Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP Free Download What would you eat for your last meal? It can be anything, even mom’s home cooking. The only stipulation is that it’s going to be prepared by a bear and your waitress is a cat. Bear’s Restaurant is at the intersection between life and death, where passengers waiting for the train to heaven or hell stop before moving on. As the aforementioned waitress, your job is to take people’s orders – even if they don’t know what they want. Bear’s Restaurant is a short narrative game, clocking in at about 2 and a half hours to finish the main story and dip a bit into the post-game content. While it tells a compelling, dark story despite its cutesy pixel art, its poor translation takes a lot of the punch out of it. ROMSLAB.COM BEST SWITCH GAMES

Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

The game also has several design issues that make it difficult to recommend. The game is divided into two halves: one where you play as the cat, and another where you play as the bear. Playing as the cat sees you taking customers’ orders, relaying them to Bear, and occasionally diving into a customer’s memories to get more information on the recipe. Once a dish is cooked, you take it over to the patron, they disappear, and you move on to the next one. There’s basically no traditional gameplay, so all you do is move your character to the correct object and press the A button. Occasionally you can speak with people and ask questions, which is the entirety of Bear’s gameplay, but that’s everything – this game is focused entirely on its narrative.

While that narrative does have some very sweet moments and twists

It can feel a bit too predictable. I won’t spoil anything here, because that would defeat the point of the game, but it’s easy to see where the game is going as soon as a certain element is introduced. I mentioned the translation issues before, with a lot of typos as well as grammatical and punctuation errors, but the way the text appears on screen feels far from ideal. Almost all dialogue appears smack dab in the center of the screen, where it can often be difficult to see or tell who’s speaking. There are text boxes in certain flashbacks, and Bear’s Restaurant would have been far better off using those for all dialogue. ONE PIECE: Pirate Warriors 3 Deluxe Edition Switch NSP

Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Speaking of flashbacks, every customer leaves a memory shard behind which you can dive into at the end of each day to see how they died. I don’t feel this serves any narrative purpose other than introducing the darker elements early. These scenes can be pretty graphic and honestly disturbing, so I stopped viewing them after the second batch. The overall dark tone contrasts with the bright and cute pixel art, which does look very nice. There are some nice animations like when cooking, as well as some creepy and disturbing stuff introduced around halfway through. However, in general, I found the backgrounds to be pretty bland much like the music which is fairly generic.

The Train to Heaven or to Hell

Bear takes Cat with him to the Station, where the dead wait for the train to heaven. Here’s your chance to get more of an insight into their former lives, by asking some pre-determined questions. Before the day ends, Cat can watch the memory shards before she turns in. Bear’s Restaurant’s description in the European Nintendo eShop gives you fair warning for that: “this game contains potentially distressing materials, such as traffic accidents, suicide and murder. However, there is no gore” It’s true, there were so many sad stories in the memory shards and still it kept me watching. ONE PIECE: PIRATE WARRIORS 4 Switch NSP

Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Most are predictable after you dove into their memories to find out the favourite dish and after you’ve talked with them at the station. I think I was hooked when the pregnant mother came in for her last meal and found out she was the victim of a traffic accident before she even met her baby. So sad! But just who is Bear? And come to think of it, who are you, who is Cat? The story takes on a new turn when one day Bear is too sick to cook and Cat has to take over, diving into Bear’s memory to find out how. I’ll not spoil the rest of the story, but suffice it to say there’s a train to Hell as well.

Lots of Emotions in Retro Looks and Lovely Music

As you may expect after reading the first chapters of this review, Bear’s Restaurant is very much story-driven. There are light puzzle elements, but mostly it’s about reading and experiencing. I’m not usually into retro looks in a game, but it fits Bear’s Restaurant. The pixels do an excellent job of conveying the emotions in the deceased. The music, a soundtrack made by Xion, fits in smoothly. It is soothing to listen to with a sad undertone. Bear’s Restaurant is a short game, some three hours I think, but it kept me playing on to find out what the story was behind Bear and Cat, and if I’d get a happy ending. ONINAKI Switch NSP

Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Despite being short, it is a story that will stay with me for a long time. The same way The Stillness of the Wind did when I reviewed that. It is a game that is not long and does not have a voice that is common in games these days due to the dot graphics, but after playing the game, I was able to feel the fullness. The uncomplicated story gave me the feeling of reading a fairy tale book. Uncle Bear’s Restaurant is a simple game that makes it feel like content to watch rather than a game. It is an adventure game that does not require difficult actions or controls, but is mostly simple operation and dialogue.

Add-ons (DLC): Bear’s Restaurant Switch NSP