Adventure Bar Story (Nintendo 3DS) Review

The narrative behind Adventure Bar Story is nothing too original: The owner of a small-time restaurant is facing a business crisis from more well-to-do competition, and has to venture out into the wilderness to gain mats—items dropped by slain monsters—in order to cook better recipes and thus make more money to stay open. A lot of old-fashioned RPG tropes and archetypes are found here, but they're presented with a confidence and spirit that's hard to ignore.

Collecting new ingredients means going adventuring, and besides farming and fishing mini-games, most of this comes in the form of battling. Battles are turn-based, with an on-screen meter determining who attacks next. Strategy, levelling, and equipment selection is important, but far less complicated or even necessary than the average RPG. Enemies look good, but a lot of them are simple colour variants of other enemies previously encountered. Outside of battle it feels like a simple RPG Maker game, but everything is heavily customised, from sprites to menus to environments.

With a plethora of mats and several locations, there's a long game ahead. It's a little light on the RPG elements; there aren't as many armours or weapons as there are mats and recipes, but this just means the focus is more on the sim side of things than actual combat. Levelling up requires eating food rather than fighting battles, which puts an interesting spin on things.

The various characters are surprisingly deep, very likeable, and full of personality, lacking only their own sound effects or musical cues. Most characters aren't locked to a class or type, giving options on how to proceed through the game. Skills are unlocked through battles, and all characters can unlock most skills, which are mainly bound to a certain weapon type, like bows or heavy weapons.