VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PS Vita)

Glitch City. In the 2070s, this technological metropolis is controlled by huge corporations, the dominant one employing a special police force known as the White Knights to harshly enforce their understanding of the law on the populace. Crime is rampant and inflation is high, but in this cyberpunk dystopia, you do NOT play as some up-and-coming hero looking to put the city on the path to change. Instead, you are simply Jill, a bartender trying to make sure she has the money needed to pay rent at the end of the month at a bar that is on the verge of closing.

VA-11 HALL-A is the name of the game and the name of the bar in the game, although they quite reasonably call it Valhalla instead. Through Jill’s job at the bar, you get a street view of life in this futuristic city, the game not giving you some glorious quest of redeeming the city but showing the sort of life many of us would likely have if our future ever turned out this way. Sure, the upper echelons of this society are corrupt and the streets aren’t always safe to walk, but regular people still try to live their lives here, and Jill is certainly a fairly typical young woman. She may live in a world where androids called Lilim have achieved human-level intelligence and cyborg enhancements are commonplace, but she’s trying to live her life and faces regular human issues like bills and interpersonal drama. Although our main character gives off an air of cool detachment at times, she isn’t a flat character, participating in conversations from behind the bar to lend heartfelt advice and even going through her own personal arc as unexpected elements of her life push her heart into dramatic new directions.

Jill’s bartender job is actually the game’s way of setting up it’s main purpose, that being to have the player interact with other residents of Glitch City and learn both more about this futuristic setting and the personalities of your patrons. It is, essentially, a visual novel, although some bartending gameplay has been added to make it more interactive. Naturally, when people show up at a bar, they want something to drink, and the player has a menu of drinks they can make on request. Once you’ve got the recipes open, you put them together in your drink mixer, the Vita’s touch screen making it fairly easy and quick to do, although there are other control options if you wish to use the control stick and buttons instead. Once you’ve got the right ingredients in the mixer and have either added ice, aged it properly, or added double the ingredients to make it big, you must mix it for a few seconds or let it blend for about twice as long as you’d let it mix, serving it up and continuing whatever conversation the character started on arrival. Drink mixing is not very hard at all and there’s no pressure to do things in a timely manner, meaning you can do things quite deliberately to ensure you make no mistakes. The bartending is certainly not here to challenge the player much, so once you get a few hours into the game it can start feeling a bit like the job it actually is, but there is more purpose to drink mixing than just serving as a point where conversations can be interrupted to change subjects somewhat fluidly. Some drinks have optional alcohol amounts you can add, and depending on how much you add to the drink, you can potentially influence how patrons treat you. More importantly, there are moment where drink choice is left up to you, with some patrons requesting things not by name, but by qualities like flavor or type, and there are even points where you are asked to guess what a character might desire or choose the best option to make them feel better. Extra dialogue and even special endings open up based on getting to know the people who drop by your bar often, the drink you serve at pivotal moments showing that you have taken the time to get to know the customer as a friend rather than a source of income.

It’s not too hard to get to know the characters either, and the main appeal of the game is developing your relationships with them. Valhalla attracts an eclectic cast of future folks who help you to better understand the setting and its society. Jill may live in this world, but she still has plenty she needs to learn about it or knows how to explain things to other characters out of the loop, so even though the game rarely steps outside to view the city, you still will have a good understanding of what it would be like to live in this view of the future. Although Glitch City is definitely dystopic, this game is not some bleak prediction of the path our society is heading towards, the game instead approaching multiple relatable subjects and putting them out there for discussion between characters who have unique perspectives. You may be speaking with a robotic woman or a lady with cat ears, but subjects like love, purpose, and a strong focus on mortality are covered both in how we in the real world view it and how that view could change when viewed through the eyes of something not tied to the same limitations as us. While these subjects are given the time and tone required, the game is not overbearing with their discussion, with perhaps the biggest focus being on casual conversation and quite a lot of humor. The game makes it very clear it’s letting itself be silly right off the bat in the Prologue, where Jill endures three straight days of customers who are actual talking dogs wearing tuxedos. The future can be absurd and the game has no issue showing that, although the character banter is where a lot of the fun comes from, especially once you get to know a character well enough that their behavior becomes charming and their jokes funnier for that sense of familiarity you have with their personality. The mix of absurd, raunchy, and character-focused humor keeps the game lighthearted between its periods of deeper introspection and sometimes dark subjects.

Since you spend so much of the game just watching Jill talk with the characters who come into their bar, it’s important that they be likeable faces you enjoy seeing again and again. Just like a real bar, there are regulars who grow into people you enjoy seeing every work day and there are people who only drop by once or twice ever. The game takes place over a few weeks at the end of the year, so there are plenty of chances to push the story arcs of individual characters along as well as things like Christmas and New Year’s to draw out different emotions. Highlights among your more regular bargoers include Dorothy, a lewd robotic girl who is not afraid to discuss in detail her lascivious line of work, Virgilio, an odd and eccentric buffoon that flusters Jill with his tomfoolery, Sei, a White Knight who specializes in rescue who manages to humanize the otherwise off-putting police force with her earnest and kindhearted nature, and the pair of Betty and Deal who are a human and Lilim working in a company run by the talking dogs who are exasperate and overjoyed by their positions respectively. There are certainly more characters like Jill’s close friend Alma the hacker and Sei’s cat-eared buddy Stella who drop by, and these regulars each get plenty of focus to flesh out their characters. Some like Dorothy and the pair of Betty and Deal have multiple moments of figuring out themselves while others like Sei and Stella ride a pretty consistent through-line during the course of the game. With the supplement of your outrageous boss Dana and mysterious coworker Gill, the core cast is definitely well-constructed to keep you hooked on the stories of these people who enter your lives for more than just drinks. As their bartender, you lend a sympathetic ear to their problems, and while the game decides how Jill replies and lends advice, she seems to be of the right state of mind to be genuinely helpful so you never feel helpless about how she treats the other cast members.

Despite having the span of many days to dig into the personalities of these patrons, not everything is quite wrapped up by the time you reach the end. A few characters like the biker Mario and attempted underage drinker Norma drop in and have their personal stories wrapped up before you really had the time to get invested in them, while other questions are left unanswered about characters like Streaming-Chan, a girl who livestreams every moment of her life, and even our main character Jill. Understandably, a small span of time might not see huge change in every character and the game does give us quite a serving of that happening despite the time frame, but the fact the bar is threatening to close could spur a few more incomplete story questions towards resolution. Provided you do serve the right drinks at the right time, many stories get the resolution they deserve, so the few remaining questions and rare undeveloped characters are not so bad in the grand scheme of the game’s design. There are plenty of memorable characters with fleshed out histories to get invested in, with humor and humanity injected into their stories to ensure a lasting impact.

Outside of the bar, there is one gameplay consideration besides mixing drinks, although it’s a relatively minor one. Jill heads home after each day of work, earning cash based on what drinks she served and if she managed to do so flawlessly that day. With the money you earn, you can buy things to keep Jill happy and focused at work or indulge in some decorations, although there are bills to consider and even a well done run of the game may leave you just scraping by to pay off the rent at the end. The game has multiple endings, two of them based on your relationship with these bills, so it is important to watch your spending here. During these segments you also get to take a look at the news or online message boards to get another perspective on Glitch City, with some characters like *Kira* Miki perhaps getting more development here than in your talks with her. There’s also a music player here, although on your days at work, you can set the jukebox to play through some excellent and relaxing synth music. Working together with the color choice, the mood of the game is set quite well, mixing together cyberpunk genre conventions while integrating a lounge-like atmosphere for the bar to keep things cool and relaxed. You do spend most the game staring at the same bar visuals that get interrupted by the sprites of your visitors, but your eyes will mostly be on the text of who’s talking to you and the drinks you’re making, so the few breaks away from the bar setting weren’t even totally necessary to avoid visual stagnation. Similarly, while the occasional bit of dialogue does feels a touch unnatural, so much of it does its job well when trying to be funny or working through serious matters that these dips in quality don’t detract from the general enjoyability of the writing.

THE VERDICT: VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action puts the player on the ground level of a technological future filled with androids, cyborgs, and talking dogs, focusing not on the action of taking down corrupted companies ruling over a crime-filled city but on developing personal relationships and making ends meet in a setting unfamiliar for its technological evolution but relatable for the continued humanity of its inhabitants. As the simple bartender Jill, the chats with patrons both reveal more of the game’s unique world and more about their personal relationships with it and with Jill, with plenty of time given to get invested in the conversations and characters. A few characters are a bit basic and there’s not much to the drink mixing, but most of the game comes together excellently to create a cast that is easy to get attached to with stories that are enjoyable to watch unfold over the course of the game. The gameplay elements know to step back for the most part to let the main attraction of interpersonal interaction dominate the stage.

And so, I give VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action for PlayStation Vita…

A GREAT rating. The issues in VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action are mostly about the rest of the game doing things well enough that it’s hard not to wish more attention was paid to its thinner elements. More time with the less developed characters and a few more things wrapped up would make the already fun and involved writing reach a fully satisfying conclusion, but already there is plenty of content there to read and the more developed patrons offer variety in personality and history. They aren’t just windows into understanding Glitch City and the 2070s but people with their own problems, and as the bartender they bare their soul to you and you get to help them along their way. Your role as the player is tied to which drinks are served, but the game can work this in to that goal as well, and it’s simple enough that it doesn’t bar you from getting more of a character’s story if you just want a relaxing visual novel experience. The drink variety could be greater and maybe a few more instances of drink challenges could keep it from becoming a touch dull near the end, but the act of bartending would still just be better off a minor addition to the exploration of the setting’s characters.

VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action is a slice of an unusual and incredibly interesting fictional life. Just like a visit to the titular bar, playing it can be relaxing but lead to some surprisingly heartfelt moments, and while it’s nice to get to know these characters who briefly enter your life for a few drinks, their fun personalities make it bittersweet to see them go when those credits finally roll.