I’ll admit that while I certainly understand the love for the Harvest Moon series and games of that ilk (Stardew Valley being the biggest in recent years), I’ve never had much interest in them. Yasuhiro Wada is the reason the series and genre in general exists. He recently released Birthdays the Beginning, which was a simulation of life type of game that was pretty difficult to grasp, and a new step for him. His newest game, Little Dragon’s Café, seeks to reach back to the roots of his beginnings while being a bit more quirky than usual.

My first experience with this game was my wife playing it. I turned it on and let the title screen sit for a bit as the music was rather pleasant. I was rocking my daughter and she fell asleep as if I had a lullaby on for her. As I was putting her down, she started the game, and at first glance the visual style made me think of the stroke-shaded characters in Wild Arms 3. This is essentially cel-shaded models with a stroke texture to give the world/characters more depth. I thought it was neat in the PS2 RPG, but I think it finds itself much more at home in this children centric environment.

That’s not at all to say that this game is aimed at kids, although it’s certainly family friendly enough for them. There are no monsters to fight, although your dragon will be making meat out of some animals you encounter, so if you skew vegan or are part of PETA, maybe don’t play this. As previously mentioned, this takes players back to Wada’s roots with the task of harvesting and creating. Despite the fact that I haven’t had any firsthand experience with the recent Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons games, I imagine this takes out a lot of the legwork you’d do for the harvesting portion of the game. You’ll harvest, but the crops are not something you’ll be tending to or even planting, really. A much larger focus here is placed on foraging and exploration, which is defined by your dragon and the stage it’s in.

Before we get into that, why is there a dragon? The game starts off in what you’d think would be a dark scenario – two twins have their mother fall into a coma and are left alone. I knew this going in, and expected my wife to get upset, but before things could turn into the intro of UP, an old guy shows up out of nowhere and starts making jokes. The situation is more or less dismissed as anything serious, although the kids are still upset, but the solution to their problem is raising a dragon. Lucky enough for the twins, they are now in possession of an unhatched egg which, what do you know, hatches. This is paramount to the success of the game, as your new pet will be able to forage areas that you couldn’t access before, netting new cooking materials as well as recipe shards. You’ll feed the dragon and its appearance will change depending on the foods given, although this is mainly decorative. While the ol’ draggo will start of small and slow, often making you wait for good periods of time like any good in-game companion, he’ll grow (basically evolve like in Pokémon) and be able to do new things, including serve as a mount for you and actually keep up. Those islands you see at the beginning with no discernible path? You’ll be able to get there soon enough.

In order to progress the game, you’ll need to spend time in the café itself, cooking dishes for the different folks that visit. A number of them will work for you, although the amount of work they actually do will be determined by how often you actually manage them and tell them to stop lazing about like a bunch of freeloaders. The dishes you serve will be determined by the recipes you find and the items you procure. When setting up a dish to be cooked, you’ll be faced with a mini rhythm game that caught my eye right away. This isn’t something in-depth like a level from Rhythm Heaven, but reminded me of seeing people on the DDR machine as I walked by. And no, I’m not referring to the people playing on the harder difficulties, but the people that had never played before and wanted to try it out. Depending on how well you do in the mini game will determine the quality of the dishes you create. So is that steak cooked to perfection with a melt in your mouth texture, or does it resemble the coal used to heat the grill? You’re allowed to play this as many times as necessary depending on your stock of ingredients to achieve the ultimate rating.

This genre has never appealed to me for much of the same reason I rarely play sports games – I’d rather just go do it. I am not able to raise and ride a dragon, and this manages to draw me in with some other aspects such as the dynamic characters you’re introduced to through the café. Of course, the game is far from perfect, with some of the game’s more prominent features falling short. The café stuff itself can become a bit of drag, having to constantly tell your workers to do something instead of falling asleep standing. If the only cooking game you’ve played is Overcooked, don’t get too excited about this aspect, as it’s not nearly as tantalizing. Exploration can also be a bit of a bummer with the amount of textures and models popping in due to a seemingly poor draw distance. Even in the beginning of the trailer used at the top of this review you can see this issue clear as day. Moving the camera around as you’re running causes a weird stutter in the environment, and there’s a fairly extensive amount of load times throughout. The world isn’t so big that you’d expect any of this, and is even more notable when you’re able to quickly fly through the environments. The platforming itself is also a bit strange, feeling more akin to when 3D platformers were just starting out on consoles and weren’t quite sure of themselves, unlike things such as the perfectly tailored 2D Mega Man.

As someone that has never found any reason to really jump into the farming/resource management genre, I find myself strangely allured to this. Even when things got goofy at the very beginning, it was charming. It’s nice that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously, as this could’ve gone in a completely different direction. Neither is necessarily better than the other, but the borderline anime triviality of serious situations makes it a fun romp regardless of age. Some of its more prevalent features can fall a bit flat, but it’s got the heart of a dragon, and that’s what raises this above the clouds.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Beautiful Aesthetic
• Fun Cast of Characters
• Quirky Fun

Cons

• Texture and Model Popping
• Wonky Platforming/Pathfinding
• Café AI

Little Dragons Café was developed by TOYBOX Inc in association with Aksys Games and was published by Aksys as well as Rising Star Games. It launched on NS and PS4 August 24th, 2018, and will be available on PC November 15th, 2018. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Little Dragon’s Café, check out the game’s official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.