Ristorante Amore

Free - From Cyanide Tea

Lily, the newest employee at her uncle's restaurant, feels like she's stuck in a rut. Over-educated for the position, she isn't even sure what to do with her life. Her co-worker's will provide distracting enough though - maybe even offering her some romance - while she tries to figure out what to do with her life.

I do not like being jerked around. I don't like starting a TV show, being told that it is action/adventure only to find out that it is a comedy/romance. I don't like reading a book that suddenly changes genre's in the final chapter. Simply put, indicate to me that there is something more to the story than what you see - before that shift comes along or you will lose me very quickly. I'm not talking about plot twists, either. I'm talking about whole mass world twists where you're told that pretty much everything that came before was a lie. I read a book like that once, where the first hundred or so pages was one giant flashback that killed the main character - only to find out a page later that he had a fantasy version of PTSD that switched two character's personalities and made us only think the main character was dead.

Brilliant? Yes. Flawed in a way that made me hate that I wasted any time on it? Yes.

This game is much the same. The prologue was pretty typical for these type of games. Nothing ground-breaking, but a mindless, fluffy diversion. Then you reach the 'post-prologue' and everything changed. First, I couldn't actually figure out what was happening. As I started catching on, I also I started getting really uncomfortable with some of the character personalities. Sure, it was more 'realistic' - but I don't play these type of games for realism. I play them for an escape from my everyday life. They're even an escape from the more action-y, violent games that I usually play.

I will say that the direction that the story went was brilliant. I've never seen or heard of anything like this before. I also admit to the fact that I didn't finish the game. Though it is still sitting on my flash drive, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of ever finishing this game.

Really, if the creator would have dropped little hints along the way that there was more to the story - and let it stay an otome game - I probably would have felt a lot better towards the game.

Favorite character? Lily (or, whatever you may change her name to).

Official Website

-Amy