Welcome to my Tavern Talk review. We were not given a review code for this title.
Tavern Talk is a cozy visual novel where you play as a nameless barkeep serving a variety of high-fantasy adventuring party caricatures at Wayfarer’s Inn of Asteria. From behind the counter, you’ll listen to guests’ stories, mix helpful enchanted drinks, and organize various rumors into complete quest lines for your job board. Mostly, you’ll just read and listen—soaking in the odd tales from a unique and lovable assortment of patrons as they come and go about their day.
By chatting with the wide variety of folks coming and going, you’ll be privy to many different pieces of stories from around Asteria. As the eyes and ears of Wayfarer’s Inn, you are in a unique position to gather intel on breakups and makeups, mysterious interstellar whales, a disturbing flash flood, a fabulous missing cape, a wandering werewolf, a suspicious gathering of the undead, and an assortment of other exciting tales.
Once you have a handle on a major issue, you can arrange the rumors into a finished quest and post it on your job board. One of the many, many options in a vast cast of 20+ characters will eventually come to accept your quest, maybe partner up with another patron, and ask your advice on tactics. And with a recipe book of cocktails that offer various stat buffs and strategic advantages, your advice carries particularly significant weight.
Here’s where the main “game” part of Tavern Talk comes in. Adventurers will make requests about the kind of drink they want, and you must match the recipe to the need. Someone looking to slay a dangerous beast might need a cocktail that inspires strength, whereas someone pulling off a heist would need a tonic for dexterity. Eventually, you can add infusions for bonus effects, like fire resistance or temporary invisibility, which can further aid a quester.
There will be some opportunities where you are presented with a choice to make two different drinks, each representing a branching story path. For example, do you make a drink to boost attack/defense in preparation for a fierce fight, or a drink that prioritizes stealth, negotiation, or intellect. The drink you choose will have consequential effects on the narrative, including whether you get a good or bad ending.
I really liked the drink-mixing part of it, even if it was simple and repetitive. It was a bit odd to watch regulars order their drink by ingredient rather than name when they get the same thing every time, though. And the game won’t let you screw up; you can’t serve an incorrect order—it will prompt you to try again. This let’s you focus on the pick-your-path story and various character arcs instead of nitpicky mixology mechanics.
Tavern Talk is more visual novel than anything, though. And with 25 chapters of short-burst dialogue between 20 characters, interested players must have a deep love for reading if they are going to survive. For the first 20 or so chapters, the story is deeply character based, rooted in interpersonal relationships rather than big picture events and drama. You won’t really start to see the threads of the bigger picture come together in a meaningful way until very near the end of the tale.
For a narrative-heavy cozy game, the consequential story beats were nearly all contained in the last 5 chapters. Which made the first 2/3rds of the playtime a bit of a slog. There isn’t much in the way of tension or conflict build-up. There is an inane amount of filler dialogue between slivers of story that actually matter, each delivered in 5-to-7-word sentences that ensure your button mashing thumb never gets a break.
Mostly folks just come in and talk about themselves, leaving me wondering where the story is supposed to be going and what the hook is for me, as the player. There isn’t a lot of space left for MC dialogue options; it would have gone along way to give the innkeeper some more player-picked dialogue branches, even if they ultimately didn’t affect the story much. I was more of a passerby than a participant.
There are also way too many characters, with some scraping by with barely any screen time. You could easily cut the cast in half and offer meatier portions of each adventurer without affecting the main story in any way. All the characters sound too much alike, too. The same speaking quirks, conversation cadence, random tangents, and even joke styles. Many of the jokes were simple cliches, too—like: “What’s up?” “The sky.” (Real example.) There is also a lot of modern slang, ensuring the game won’t read well to some and most certainly won’t age well (ie. the GOAT, it’s giving, GG, bet, idk, chonker).
I say this in the kindest, most loving way possible: the writing reads like an AO3 anime fanfic. For some people, that will be a huge draw—easy to digest and grin along with. For others, like me, it will be a huge turn-off. Not one for the twangs of overtly hormonal melodrama and Podunk comedy beats, there wasn’t much there for me to grab hold of until chapter 20+ when the real plot picked up pace.
“Kill your darlings,” is an old writing trope that means: Viciously edit the things you love to carve out the best story experience for your readers. I feel like it’s advice visual novel devs should keep close to the heart, too.
However, there is a nugget of a good story—an excellent story, even—buried deep within the piecemeal dialogue barrage that is Tavern Talk. The idea that the ending you get is based off all the dual-path quest drinks you’ve made to date is a savvy twist that veteran VN players will appreciate.
While I prefer visual novels with a bit more player agency, that is certainly not a requirement of the genre. However, in lieu of agency, there must be a compelling story: high highs, low lows, suspense or tension, a building threat, and the final reprieve. And these must be consistent, not saved for the very end.
The artwork and character design is devastatingly beautiful. There is a large cast of diverse characters, with differing skin tones and pronouns to make the group inclusive even though technically our human concepts of diversity might not apply to them.
A few of the tavern guests get more detailed character arcs, which are fun to watch bloom. The final few chapters offer a story worth waiting for, with a climax and character development that does pay off…just at the end of a long, loooong wait.
Overall, Tavern Talk has a great setting, some intriguing characters, and a cool storytelling concept that deflates from a lack of tension and too much sameness between NPC interactions. Instead of adding more twists and turns to the story, the game just added more characters, piling them on until you could hardly keep track of who was doing what.
The adventurer vignettes portray a compelling and beautiful world, but I didn’t feel like I, as the player, needed to be there witnessing it. There was no room for me in a story that mostly happened off-screen. It’s an interesting format idea, but having stories told at you from the POV of 20+ characters for hours at a time doesn’t make for a fun game.
And that’s what we are all here for—to play a video game that draws us in, gives us something to do, and leaves us with poignant memories that couldn’t have been told quite as well by any other medium.
Summary
Here’s a quick summary of the main points of my Tavern Talk review—for those who don’t have time to read a whole article because they are too busy reading cozy visual novels, instead. (Mood.)
Pros
- Diverse, colorful (literally) characters with LGBTQ+ representation
- A few great character arcs
- Beautiful artwork
Cons
- Too much filler dialogue between important story beats
- Too many characters to keep track of
- Too long/verbose for a VN with multiple endings
- Not for players who don’t want to read and button mash for 12hrs+
Tavern Talk is a chatty, meandering visual novel where you step into a D&D-inspired world as what would usually be considered an NPC—the innkeeper. Influence the direction of the story by mixing drinks with various properties to enhance your patrons on their quests, collect rumors and figure out the through-lines between them, and help fell a world-threatening danger from behind your bar counter.
Buying Tavern Talk at a steep discount is the sweet spot for getting the most out of this loquacious tale. I’d say wishlist it and pick it up somewhere between $5-10 if you want to try it out.
Games like Tavern Talk:
- Spill the Beans (Demo only)
- The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Stay cozy, gamers!