Review: Tavern Talk Is Comfy, But Not Very Adventurous

Following within the footsteps of different visible novels like VA-11 HALL-A and Espresso Discuss, Tavern Discuss locations you behind the counter of a medieval fantasy inn the place you’ll meet and serve a gaggle of adventuring clients. You’ll hand out quests, in addition to recommendation and drinks, influencing how varied tales will play out from behind the counter of your cozy bar. Whereas the tropes and motifs are properly worn, they’re additionally pretty well-executed and the sport as a complete avoids slipping from “healthful” to “cloying” as a few of its fellow vacationers do, even when it may possibly play it a bit too protected at occasions.

Tavern Discuss is primarily a visible novel throughout which you additionally need to serve drinks to your patrons, brewed from quite a few stat-boosting components. These begin out easy sufficient. A patron asks for one thing to spice up their power, and also you make the drink with plenty of the power ingredient. Naturally the problem will increase as you unlock extra recipes and the requests get much less apparent, however the recreation additionally mixes issues up with the hunt system. Because the pure hub for adventurers within the area, your tavern additionally serves as a spot for folks to put up missions (or so that you can put up ones pieced collectively from a the ramblings or rumors you decide up). Different patrons can then decide up these quests, however earlier than they go they are going to usually ask for a drink for the street. Whichever drink you serve can alter how they go about finishing the hunt and whether or not they succeed.

It’s serviceable, however hardly ever difficult. Even with the addition of infusions, you hardly ever have to make greater than the odd adjustment to a recipe. Your entire time, I stored considering again to a Honkai: Star Rail occasion known as “Vignettes in a Cup,” which had the same, however barely extra concerned, drink-mixing minigame that served as a extra substantial puzzle. That mentioned, you possibly can make a very good argument {that a} extra complicated system would solely sluggish this recreation down and maintain gamers from attending to the actual draw: the characters.

Tavern Discuss incorporates a strong gallery of rogues (or fighters, or clerics, or… detectives), and every appears like they may very well be somebody’s participant character. There’s a grumpy dwarf that has no time for worldbuilding and desires to get on with the sport, the stuffy cleric that rigidly obeys their alignment, and a changeling with probably the most rancid vibes I’ve ever seen. They bounce off one another properly too, and typically buddy-up with attention-grabbing outcomes. The edgy rogue and the optimistic kitten have been a enjoyable pair, as was the anxious elf taking cost of the imposing warrior girl. Their interactions additionally helped promote me on the setting, which I in any other case discovered to be pretty typical excessive fantasy fluff. The extra I noticed of how they talked in regards to the world at massive, the extra lived in it felt.

Patrons may even deliver again decorations they discover on quests to spruce up your bar, although you don’t get to put or customise them your self. It’s additionally a pleasant contact that Tavern Discuss permits you to open up a logbook at any time to learn a bio on all of your regulars, together with their class and alignment. That final half was truly attention-grabbing to look at within the dialogue, as there have been various occasions I discovered characters agreeing (or maybe, aligning) on sure matters regardless of having vastly totally different personalities. I normally despise the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system as restricted and limiting, however right here it felt much less obtrusive and extra like a consistency.

My greatest criticism of Tavern Discuss is simply that it doesn’t actually step too far exterior that cozy consolation zone to re-evaluate issues. To deliver again a earlier reference, VA-11 HALL-A (for all its problematic components) used its ‘worms-eye view’ to point out a unique aspect of its cyberpunk setting, the place you hardly ever have all of the solutions about whats occurring and may do valuable little when one thing occurs to your mates and colleagues. It made the rapport you constructed together with your regulars extra significant, and in the long run it felt such as you had fostered a neighborhood that might mutually help one another in opposition to the horrors of company dystopia. I by no means fairly received that very same feeling with Tavern Discuss regardless of it hitting comparable notes, or maybe even as a result of you may have that little bit extra company within the story.

That’s to not say the sport fails, in actual fact Tavern Discuss accomplishes every part it units out to do: it has coziness in spades and loads of entertaining characters to come across. In the event you get pleasure from a delicate trip and the odd tabletop RPG, Tavern Discuss will really feel like ordering a favourite drink out of your common watering gap. It received’t problem you, however it is perhaps simply what you have to refresh after an extended day.

Tavern Discuss is straight away out there on PC and Nintendo Change.