebolt which seems to be his signature get out of jail free card. As a result, it is hard to get invested in the characters.

Naturally, there is plenty of fan service with Hestia herself designed purely for it. There are all the other female characters that fawn over Bell or will nonchalantly show off their assets. The OVA accentuates all this as it is a swimsuit / beach episode with most of the main female characters. It is extremely silly in tone and goes for a cheesy humor. Some will hate it; some will like it. It is a tad bit over the top though and tries to go at it too hard.

Overall, the second season is average, and it is as forgettable as the first season. None of the characters stand out and the season feels flat. The biggest problem is that the arcs are covered too quickly so that there is little build up and little reason for the viewer to care about. The season, and series, lacks a proper story hook so it is surprising that this managed to get anything extra after the first season.

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Quantum Break (PC)

Quantum Break is a third person shooter action-adventure game. It follows Jack, who arrives at a university to meet his old friend, Paul Serene. Paul had successfully researched time travel and he tells Jack that he has witnessed the end of time. Paul sees himself as having to stop this catastrophe from happening, however the actions that he takes are questionable. So now Jack must find a way to find out Paul’s secrets and stop him. The game is story heavy with gameplay taking a back seat. Most of the game has you walking around from one place to the next, watching story cutscenes. You can interact with certain objects with a lot of the optional collectibles being worldbuilding text and dialogue.

The other bulk of the gameplay is the shooting. This is a third person shooter, and it has decent shooting mechanics. Jack picks up weapons from other enemies and automatically ducks behind cover when he gets near them. After the time travel accident, Jack has a few powers based on time, although some of them function more as conventional abilities. He can cast a time bomb to blast away enemies. He can erect a time shield, protecting himself from bullets. There’s the time dodge, which feels like teleporting, and he also can slow down time for his enemies. Finally, there’s time vision, which basically highlights enemies and objects of interest in the environment.

There are varying enemy types, although ultimately, there aren’t too many unique ones so it can feel boring and repetitive by the end of the game. Some of the enemy types are more annoying than others, especially the heavily armored or the heavily armed ones. The enemies like to flank you. This is deliberate as the AI is designed to force the player to keep moving and not just to camp behind cover picking off the enemies one by one. This aspect forces you to use your powers to stay alive. While the gameplay is competent, it can also feel generic.

The time abilities that Jack has feature somewhat in the exploration with light puzzle elements. Jack can climb and jump as you’d expect, but just like his running speed, it is slow and painful. He lacks the finesse and parkouring abilities of other protagonists, so platforming isn’t that fun. The puzzles are basic and are little more than just heading to the object of interest to “rewind” time. Usually this allows Jack to get on a platform to reach a higher area. These platforming segments are uninspired. To be honest, as the focus is so much on the story, there aren’t enough opportunities to utilize your time abilities, so you aren’t familiar enough with the controls to intuitively know which abilities you need for that specific moment. You just know you need to use an ability to progress but then spend a few seconds figuring out which button to press.

The most unique aspect of the game is how it tells its story through both the game’s cutscenes, and a live action TV show. They’re integrated together such that after each act, you are supposed to make a choice. The two choices supposedly change the direction of the game’s story while also affecting which TV episode you will be watching next. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work properly in the PC version as there are perpetual errors with trying to stream the episode from the services. Thus, you’ll have to watch the episode on YouTube instead. These live action segments focus mostly on side characters so it can feel tangent to the main story. It is still cool to see the real actors, as you’ll compare them to their character models in the game.

The beginning of the game where it leads up to the time travel aspect was excellent… and then the story goes downhill from there. There was a lot of potential but instead of using the time travel elements in clever and unexpected ways, it ends up treading down a well-worn path instead. The middle parts were not great as the plot developments felt like big letdowns. There is a slight pick up towards the end where it touches upon the time travel elements again, but the bulk of the story is about the politics and relationships between the characters.

The game feels short with the story zipping past but lacking substance and meaning in its developments. Despite how brief the game is, taking only ten hours or so to finish, the final sections can feel like it is unnecessarily being padded out. It’s filled with gunfights that pad out the levels and can be annoying especially when the game wasn’t too heavy on combat in the first place. The final boss was okay, and the story ultimately ended up being average. It’s not a great ending either as it tries to be clever in incorporating the time travel elements, but it lost its thunder as it is something we have seen a few times before already.

The PC version, specifically the Game Pass version, is broken. There are massive graphical glitches, the worst of which are the light flares. Green and purple light stemming from reflections or light sources in the game will obscure most of the screen and render the game basically unplayable. It’s disappointing that such a broken state of a game was never patched. The Steam version got patched but not the Game Pass / Microsoft Store version, which is just ridiculous at this point.

Overall, Quantum Break is an average game. It has passable shooting mechanics, an average story, and subpar platforming. All this combines into something that you can see had a lot of potential and it did start out with plenty of promise, but ultimately quickly loses its shine. The characters fall flat, the integration of the game and live TV show episodes is a unique idea but that doesn’t work as well either since it focused mostly on offscreen characters, so it was hard to keep the player invested.

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Twisted Metal (2023)

Twisted Metal is based upon the PlayStation game, which was an arena vehicle combat game. The show stars Anthony Mackie as John Doe in a ten-episode first season. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a bug has infected all the computer systems in the world and brought it down to its knees. As a result, some of the population have isolated themselves in their walled cities, while on the outside, it is overrun by marauders in their vehicles and guns in a lawless society. John Doe is a milkman, a delivery man that collects and delivers packages between the cities. It is a dangerous job given the marauders, since they know that milkmen carry valuable packages, so John is often targeted.

John loves his car and all the vehicles we see are modified with weaponry or other aggressive customizations. There’s inbuilt guns and rocket launchers as well as traps that can be laid that can stop pursuing vehicles. The setting, combined with the vehicular weaponry can give off Mad Max vibes. The show tries to merge the setting with a more lighthearted performance of John, and it does not work very well. John’s character is supposed to be funny, cool, and slick. However, it often comes off as trying too hard and cringey. Then there are the questions that aren’t answered such as how in this isolated world are all the necessities still able to be produced? John talks and negotiates around gas, food, and medicine, but if the world was really crippled that much, then these would have run out long ago with no new production.

For a post-apocalyptic world where it is apparently very hard to keep law and order, it sure is easy for certain characters to have such a well-oiled society that mirrors what it was like before the “fall”. They even place important on mundane things like paperwork. There are some ridiculous things like the characters having high quality steak, or even simple taken for granted things like buildings that had fallen into disrepair still having access to electricity.

The season’s plot revolves around John accepting a tough request to collect and deliver a package that requires him to cross a huge portion of the country. It’s a portion that he isn’t familiar with and is well known to be extremely dangerous and risky. He’ll meet plenty of new characters and is reluctantly joined by others. The show tries its hardest to rationalize why some characters travel together even though in this world, no one trusts anyone. John’s partner for most of the season, Quiet, has an interesting background that shows how evil and corrupted the population has become. These bits make you feel that the rest of the show could have followed a similar vein in that it didn’t have to be too serious but also not too loose with its realism either.

There is a lot of stylized violence such as brains being splattered and the usual injuries from gunshots. One thing that is hard to portray is how the vehicles, particularly John’s vehicle, can survive so well while taking on hits from those heavy weapons. In a game, it is easier to overlook, but in a TV show, it requires you to suspect disbelief. The show constantly flipflops between cheesiness and seriousness. It cannot decide on which side it wants to go for. It tries to tell a serious story but then fills it up with cliches and over-the-top exaggerated reactions. This results in an inconsistent tone and quite a bit of mood whiplash. It changes from serious to wacky at a moment’s notice with events that are completely unexpected. At times it plays into the despair that one would feel in a post-apocalyptic world, while at other times, the characters have fun in the sense that one would in a normal world.

If you’re in it for the action, then the season will disappoint you. For a Twisted Metal show, there is limited vehicular combat, despite the focus on them in the source material. Despite how vehicles are so important in this world, we barely see a lot of them since John constantly gets out of his car to do random stuff. However, at least our thirst for them will be satisfied at least once and it was a lot of fun watching that battle play out. Unfortunately, it had an anticlimactic way to end the battle with the villain.

Perhaps most surprising is how the season manages to improve as it goes along. It is still silly and corny, but it gets more confident. This is to the point where the last few episodes were some of the best in the season. It’s still not going to win any awards, but it can be fun. It was a long detour, but it resolves in a satisfying way, despite all the hints otherwise. Most interestingly, it heavily teases future developments. These teases were much more promising than what we got so this season felt like an elongated intro before the real stuff.

Overall, Twisted Metal is an uneven show. The beginning was promising but then it leaned too hard on the cheesy and corny humor. It crossed the line to becoming cringeworthy. Some characters instantly felt iconic (aka Sweet Tooth), while others were so so (John and Quiet). There were moments of highs and moments of lows but on average, the quality did improve as the season went along. It improved enough that when it teased what could be coming in the next season, you are genuinely curious and interested to see that.

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