There's nothing "cyberpunk" about this game beyond the vaguely futuristic aesthetic. There's no grimness, no loss of humanity or subordination of the self. It's anime girls and cute doggies chatting about romance. All of the "cyberpunk elements" like the supposedly dystopian setting are entirely informed. The characters might as well have been pulled out of your local bar. It's like Cyberpunk Zero Calorie™, cyberpunk trappings without any of the actual gravity the genre carries. Cyberpunk isn't just a "slap some gears on it and give them a tophat" aesthetic like steampunk.
The world's not portrayed as "bad" at all, beyond people saying "gosh it's so bad out there". The character never suffers at all. She lives a perfectly pleasant life. And "a perfectly pleasant life" is not cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is supposed to be about something, not jerking off over "OH MAN WHAT IF I HAD A LOLI SEXBOT". They explain a character having cat ears with "I got sick when I was a kid so they gave me a surgery that gave me cat ears." That's an anime level justification for body modification. It's just "hey we want this character to be a cat girl, what justification can we come up with for that".
Your character never actually interacts with any of the supposedly dystopian features of the world. She's living a life that looks like it could be carrying on in any big city right now. Every cyberpunk element in the game is a perfect example of an Informed Attribute. Compare the "dystopia" with Papers, Please, where you're actively living the nightmare. You have to choose between medicine for your child and food for yourself sometimes. Your child can die. Even a whiff of seditious thinking will have you hauled off and executed. That's a dystopia. Valhalla is a nichijou VN that happens to have characters with some prosthetics.
Not to mention the 'gameplay' is even shallower than your average visual novel.
She lives a pleasant life until she gives the wrong drinks to the customers.
Kevin Sanders
Here comes the waifu gags to defend their shit vn
Landon Watson
I'll take that typo to the grave fuck it
Ayden Martinez
Dude. They are in cyber punk venuzela. Venuzela is bad on it's own. Imagine dystopian venuzela.
Aaron Green
tl;dr
Owen Fisher
hello columbian
Parker Martin
have sex
Isaiah Fisher
You're right, it should be called neon noire cafe
Joseph Sanders
You complain about anime, but you're the cyberpunk equivalent of a weeb.
>Cyberpunk isn't just a "slap some gears on it and give them a tophat" aesthetic like steampunk.
Yes it is.
Ryder Martinez
It does have all that. But you're in the bar all day, you only hear about it from other people.
Alexander Cook
Well yeah, that's the entire point. It's a shitshow of oppressive corporations and cyberterrorism but the game's about a shitty bar in some corner of that mess that's a bit comfy but smells like dog piss sometimes. The game explicitly ISN'T about how Jill interacts with that world, you see that more with the characters she talks to, from the shady career ventures like Delay's private investigating, Alma's hacking and Jamie being a mercenary to pleasures being sold like Dorothy's "little girl fantasy" prostitution and Kira*Miki*'s idol ventures, to even a look into the life of the rich with Stella, not to mention all the characters who live normal ass working class lives, same as Jill.
None of this is the point, though. You casually glean these details by talking to them but it's all about those cozy conversations more than watching the world go to hell. Even then, you still see glimmers of consequence like with what happens to Sei. And there's also hints of the requisite pseudophilosophical bullshit you'd expect, characters like Dorothy and Anna serve that up on occasion. But yeah, it's a comfy VN in a cyberpunk world.
Gabriel Brown
It's a shitty game for weebs, they don't care about any of that
Tyler Hughes
> It's also not an action game > It's also not a bartending game Wow OP.
Cyberpunk has been "muh aesthetic" for literally decades. By the time steampunk was a thing it was all over. Punk is dead.
Brandon Peterson
it's almost like the game's entire design philosophy is "what if cyberpunk but focused on the faceless masses just trying to get by"
Joseph Garcia
Cyberpunk is high-tech low-life. Fact that people are not constantly hacking each other does not mean it's not cyberpunk you autist. Also, VA11HallA is sad at times. Sorry there's no rain and neons to tell you something is sad - you seem like the type of guy who needs some serious help with social cues. But you are an autist. I mean, whole backstory of Dorothy? Birthday guy? Old lady's brain? Fact that there are funny, good, bad and sad things happening at the same time prolly leave your NPC mind confused. Jesus OP, you are dumb and mentally rigid as fuck. I'm not joking with you being an autist.
Aiden Ortiz
I know the original dev got shipped off the the gulags, but would there ever be some kind of mobile port? I'd play the crap out of this on mobile or switch at work between jobs.
OP confirmed for literally not playing the game /thread
Anthony Brown
Cyberpunk is pretty much a dead genre, you can't really fault the game for not living up to conventions that haven't been popular or relevant in decades. >Papers, Please Oh wait, you're not serious.
Eli Reyes
Switch port was announced
Camden Ward
>female protagonist trash
Caleb Morris
Have sex
Wyatt Gray
Sure. Let's go.
Justin Stewart
>Imagine dystopian venuzela. >Dictator mad with power >6 day blackouts >Foreign powers hold the government reigns >Opposition might also be controlled by foreigners >No food or medicine >No hope So Venuzela
John Long
giv pusy
Thomas Baker
>this whole fucking autistic essay This is why people don't do cyberpunk or futuristic settings anymore.
Logan Russell
You seem to care more about the game matching your arbitrary expectations of cyberpunk than it just attempting to do what it's doing.
Of course the characters don't go through some crazy shit, the point is the events are a relatively normal daily life for the people living in a world like that. Of course the world and setting is delivered through dialogue, that's literally the point, the very idea of being the bartender exists to serve the concept that all of the game is delivered through dialogue.
If you want it to go all in with showing the worst parts of the setting and focusing on them you are literally missing the entire point, being that this is about people who just live their lives in a setting like that.
It fucking amazes me people like you actually exist sometimes. It's like you think everything exists to serve the genre and not that a genre is just a collection of similar ideas.
