Little Dragons Cafe (Nintendo Switch) Review

Little Dragons Café opens up with a pair of twins Rin and Ren, waking up to their mother preparing breakfast. After a quick tutorial that teaches the basics of gathering ingredients from the outside world, the twins' mother promptly falls into a coma. A mysterious wizard comes by and gifts the twins a dragon egg, saying that feeding and raising the fledgling dragon is the only way to cure her. What follows is almost a sitcom-like series of encounters that outfits their small home with a rather haphazard staff of characters, all helping the protagonists run the café their mother owned, while they seek out ingredients from the field. Between helping out at the café during the busy hours and gathering items outside, there's always something to do.

Unfortunately, there's not really a lot to this adventure other than that. The café management is extremely simplistic. Choosing which recipes to keep on the menu is pretty much just a matter of going by what is currently in the storeroom, and the game gives Rin and Ren plenty of time per day to go out and collect ingredients. Some of the more complicated recipes used for the few available quests may require going a little further afield, but it's still pretty straightforward.

Annoyingly, even traveling outside is kind of a chore. Going into the world area from the café takes upwards of ten seconds each time, and going back requires the same time investment. Little Dragons Café has some serious optimization issues, and the framerate frequently stutters and drops. The player characters often get stuck on level geometry, and the limited platforming is so imprecise, it's comically easy to get stuck trying to jump off of a small stepping stone.

These issues don't stop outside, either. The short rhythm minigame used to prepare dishes to put on your menu also frequently falls victim to large stutters, throwing off your rhythm, and costing you a note or two. This is a huge problem when making a perfect dish for the menu requires perfect scores on every single note in the song. They are pretty short to complete, but it's definitely a huge waste of time having to remake a dish when the game essentially fails it for you.

Story progression is the only real goal in here, unlike the rather abstract goals of Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley. Customers happy and satisfied with the café experience will slowly raise a progression bar, unlocking the next section of the story, prompting a special guest to stay at the café for a short period of time, before leaving to make room for the next one. These guests have pretty non-specific goals, outside of preparing dishes with flavours that they like. Their stories do provide some insight to the world in the game, but they don't really stick around long enough to develop their characters fully.

It all kind of boils down to a routine that's pretty much set in stone after a few in-game days. Wake up, feed the dragon, gather items from the garden, help the café for the lunch rush, go farther out for ingredients, help the café at dinner, feed the dragon, bed. That cycle goes on and on, and there's never really a point where it feels good to stop and put the game down. The cycle is so frantic that every minute not used in pursuit of supplies feels wasted, and the rewards really just aren't worth it. The characters are pretty bland, so unlocking more of their story isn't a compelling reason to waste hours and hours away doing the same two tasks fifty thousand times.