VA-11 hall-a is such a pure and genuine gaming experience to go through. There's a lot to be said about the story, themes and characters, but such analyses get long winded (especially when I do them hahah) and could be much better handled by someone more eloquent than I.
One thing about that game that greatly struck me and that I do really want to touch on is the wonderful simplistic nature of the gameplay loop. You, as Jill, make drinks, you have conversations, you go home, pay bills, buy things Jill wants to help her focus, and go back to work and make more drinks to experience more conversations and go through the character driven story. All with the use of simplified interfaces and clicks of buttons. The drink interface has some minor nuances to it and you're given varying amounts of freedom to what drinks you should serve a customer, ranging from choices based on their tastes and vague suggestions, down to them downright asking for specifically what they want, you don't have to listen to them and there's room to experiment, but you usually should. There's optional things you can read at home, that amount to passing time before work for Jill, and greatly enhance the worldbuilding and the characters to an extent. And there's things you can buy you don't need, but your decisions with money should be weighed carefully in case there's a bill Jill has to pay down the line.
In this basic limited framework you're given, and the suggestions you should mostly obey to get desired results, the player agency and options you have are very limited. In Va-11 hall-a's case these limits aren't really a bad thing at all however. Because the game is defined by what you, or more specifically, Jill, needs to and should do, above what you can potentially do. This simple loop of playing it integrates so well with the characters, their dialogues, the cyberpunk setting and other related background themes in the game, and highlights a type of melancholy beauty in trivial and mundane existence in an unforgiving corporate world. It is an astoundingly human experience heightened by its simplicity of playing it and going through the motions, even more than any complexity in its writing. It does an incredible amount with very little and it is probably the greatest impression the game left me with. I couldn't imagine it being nearly as great to me if it was just a straightforward VN with choices and reading, and in that way it specifically uses its medium in among the best possible ways, not despite, but specifically because of that simple and pure approach to its gameplay.
I put off VA-11 hall-a for a very long time as I tend to always do with most VN like games, and I'm incredibly happy to finally have been able to experience it. However, I don't really regret putting it off since I ended up playing it at what I think is just the right time for me. It is a game experience I don't think I'll forget anytime soon specifically because of how well every aspect of it serves each other to highlight its beautifully simple concepts and themes.
One thing about that game that greatly struck me and that I do really want to touch on is the wonderful simplistic nature of the gameplay loop. You, as Jill, make drinks, you have conversations, you go home, pay bills, buy things Jill wants to help her focus, and go back to work and make more drinks to experience more conversations and go through the character driven story. All with the use of simplified interfaces and clicks of buttons. The drink interface has some minor nuances to it and you're given varying amounts of freedom to what drinks you should serve a customer, ranging from choices based on their tastes and vague suggestions, down to them downright asking for specifically what they want, you don't have to listen to them and there's room to experiment, but you usually should. There's optional things you can read at home, that amount to passing time before work for Jill, and greatly enhance the worldbuilding and the characters to an extent. And there's things you can buy you don't need, but your decisions with money should be weighed carefully in case there's a bill Jill has to pay down the line.
In this basic limited framework you're given, and the suggestions you should mostly obey to get desired results, the player agency and options you have are very limited. In Va-11 hall-a's case these limits aren't really a bad thing at all however. Because the game is defined by what you, or more specifically, Jill, needs to and should do, above what you can potentially do. This simple loop of playing it integrates so well with the characters, their dialogues, the cyberpunk setting and other related background themes in the game, and highlights a type of melancholy beauty in trivial and mundane existence in an unforgiving corporate world. It is an astoundingly human experience heightened by its simplicity of playing it and going through the motions, even more than any complexity in its writing. It does an incredible amount with very little and it is probably the greatest impression the game left me with. I couldn't imagine it being nearly as great to me if it was just a straightforward VN with choices and reading, and in that way it specifically uses its medium in among the best possible ways, not despite, but specifically because of that simple and pure approach to its gameplay.
I put off VA-11 hall-a for a very long time as I tend to always do with most VN like games, and I'm incredibly happy to finally have been able to experience it. However, I don't really regret putting it off since I ended up playing it at what I think is just the right time for me. It is a game experience I don't think I'll forget anytime soon specifically because of how well every aspect of it serves each other to highlight its beautifully simple concepts and themes.