The graphics are nice, and the story seems to be interesting, while a bit strange at places. The controls though make it almost unplayable. It plays like a absurd mixture of an old Pool or Golf game for the Gameboy with Metroid. You can only move between walls, like a bouncing ball. With mouse and keyboard it feels mushy, and with a Gamepad you either have razor sharp precision, or you will fell like walking on eggshells with your hands bound behind your back. While it is the feeling of gradual empowerment which makes other Metroidvanias a joy to run through, Dandara doesn't even let you run. At all. A charming looking game, which killed itself by having the most unintuitive, unusable control schemes I have seen in a long time. What a pity.
The game looks gorgeous, it nails the 16-Bit aesthetic rather well, but improves on them in subtle but noticeable ways. The music is rather nice too, catchy chiptunes all the way, pure joy. It certainly has the classic jrpg look. So I prepared myself for a funny action adventure. Only the game is neither an rpg, nor an action adventure. It is a twin-stick-shooter with an attached rpg mechanic. You have a ranged attack, which demands absolute precision and fast reflexes, even on the lowest difficulty settings. The target overly might from time to time be missing, depending on the readiness of your ranged weapon, and might blend in rather splendidly with rain and other (stunningly beautiful) graphical effects. And you will need it, for puzzles (with timers, none the less), and enemies which stay away and force you to shoot them. (You could try with the mouse, here at last aiming is better. But then you have, different from the controller, to click spam your attacks with the mouse buttons. This is Carpal Tunnel in the making.) Dodging and your shield is bound to the very same button (not customizable), the action depending on your character moving or standing still. Enemies will absolutely throw themselves or their attacks onto you perfectly zeroed in, so you are forced to dodge with lightning quick reflexes or eat up the damage. But, this is an action rpg? For sure a bit of actual action should be expected? Yes, of course. But. Above mentioned elements are not woven into the rpg system. You can't level to increase your dodge time. You can't spend experience points to make targeting more forgiving. Hence, those elements are dependant on your reflexes and raw skill, so "get gud" or leave. It's like buying Mass Effect, but instead getting thrown into a round of Fortnite against a bunch of hyper skilled twelve year olds. If I wanted to play a brutal action game, I wouldn't have bought an rpg. Pity.
To get it out of the way, this a visual novel. I'm referring it as such, since this isn't really a game in the scope of interactivity. Just now that this game gives you exactly what it promises, namely 'bartending action'. Your interaction in this novel is more or less limited to serving drinks. You are in no rush, there is no time limit or such, so it plays rather laid-back, and that's absolutely fine. You can influence the story through your bartending performance, though, by messing up the drinks, or going the extra mile to please your customers. After a while you get to know and develop a feeling for them, so going the extra mile sometimes means overriding their order to serve them something you know they _really_ need now, which isn't always what they are asking for. The graphics are lovely and quite pleasing to look at, only the font rendering seems off in places (but that's only minuscule, and might be only me [I'm a graphics artist myself]). About the music, it is the right kind of MIDI-synth stuff, ranging from laid back lounge/elevator music over 80s synth to slightly jazzy sounding pieces. A big plus is the 'jukebox'-feature, which allows you to pick the soundtrack as you please. The story in itself is engaging, and one starts to care about the characters quite a bit. The multiple ending feature is absolutely clever, since these add together, so you have not ending X or ending Y, but ending X+Y and so on. It fits and doesn't leave you with unfulfilled promises or open questions (depending on how much you unlock of course). For the feeling, well, if you are into 80s to 90s cyberpunk, especially of the Japanese kind (Bubblegum Crisis, Silent Moebius, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner...), you'll feel right at home. Bonus points if you ever served drinks for a living yourself, I guess. All in all VA-11 Hall-A is really enjoyable, just don't mistake it for something it doesn't want to be, namely a 'game' instead of a 'interactive novel'.
