Little Dragons Café is the newest, cute, little game from Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada and Aksys Games that brings a fun, laid-back gaming experience. Though, it is a little rough at times.
I was very excited to see this game come around. I am a new fan of laid-back, more relaxing RPGs. What better way to dive deeper into the genre than with having to run a café and raise a dragon?
Little Dragons Café starts with a brother and sister, who are twins, helping their mother in their café. You decide which sibling you play as, and the other becomes your “Helper” through the rest of the game. After completing some chores for your mom, she sends you off to bed. A cutscene follows where it becomes evident that your mother is sick.
The next morning your mom is found in her bed in a coma. A wizardly figure appears, calling himself “Pappy.” Pappy informs you that your mother is half dragon and the only way to wake her is to raise a dragon. While doing so, you must also run the café.
To keep the café running, you have to explore the island and look for recipe fragments and ingredients. Later, you can explore more of the island and uncover new recipes. As your dragon gets older, it will help you get into these new areas, and when it has grown up, you can ride it and fly to new areas previously unexplorable.
The story brings new characters to your home. Each one brings a problem you have to help solve with your cooking and exploration. The first few will help you run your café, while the others come to visit. Each one is quite interesting and unique.
Little Dragons Café, visually, is very calming. The animation style reminds me of older games, like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The world is very vibrant and full of color, while also having a dynamic time and weather system that changes how the environment feels as you explore.
The only weird thing about the graphics is that there is a texture over everything that reminds me of a paintbrush stroke moving from the upper-right to the lower-left side of the canvas. This texture is on absolutely everything. In some cases, it makes objects feel as if they are one when, in reality, one is the door, and the other is the wall. Issues arise from this when outside and rock faces have unnatural lines across them.
The music in Little Dragons Café is fun but sometimes disjointed. There will often be cutscenes where a character comes to you with an issue that they are having and the music will reflect that emotion. However, as soon as the cutscene ends, the cheerful music of the café begins again. The feeling from the last scene is gone all of a sudden, and you are left to complete your daily tasks once more.
Playing this game reminds me of playing older games on older systems, and that’s not entirely a good thing. While the nostalgia factor is there, the controls are not pleasant. The character turns too widely and gets stuck on objects all too often. It is frustrating to pick up at first, but after some time I was able to get used to the movement controls. When making dishes, you have to press a button to the beat of the music. The music and location of the button press didn’t quite seem to line up, and I felt like I had to press the button early every time. Again, it is frustrating at first, but patience is a virtue.
Possibly the strangest thing about Little Dragons Café is the amount that the game takes you to a loading screen. Every time the game enters, or exits, a cutscene, or the café, there is a loading screen. The loading screen between the store and the world makes sense, as it is loading in a new environment. To see a black screen for a few seconds when moving between cutscenes takes the player out of the game just a little.
Overall, Little Dragons Café is enjoyable, but it has its quirks. It takes some time to get used to the controls and pacing of the game, but when you do, you will find that watching a dragon grow and taking care of a café is a great way to spend some time.
