Nyan Cafe Macchiato Review – More of the Same

Okay, so once again, I’m stuck reviewing the nukige visual novel. Lights dimmed? Check. Is the girlfriend at her house tonight? Check. Pre-chosen best girl for optimal route first time through? Check. Alright, I’m ready to go.

https://youtu.be/BfLKfphWrIw

Nyan Cafe Macchiato: Sexy Times at the Cat Cafe stars Kouya, a soon-to-be teacher who has terrible luck. It seems like everything he does, bad things happen to those around him, and his apartment burning down in the opening moments is just one of those things.

His Grandpa offers him a place to stay, but in return, he will need to manage a cat cafe. He runs this by three of his students, Miké, Ameri, and Persia, who then take up part-time jobs to help out. Within the first night of training for the opening, the three girls each sneak into his room and confess their love for him. To solve the situation, Kouya decides to date all of them, and for some reason or another, they agree.

The set up is exceptionally lacking any real substance, but opening up the romance straight to a harem is a bold move. Following the opening scene, players are able to make choices during intermissions to decide the love interest for that day. This also ends up locking them into several different routes.

As the main protagonist, Kouya is nothing special, and his only real personality trait is that he is a pervert. Things like accidentally saying “tits” when Persia is around or commenting on someone’s sexual preferences are the butt of many of his jokes, and it gets old rather fast. I mean, even thinking about it now, he’s just not that great.

Each girl adds a different personality to the game. Miké is actually the only one who seems to genuinely like Kouya as she had an interest in him for quite some time. She’s exceptionally outgoing, which made me kind of feel bad for her to have to share this person that she loves. In later parts of the story, her mom makes an introduction, and yes, things get spicy.

Ameri has some split personality disorder where she is quiet and shy, but then her hair turns silver, and she turns into a completely different person. Ameri’s attraction to Kouya came only after he noticed her, and before that, no one could even remember her name.

Persia might have been the favorite of the developers because her route just completely goes off the rails. She is the most sexually intuned and carries herself in a mature matter. She’s also pretty cruel to people and seems to enjoy one-upping those around her. There’s really no reason for her to date Kouya other than she thinks it would be fun.

You’ll easily get what you came for in Nyan Cafe Macchiato, but that’s about it. Past the opening moments, you begin to lose interest in the characters because Kouya just sucks, and it’s tough to understand why this is happening to him. When the story remembers that Kouya is supposed to have bad luck, it’s a little too late to the point where I almost forgot that point about him entirely. Still, it’s an exceptionally long visual novel with around 20 hours of shenanigans.

The player has some interaction with the game as some choices will lead to optional endings for the characters. They’re noticeable and can’t really be missed, but there’s nothing wrong with just randomly picking girls to hang out with for a first run. I think the problem is the lack of any real drama or tension. This is a light-hearted story through and through, which makes it kind of unsatisfying.

Nyan Cafe Macchiato has some great character illustrations, the facial animations and different poses of the characters matches the tone of the story. Furthermore, the CGs are all really good, almost too good for the lacking story bits. I imagine that most people playing this will only be interested in this section so I can assure you, this title offers a lot of H-scenes.

Nyan Cafe Macchiato is a visual novel that fails to execute a unique narrative within the genre but does a few interesting things to at least hold the reader’s attention. The illustrations are excellent, which makes it easier to bear with the lacking main protagonist and throwaway story scenes. If you’re looking for a light-hearted comedy with no real direction, then you’ve found it.