Café Rouge Reviews

i was so excited for this game to come out yet it's turn to be such a disappointment. first of all; there's a lot of bug in this game and i get stuck at some routes with a black screen which i need to play it from the beginning all over. secondly; there's some part of the story seems interesting and some part is just sound off. however the art is really beautiful which made me try and give the game a chance. anyways this is my scores based on: story: 4 / 10 dialogue: 6.5 / 10 art: 9.5 / 10 characters: 9 / 10 heroine: 7 / 10 control on story: 6 / 10 BGM: 8 / 10 settings: 3 / 10 sound effects: 5.5 / 10 overall score: 5.8

EDIT: I didn't say this before, but I think it's absolutely disgusting for a non-black Asian American to profit off of a story where the poster couple are literal slave owners when Black Americans are not even allowed their humanity in the U.S. Instead of spending money on this game, I hope people can donate to Black-led organizations or Black people that need it. (Also, Sonya Fung openly defended the Trumps on Twitter. Take that how you will. I personally will never again support a creator like this.) Long review ahead. I echo everyone else when I say that I regret buying this game. Nobody should buy this. I don't think it was worth the money I spent (and I split that cost 50/50 with a friend, so not even $10 I would've bought this). I played through both of Valen's ends and was in the middle of Ron's before I stopped, and I don't plan on playing anymore of it. The main issue I have is the inclusion and atrocious mishandling of real, heavy issues that are present in U.S. history and the political climate... IN A "FUN" ROMANCE GAME. This is such a ridiculously inappropriate medium for this that I cannot express it in words. Those are things that require a lot of care, nuance, and review with others before even publishing. In the little time I've played this game (and read spoilers), I've seen anti-abortion comments from Isis and plotlines dealing with racism, slave owners, and U.S. slavery but surrounding white-coded characters. Why are cotton plantations even in this? Sonya Fung is the writer and I firmly believe that we non-Black Asian Americans have absolutely no right to be writing about those things in the first place, especially in a romantic way. Given what I've seen, I doubt the subjects were handled carefully. Was an outside Black person even consulted about this? This game could've literally been written without any of these elements. They don't enhance anything. This is insensitive at best at a time like this and willfully ignorant/harmful at worst. Politics can be interesting in a plot line, but PLEASE just make up your own. Don't use or allude to real histories that still oppress and harm real people. Even more disappointing is to know this is a remake and this was not thought through. This shouldn't be an addendum, but I don't know what to say about Ron's route other than the entire premise was extremely predatory. An adult in a position of power flirting and increasingly getting more intimate with a vulnerable 17-year-old girl (supposedly, yes I know she's a vampire) who lost her only friend and had a bad home life? Ever heard of grooming? I know this is an otome and this is a common trope, but the way it was written in this instance was extremely creepy. Yikes. In general, the writing is... not good. Very lackluster, illogical, and brushes over a lot of things it should've dove deeper into. I say this as someone with lowered otome writing standards and who also writes. There was so much time to redo the script and it didn't seem like any improvement was made. I did not feel any organic development between any of the characters, even in Valen's route where they already knew each other. I'm not attached to any of them in particular either. There were many twists and turns that lacked a cohesive story flow, and it was often difficult to discern from the writing where routes even branched or what purpose some of the choices had... And not in an alluring, mysterious way. I felt like a lot of the details were unnecessary and just put in to elongate/stuff the plot. So much of the writing was abrupt and pushy, like really awkward forced intimacy. I didn't understand everyone moving on with their lives from what were supposed to be deeply unsettling events. Isis lacked consistency as a character and had very strange reactions to various events around her. The medical and scientific stuff was so wildly off-base from reality that I wished that no attempt was even made to "logically" explain anything. What was even up with Aldo's 900 European "accents"? The art is absolutely stunning, which is what drew me in the first place. But that's the only praise I can give this. The art direction was strange. There were so many moments I felt could've used a CG and some that I thought seemed out of place in terms of priority. Why have a CG of Aldo's hair on fire but not one of Chris pinning Isis to a cafe table? The sound direction was terrible. I had pretty consistent bugs like sounds playing too long or not playing at all. A lot of the effects sounded like free ones and they were often disproportionate to what was happening in the game. Why was there a gunshot when Isis got captured on the street with the attacker's bare hands? Why didn't the opening screen have music? (If it did, it didn't play for me.) I didn't even know there was a soundtrack because I barely heard any music throughout my hours of playing. The UI was very broken. Auto would play even if I tried to stop it AND it didn't autoplay everything. Skip would sometimes make the game lag. Saving was a hit or miss. The settings window and save slots weren't even stylized to fit in with the game, which you can see in other more polished otomes like Code:Realize and Collar x Malice. tl;dr Stay away from this. This game would need a major overhaul before I would even consider playing again. EDIT: Fixed typos and elaborated on some thoughts.

What puts me off about this game is the same problem I have with other visual novels. The game and the story are superb. The one thing that makes me not recommend this game is. I've played Cafe rouge, the original version. It was a fantastic time. I've paid to support the Developer. I've wanted a Damian route since august 20th, 2012. And what do we get? The Demian's true love route. You can't even put your name in as the main character. We don't get a Damian route. The one dynamic I love about visual novels is how you can personalize the character in the game. So you can give them your name. The set looks for the characters are a give-in. But the name, yes, is changeable in the main route. It left a sour taste in my mouth for Demian to call another girl's name. So good job, Developer, you've ruined my dreams. I'm so not glad to have waited all this time for one character. But then again, what do you expect when you show your support. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This game was no where near as fun as I remembered. The storyline was so damn political even though it’s a game advertised for some kind of forbidden vampire romance. It comes off more as a poor presidential campaign

First off, I really love the art! Its so beautiful. I enjoy the story, it's interesting and not really what I have seen before. Soo now here are the pros and cons. I'm also a sucker for vampires (^^b~ Pros: - GREAT. I mean BEAUUTIFULLL art - Interesting story - Plenty of options to choose from - Developer is very quick with patching the game and updating it. Cons: - UI is a little bit buggy. Especially with Auto play since maybe it's user error but sometimes it wouldn't turn off for me when I clicked it a couple times. Not too fond of the sound for when clicking options, but you get used to it. - There are some grammar/spelling issues but it didn't bug me too much. - I personally found it really hard to get a good ending... Took me 6.8 hours to get a good ending for one of the characters. Perhaps that's just bad luck (and that I mostly tend to rely on walkthroughs to get good endings). - Spoiler con: [Spoiler] I didn't like the age gap and power dynamic with the MC and Ron... Every time there was something romantic going on between them I always thought back to the age gap with how the MC is 16 and then Ron would've had to been around mid 20s or older. Soo there's that. [/spoiler] Overall: I really enjoyed this game! The art was always pleasing to look at and I'm glad there was attention to detail with the characters stories and design. I'd recommend starting with Valen~. Can't wait for more side characters to come out with their own routes! I really hope for some badges from this game! Backgrounds would be sooo pretty for the steam profile...

I didn't play this game, my SO did and here's what they have to say: "[i]Sigh, you pay attention to too much liberal media brainwashing and feel the need to shove your opinions down people's throats because you think all republicans and conservatives are.....monsters.[/i] - Demian, to the protagonist, Isis. This is really all you need to know. The only good things about this game are the beautiful art and the attractive character designs; unfortunately for me, these and the addition of vampires are all you need to grab my attention. Completed just three of the seven proper endings (somehow!... Just kidding, I needed a guide for two of them.) of this buggy and terribly written mess full of American political propaganda (Wtf????) before deciding I'd had enough. Maybe someday I'll write a proper review of this game, but honestly right now I want absolutely nothing to do with it. [b][i]PLEASE[/i] read user COFFEE's review before thinking about picking this game up.[/b] I would steer clear of anything associated with the name Sonya Fung, or with CloudNovel, which she is the CEO of."

This is a very pretty game that tries to do a lot and... falls short. Functionality- I didn't have any issues skipping repeat dialogue or saving. Seems like some updates may have fixed this. (The UI was a big buggy, but I was still able to play with no real issues). Art - truly lovely Story/plot- I get the feeling there's an attempt at a deeper story involving vampire politics that gets shoe-horned into modern human politics that comes across as sloppy. I can't tell if the writers had a particular political angle, or if they were just exploring things, but it is jarring and distracting. There are also elements that... try? to address racism and slavery, but it doesn't work. There's a field trip to a plantation where slavery isn't mentioned and [spoiler] Antoine and Demian are from the old south and owned slaves/plantations and it's...never really addressed. (The most racist of vampires hate all humans-- slaves and everybody else, too!) It just comes across as tone deaf, at best. There's no real reason to include this setting and it only makes the Antoine seem like a dick. Don't set things during this period, romanticizing slave owners and southern belles and expect your audience to go along for the ride without questioning your "heroes." [/spoiler] The other thing I found truly frustrating was the wrap up for Antoine's route. [spoiler] MC is ready to leave him in an empty restaurant, bound and bleeding from two bullet holes, because he doesn't actually love her. But he stops her. And she realizes she actually is his long-lost love, not this random high school student she has somehow replaced. (Clearly something happened to that high school student, but that is brushed aside). Never mind that Antoine's long lost love was definitively dead and there was no discussion of how she survived. Just... j/k not *actually* dead. She survived and is just pretending to be in high school and has no memories from the past 150+ years. [/spoiler] Other than Antoine, I got a bad ending for Valen and haven't tried Ron's route (student/teacher romances are of my least favorite tropes to begin with because of power dynamics/age gaps-- especially in a high school setting). I'm sorry to say that I managed a little over 2 hours of play time and I'm done with this one.

Oh gosh, when I saw the art and the plot of sexy *vampire* anime boys I knew this game was right up my alley! But... Oh I really do want to make this a positive review but it's really not possible with how the game is right now. Maybe only I have this problem but after scanning over the other negative reviews, I highly doubt it. This game is currently unplayable and it's so frustrating and sad because I really was enjoying the story, or at least whatever of it I managed to read. This game is very broken, skipping dialogue skips through parts you haven't even covered, which makes the skip function overall useless, unless you really are okay with missing out on new and possibly important scenes and plots. But using the skip function also causes insane lag to where if used a couple times, your game freezes at every new scene which is pretty often, to say the least. So really, your only option of possibly reading this properly is to never touch that skip button, but good luck reading through the entire story over and over to where the game is more of a clicker game than a Visual Novel. However, I would like to take a moment to emphasise how much I LOVE the art, it's beautiful!! That's definitely one of the best qualities of this VN. I also quite enjoy the story and characters, but I must admit that the story is a bit... over the top... and feels very fast-forwarded during most scenes which makes it hard to appreciate fully. (Also, what is with the millions of convenient interruptions? I swear every time something exciting is about to happen, someone's damn phone rings haha) I really, really want to read this fully but right now I can't, it's too buggy. I would love to try it again in the future and will for sure change my review to a more positive one if the buggy bits are fixed because it has a lot of potential! I will admit I struggled to get into it for the first let's say, 20 minutes because it really felt like I was reading some teenage fanfic story but it did get more interesting later on. I only got the common bad ending so I obviously would like to read a beautiful ending with the adorable K-Pop idol wannabe Valen, but I guess I'll save that for when this game gets fixed or if I really feel like clicking my mouse awkwardly in silence a couple thousand times. Overall, it's an average story that has an interesting plot and some nice characters (Valen best boy, fight me) but really, really buggy at the moment. As of now, I will have to give a rating of 4/10. Hope to see updates and fixes!

** EDIT** After taking some time away from this game, I contemplated whether it was even worth giving it another go because the issues I have mentioned below are still prevalent in the game. It has also come to my attention after reading a fellow otome-lover's review that the developer Sonya Fung is absolutely not someone that I can support moving forward - knowing what I know now, I wish I could refund this game and take back my donations. If any of you have the time, please read the user COFFEE 's review of this game as it will better inform you of the racist implications of the game and their publisher. **EDIT** As a kickstarter backer for this game, it saddens me to not be able to recommend this game, to be frank, its really bad and the price-point is way too high. This game despite its professional visuals, needs a serious story and ui overhaul to meet the $20 price-point they're wanting. I was seriously hoping for so much more out of this game, but was left feeling utterly disappointed and highly unsatisfied. For me, the story line feels like something they pulled off of Wattpad - it feels all over the place and the cheesy-moments were less than enjoyable for me. I felt disappointed in some dialogues, felt confused by the actions/choices of their characters, and could not understand their choice of direction with their character Aldo. I adored Antoine's look and essence, but his actions and dialogue with the MC killed most of their sentimental moments for me - they felt so pressed and forced and not natural. My most bitter feedback is about the MC, I understand her backstory is suppose to reflect ideals of a "normal American girl" but I can't understand why the MC herself needs to press this ideal, even going as far as to say it and think it multiple times throughout the story line- and to just be frank, the MC's backstory is far from a "normal American lifestyle", I wish they just marketed her as a student. Overall, the story was very lackluster for me and wished that they put as much effort in proof-reading and editing their story to match the effort they put into creating their visuals for their characters. Overall, I can firmly say to anyone asking, this game is not worth the money. You can get seriously outstanding games like Nightshade, Ozmafia, or 7'scarlet with competing (yet comparable prices), breathtaking artwork, and with storylines that are cohesive and very well-written.

I have yet to complete any good routes, but the story is really good and I like the characters. There are some technical issues, especially with the endings being unnaccessible if you reached it from a loaded save rather than playing in one go, though this issue is apparently being worked on. Edit: Issue with loading saves preventing reaching an ending has been fixed. Also, as others have said, the game is EXTREMELY laggy when skipping, sometimes getting stuck on a line for a second or two making skipping rather slow. Also, if you accidentally trigger auto-play, the only way I found to stop it was to open the menu and toggle it from there to stop it since the UI element outside the menu to do it seems to only activate it, not stop it. Unlike most other visual novels, the skip function just skips everything, there's no option to just skip read dialogue, so this can lead you to skip sections you assume will be the same but suddenly realize there's a difference but you've been mostly skipping it. I wish there was more control over sounds since there are some screams which are REALLY loud and lowering the sound so they aren't too loud when they happen makes the BGM too quiet to hear. Overall, the sound effects are pretty bad, though the BGM is good which makes it a real shame that sound effects are so loud I have to basically forget hearing the BGM so the sound effects don't get annoying. Another issue with the game is the author forcing in real world politics into the dialogue with the MC being called a stupid brainwashed liberal, how guns aren't bad because they save lives and how the big bad vampire faction is left wing. I don't care about your political affiliations, but putting them in a game when doing so feels forced as the game would be the exact same without all those political statements is just stupid. If adding real world politics adds to the game, that's fine, but in this case, it's just jarring how unfitting those dialogues are compared to the rest. Overall, the story is great, but the game is plagued with technical issues which can render the experience irritating. If you can look past these issues, the story is definitely worth it.