awesome world and story behind it. awesome character and world design & art style. But that's sadly it..

gameplay lacks quite a bit of depth after time. It ALWAYS tells you the answer as soon as you open your recipe book, which is pretty lame after some days.. I'm at day 30 or so already and am bored as hecc mixing drinks. stop spoling after some days and also make the characters give less details about the stuff they want, so i need to really think a bit more instead of "give me strength you dumb, not thinking idiot standing behind the counter!"

but what especially gets annoying are the dialogues and I'm not even through the game yet. they are clichè to the max and often times waaaaaay too gen z for a middleage fantasy world where ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan.
I mean Iniko literally says "GG" at some point. This is SOO out of touch for this world it kills the whole atmosphere of the game for me and I needed to quit the game the day.

Most characters need a drastic rewriting of their dialogues and the mixing drinks minigame needs more depth overall until i can recommend this game to anyone with a brain more mature than 6 years old.

The visual novel part is really visually novelling -- so for roughtly $18, it *is* like buying a book. And if I think about it that way, the game feels less like a sunk cost. However, I did buy this game at a discount during a sale -- I wouldn't have otherwise.

CONS:

The game play experience is pretty repetitive and tedious in my honest opinion, which was my least favorite part. I'm trying to complete all the achievements and it feels needlessly more tedious than it needs to be, even with the fast forward.

Additionally, I would have liked the game to be more queer since it has the LGTBQ+ tag on it; so I was pretty disappointed about that. It still felt comphet in many areas.

There doesn't feel like a whole lot of variety when it comes to the story telling, even when you make different choices. It feels like the end is only where the convergences happen, but I think had there been some more different directions depending on drink choices, it would have made the overall gameplay more novel -- especially when you start over to try other things to collect the achievements.

PROS:

However, all that above, for me, is not enough to vote it as a no. At best, I'd rate it as a mixed yes/no, but since that's not an option, I'd rather lean more towards the positive. So like gradewise, I'd say this is a C+ to B-

Overall, the game is cute. The characters all have their own personality. I personally like how much of a himbo Clay is, for example. And how Fable reveals different, contrasting emotions in her character development. Andu is a cutie, too.

The tavern background is pretty. The overall art aspect of the game is pretty, maybe not *gorgeous* but still aesthetically pleasing enough. The drinks are fun to look at -- I always like seeing the cute end results of drink crafting.

The drink mixing is also functionally pretty fun, but I think having more drink variations would have made the experience a little better. Using the coaster as a guide is very helpful and mentally stimulating enough for me, personally.

I've only played a couple of hours and I can tell clearly when I love something straight ahead and Tavern Talk left me with such a great impression from the start. The music is truly beautiful and it does add so much to the gameplay, as well the art which I find to be so nicely done! The character art, the props, the background and everything is truly whimsical.
As for the story, it's so original and well done and can't wait to explore more 🥰