Estimated reading time: 7.5 minutes
You ever have the urge to help a Japanese "Night Sparrow" run an Izakaya (late night pub type restaurant) in order to help pay off debts? Well, neither did I before now, but it's all I can think about at the moment.
Touhou Mystia's Izakaya is a cozy restaurant management type game based on the Touhou Project universe. In it you take on the role of Mystia Lorelei as you collect ingredients by day, and run the Izakaya by night, serving Gensokyo's residents. You will interact with the locals and procure ingredients by day, as well as completing requests for the locals, then at night you open up shop to try and rake in some cash so you can purchase new or different ingredients and to pay off your debts.
Mystia's Izakaya is a really laid-back 2D pixel art game that's really comfy and surprisingly relaxing to play. The gameplay loop is separated in two segments: the daytime and the nighttime. During the day you'll be checking out areas looking for cooking ingredients, buying things from the merchants (whether that's food, recipes, or additional cooking tools), completing requests for the locals, both unique and generic, and hanging out with your friends. Once night falls, you will be prepping your store by selecting what items to put on the menu, getting your tools in order, choosing where and what size storefront to use, and serving customers.
During the day you will have a set amount of time with which to gather what you need. Moving between areas, prepping food in advance, inviting a rare character to visit the restaurant, and harvesting items all take half an hour of time. Chatting with people, buying items, and interacting with characters, whether for sidequests or your assistant Kyouko for tips and tutorials doesn't take time. Once the time of day has advanced enough, you are then set to open your izakaya. Keep in mind you can choose to skip the daytime dealings if you want, and go straight to opening shop if you want. Also of note is that available harvest points change depending on time of day, and some rare gathering points are only available during limited periods. As an example, there is a rare gather that is only available early morning on the Yokai Trail (starting area).
As I mentioned, you can get requests from characters. Some of these are from the local newspaper clippings you keep, which also detail interesting tidbits as well as currently popular food types. Other requests you'll get as your bond with the rare customers goes up. It's a good idea to complete these, as they usually give not only a little bit of money, but also cooking ingredients and new recipes! New recipes can also sell for more money when you open shop, so it's probably a good idea to give those requests a shot.
Alright then, now that you've finished your gathering and request fulfilling, it's time to open the shop! First step is deciding where to open shop, provided you have more than one location available, how big you want the shop to be, and who you want as an assistant. Location determines who shows up, and different areas may have different levels of foot traffic. Size determines how many tables you have for guests. While guests will wait to be seated, usually more tables means more guests show up regardless. As a comparison, the amount I earned on the Yokai Trail between level 1 and level 2 size was 500 to 2000 yen in earnings. Yeah, it's a fairly sizable chunk for doubling seating. You can also hire an assistant to help out. You can also tell them what to help with, either handing out drinks to the customers, taking food from the storage area for them, or helping you out.
Next up is selecting your menu. This includes dishes you will serve, drinks available, and what cooking tools you will set up. You only have a limited amount of space for these, so pay attention to what you're selecting and how many of each you have the ingredients to make. Don't want to run out mid dinner rush, now do we? Good news though, not having an item on the menu doesn't mean you can't make it, it just means that the common customers won't order it, and you have to make it manually if you want to give it to a rare customer.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. After you've selected your menu and prep, you can open shop. Customers will come by, sit down, and then place an order. You then start cooking for them. For the common customers, they will order off your menu, so you walk up to the cooking implement needed, select the recipe, then start cooking. You can also play a little rhythm minigame when you start the cooking to have a chance of giving you a buff. My personal favourite is the ability to yeet the food you make (like a basketball player trying to beat the buzzer) at the customers, meaning you don't need to walk over to the tables. Food will cook on its own once started, so you can set up a bunch as needed. Once done, you can take the food to the table for them.
Now we get to talk about the exciting part here: the rare customers. Essentially these are the named unique characters that are part of the Touhou universe. These customers are...well, awful if you've ever worked food service, or even retail. These customers give you hints at what they want, such as "I like sweet food" or "I can't stand mild flavored food" and it's up to you to select a dish that suits their taste. As an added bonus, you can add extra ingredients to the dishes to add extra tags to it. Each dish has certain tags associated with it, and each ingredient has it's own tags as well. Some dishes aren't compatible with certain tags, which will cause your dish to fail.
Rare customers also have an extra aspect to them: spell cards. Basically, if your dish is too outside of what they want, or extremely in line with what they want, they will use a spellcard. If they're happy, it's a positive effect, such as attracting more customers or giving you ingredients. If they're unhappy, it'll be a negative effect, such as covering your work area in a dark cloud so you can't see what's going on.
Now, considering how many characters populate Gensokyo, remembering their likes and dislikes can be pretty demanding. Thankfully you always carry around a handy dandy notebook. This notebook automatically records everything you need, whether it's personal stats, recipes, current ingredients and items, character info, such as likes and dislikes, and what tasks you currently have, both for story purposes and requests. Seriously, the notebook is absolutely packed full of a ton of info. Anything you need can be found in there. More good news, while you're looking at the notebook, time is paused so your guests don't get tired of waiting and leave.
After a set amount of time passes, you'll now close up shop, count your earnings, and earn exp based on the number of guests served. Yeah, that's right, there's a bit of an RPG mechanic going on here. As Mystia levels up, her cooking speed, customer satisfaction rate, chance of activating a singing effect, tips earned, etc. will increase. You also unlock new recipes at certain level benchmarks, so you definitely want to do your best.
So, let's talk a bit about some miscellaneous items. First up, the music is really soothing, so Mystia's Izakaya really does end up being a pretty relaxing game for the most part. Well, unless you get a big rush of people, but even then it isn't too bad. Also, all the DLC is included in this Switch release, which adds a nice chunk of content. The only real negative aspects I can think of are that the game does get a little repetitive by nature, so make sure you're ok with this style of gameplay, although the daytime gathering/questing period helps alleviate this, and the selected highlight. What do I mean by the highlight? Well, the box surrounding whatever you have "selected" blends in too much, so it gets really hard to tell what you have selected. On a cool other note though, there's a jukebox type thing set up where you can play some rhythm games for fun.
Score: 9.75 / 10
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