Little Dragons Cafe - Release Thread

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.

Which version of the game are you picking up?

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ChocolateKisses
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well i posted a thread about my opinion cuz i didnt see this one but honestly....is it worth the price tag? Hm...yes and no. I have played the game for almost 10 hours now and, while it is keeping me interested at the moment, i know about a week from now i will probably get bored of it. There arent any side-quests or anything else that you can do. Its honestly just gathering/fishing + managing your cafe. Yes you get to explore but man, the character is so freaking slow and clumsy that it gets frustrating. Im just waiting for my dragon to grow into an adult to see how the exploration turns out to be.

But yeah i think i'll be returning the game in about a week or two to exchange it for another $60 title (*COUGH*Theworldendswithyou*COUGH*)

Its very fun, cute, charming, relaxing...But It gets boring fast. I can get a longer game that will keep me interested for those same 60 bucks.
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RopeMaidenKirie
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The game is super cozy, and just...happy. But it's not like Bokumono imo where you can get away just marathoning straight through and putting tons of hours into. I feel like it's best paired while you're playing something else to switch back and forth between, otherwise some of the mechanics are probably going to get old very fast and bring down the enjoyment of the title quite a bit.

For performance, while it's pretty bad tbh, I've gotten used to it fairly quick. So luckily that didn't end up being as bad as I thought it would be. There are some definite quality of life issues which I hope if they make it a series they will end up ironing out (better yet I hope for a patch but I honestly doubt it)

I think if someone is in the mood for a cheery life sim that focuses on its story and characters, I'd say go for it. I personally don't like to judge games based on their length. There have been games where I've paid $20 for 3 hours worth of content and felt they were far more than worth it. Some of my favorite games of all time are only 20 hours and I paid a full $60 for, so I really don't like using that as some sort of metric for quality, because it really varies. But Mel, if you're on a budget and looking for a longer game, maybe wait for a sale.

For the record, I absolutely loathed Hometown Story and consider it one of the worst games I've ever played, so Wada has redeemed himself a bit in my eyes lol
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Ronin19
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I've gotten to the point where I recruited Luccola. I must say the game is definitely charming and it's worth playing for the characters and story. The dragon is definitely adorable, Ipanema is a bad influence on the dragon, Billy is incredibly lazy, Luccola is fabulous, and the Helper Sibling is pretty innocent. Even though I'm not a fan of Billy, I can't help but ship him with Ipanema based on their interactions so far.

I think it's worth the price tag based on the story and characters alone. Gameplay is getting a tad repetitive though and the performance is noticeable, but they're pretty easy to ignore after playing for about two-three hours total.

I do hope that if this becomes a series for Wada, I hope that the feedback he gets from this title will improve the sequel.
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Kikki
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Ronin19 wrote:Even though I'm not a fan of Billy, I can't help but ship him with Ipanema based on their interactions so far.
Ha ha, me too :) I feel like the only way Billy will ever amount to anything other than a pile of sludge with hair is with someone like Ipanema standing beside him in place of the sense of will or drive he seems to entirely lack, lol. However...she's always the one slacking off. :/ Almost every time I have to rouse a worker from slacking, it's Ipanema, not Billy...he only seems to slack once the customers are actually gone, and then I really don't mind if he stands around playing his...whatever that is. A guitar, I guess. Plus I like Billy's design quite a bit, so I do enjoy having him around :) And Poncho is super cute. I like his 'heroic' nervous tummy and his big ol' spoon. (Cursed? Lol.)

I am in Chapter 2, but just one or two sections in. My sister basically played the game all night. I drank a load of water yesterday and when I had to get up at 2:45 am, she was still in the living room, playing. She must've logged 10 hours yesterday. O.O I knew she'd like it as long as it didn't make her dizzy. She LOVES to forage.

Anyway, the characters really are lovable, at least so far. My progress is probably going to be slow, but not because I don't like the game :)
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Bluie
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I think i've put around 5ish hours into my game? Dragon is at second stage and i've currently only have Poncho as a guest (and he wants a dish I don't think I can quite make yet).

Does the reputation meter only go up if the cafe had a 'good' day? It doesn't seem to budge if it was just 'fine'.
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I don't see the issue with the price. If AC and SoS can cost $60USD then this seems fine too.
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Kikki
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It's all in whether you think this game is on the same level as HM/SoS in terms of content and quality. I don't, so I don't feel like the game is 'worth' as much money. Though they're not really that similar, SoS and LDC. No farming, no dating or marriage, no building, no customization except being able to change your dragon's colour...pretty different, really. It doesn't feel the same to me, anyway. Other than the ability to forage and cook, I can't think of anything they have in common, but the importance of even those things is really different in each game, so even they feel pretty different.

But I don't care about the price anyway, I don't buy my games based on whether I think they're worth the cost, just on whether I think I'll have fun with them or not. So far I like the game but I don't think it's ever going to reach the 'love' level...the go foraging for ingredients and recipes, help out at the cafe and occasionally cook something and feed it to your dragon stuff gets old pretty quick. It refreshes a bit when you have a new area to explore, but...yeah. The story works the same way...the details are different for each character but it seems that each time you just have to find and cook a specific recipe for them and that solves their little story arc. (I just did Poncho's. I'm getting through the story way faster than my sis, somehow, even though she's put in more than double the time I have. I think she's just spending all her time foraging without paying a lot of attention to the story.)

The characters are the best, most unique part, imo. The rest is pleasant, but not exciting. It's a nice game to play for an hour or two here and there, but not so much a marathon type of game because for me the routine gets tiresome. (Just as well, I've got stuff to do and can't afford to have this game hogging my time this weekend.)

The reputation meter is puzzling, but it certainly seems to go up if the patrons like the food they are eating (so make sure your menu is filled with stuff they're leaving good comments on) and if you help out a lot at lunch and supper. Cut Ipanema and Billy off, grab orders before them, clean up before them, etc. Make them useless, lol. :)
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ryume
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People are already scalping the Switch version on Amazon SMDH.

Sounds like overall most people are having fun with the game in shorter bursts, and that the technical issues aren't as horrific in person. That's good! I still don't have my PS4 copy, but I'm enjoying reading the comments anyway. Still undecided, but whatever. I'm not bothered :lol:

Price matters to me, fish, when it's a game that falls in the on that fence category. And length matters as well if I'm not drooling to own a game when I'm told repeatedly that said game is story and character driven. But ONLY when I'm on the fence will I even think about cost and length when making my decision (not that my buying criteria should matter to anyone else but me lol).

The day an SoS game is $60 could be an expensive day indeed. It will be nice to see the series return to a non-handheld console.
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Bluie
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Kikki wrote: Cut Ipanema and Billy off, grab orders before them, clean up before them, etc. Make them useless, lol. :)
I have had a few 'no, those are my customers! >:v' moments when running the cafe. I imagine as more of the characters show up it'll get more hectic thus needing Ipanema and Billy more often, but right now, MINE.

As for the price thing, this is really blunt but I really don't care. My attitude towards games lately is 'I wana play that' not 'how much?'. I understand wanting to stretch your money out or being picky, I ain't made of money nor do I want to play everything. However, if I get enjoyment out of something I purchase, I feel it's worth the price I paid for it, whether it was on sale or I bought it day one at full price.
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Kikki
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Only having 3-4 customers in a cafe with 4 helpers does make it hard to get in enough opportunities to help. It really needs to get at least a little busier. Though I'll need better access to some ingredients if a lot more dishes are going to get cooked...

Yup, I agree. If I see a game, look into it, and think 'that looks really fun', then I buy it. I'm so fussy that there is no need for me to budget...I'm lucky if two new games per month meet my criteria. Usually it's only one, and sometimes none. So I don't care about price.

However...sometimes you can't tell. When there are a lot of things I like about a game I'm looking at, but just as many things I'm unsure of, then I start wondering about how many hours of gameplay there is, how much story content, how much busywork, side quests, optional content, etc.

When it comes to price specifically, the only time I worry about it is if I think there is a high likelihood that I won't like it much (which is why I'm still holding off on Light of Hope...and I'd also like them to patch some of the bugs I'm hearing about.) Because if I want to try it but there's a higher chance of me not liking it, I don't want to waste too much money. I won't be mad at myself for wasting $10 if it turns out I don't like the game after all, but $60 is another story. If I'm that unsure about a game, I'm better off to either just wait until I know enough to feel more certain, or only risk it if it goes on a good enough sale that I won't mind even if it turns out it was a loss.

Story progression EDIT: I've played 4.5 hours, my dragon is up a size, and Poncho's arc is done and the next character's has begun, which means I'm in chapter 3. I think maybe I should be spending a few whole days just foraging further afield, not even bothering to go back to the cafe to serve once in a while...I'm progressing the story relatively quickly but I often run low on various ingredients (I wish it were less time-consuming to get those chicken things.)
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Night Owl
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I played many, many hours last night and got to the start of Chapter 5. I have also successfully turned my dragon purple. He's still in the 2nd stage of growth and I can't wait for him to grow up so I can reach the things that my jump barely doesn't get to. The exploration is fun, and this is a game that definitely increases in difficulty as you progress and the cafe gets more popular. You need to balance helping out at the Cafe with ingredient and recipe collection. The garden can help you out in a pinch though. Like when I was running out of eggs for some reason. I took the opportunity to change the menu up a bit, but it got a bit worrisome there for a moment. Like, to the point where I was wondering what was gonna happen if you run out of an ingredient in the middle of a rush with really no chance to collect anything more.

A few ingredient gather spots don't show up until they're needed, which kinda threw me for a loop in Chapter 4, because of the main ingredient I needed. It was the same for Chapter 3 too, but the gather spot that popped up was easier to spot. Once the game hits roughly Chapter 4, I found a slighttt difficulty spike in helping manage the Cafe because there were just so many people. This is when my stockpiled eggs ran out over the course of like, 3 days even though I had been gathering more. It was a combination of having Pudding, Bacon & Egg, and Sunny-Side Up as my 3 most popular menu items. I ended up having to take 2 of those of the menu and replaced them with something else. I can already tell that I'm going to have to manage ingredients better now. I also began running out of Soy Sauce for the Menieure I made and running out to the rock that gave it out everyday was a bit of a pain, so I took that off the menu as well. :lol:

The characters in the game are quite adorable, and I love all of them. Billy is so far my favorite, but they're all such good characters that I'm fond of them. The guests I've had so far have all been amusing to say the least. Although I think think character introduction at the start of Chapter 5 is my favorite so far. I won't say anything more than that.

The technical issues aren't bad, they're just too noticeable. The game isn't glitchy, it just has a few polish related issues. The game could've stood to be polished some more, but I know there's a certain threshold where the devs just have to shove it out the door and hope that it doesn't melt the console into hot slag or something. Hopefully they'll iron stuff out with a patch (or few), if not, well they have plenty of material to improve upon for the 2nd game should it do well enough to warrant a series. It has good potential, and I want to see more. As for the price, well, I shelled out for the LE which I mainly bought due to the plush. Do I think my purchase was worth it? Absolutely. I really like this game. It performs well on my own checklist of what I like to see in a game: Story, characters, and music. The visuals are also there, they're just kinda dragged down by the pop-in. However, nothing will beat Makna Forest from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 as the "pop-in forest", so I don't think I mind it too much.
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ryume
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Nice, Night Owl. I was toying with the idea of making mine purple like Spyro myself :lol:

What colors for your dragons did you guys end up settling on/working toward?
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Bluie
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I've finished the 2nd character's story and i'm patiently waiting to unlock recipes to change my dragon a different colour! It's name is Marigold, I don't want it to be green forever! D:
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Kikki
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Seems like the baby dragon can ONLY be red, green or blue...as far as I can tell, it can't change to any of the other colours until it reaches it's 'child' form. After that I quickly changed two shades away from blue toward green to get the teal I wanted. :) I'm finished chapter 3 but not quite started chapter 4. Seems like each chapter so far is taking me just over two hours, but I suspect it's going to get more difficult to get ingredients, and frankly any recipe with more than three ingredients is impossible for me to score well on. I'm really no good at the cooking game.

I'm not really clear on how you'll change to yellow, though. I've so far only seen recipes to turn red, blue and green and whatever shades can be mixed between them...
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Night Owl
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Kikki wrote:I'm not really clear on how you'll change to yellow, though. I've so far only seen recipes to turn red, blue and green and whatever shades can be mixed between them...
I've seen one recipe so far that isn't green, blue, or red. The dish had white dragon dye. It's an unmissable recipe that pops up in Chapter 4 for those curious. I've yet to find something that turns the dragon yellow, but I have 2 hunches on the recipes that do it, and I can test one out fairly quickly. The other one involves cheese, and I have no clue where to get it at the moment.

And I believe the 1st stage can change colors, I had it turn a different shade of blue and I thought I was seeing things for a moment. But nah, there was a definite difference in the coloration since it went back to the bog standard starting blue after I fed it a blue dragon dye recipe.

Also, Billy has become my favorite Cafe employee. I love these characters so much... I'm pretty much at the end of Chapter 4, I'm taking a break for the time being. I'll go back to it soon though.
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