Slice Up Monsters And Feed Them To Your Customers In Adventure Bar Story
Adventure Bar Story ($0.99) by RideonJapan,Inc. is a role-playing and management simulation mashup, where you head out and fight enemies in order to collect ingredients that allow you to cook up delicious recipes that are sold in your bar. It’s a port of a popular PSP game.
The goal, of course, is to end up with the hottest bar in the land; a task that’s a lot of fun achieving. As a fan of both RPGs and simulation games, this is truly the best of both worlds.
A few months ago, my brother introduced me to a similar game, Recettear, where you go out and kill monsters for loot, which is then sold off in your shop. I was immediately addicted, so I jumped at the chance to play Adventure Bar Story.
In the game, you run a bar, where you sell both food and drinks. In order to get supplies from the bar, you need to buy them from the local shop or go out into the woods to hunt for them.
You start out with one fighting companion when you first venture out to gather ingredients, but as the game progresses, you’ll attract others, such as a girl who loves your apple pie so much that she wants to help you out.
Out in the forest, you will wander around picking up ingredients, but unfortunately, you will also run into quite a few monsters, which you don’t see coming. Like most RPGs, battles are random with randomized creatures, and you have a variety of weapons, skills, and items to use to defeat them.
These monsters are no pushovers, so you’ll need to use all of the skills at your fingertips to make sure you win. Defeated creatures drop even more cooking supplies.
Back in town, head over to the oven to start baking up treats for your customers. You can discover new recipes on your own, or buy them from the other shop in town. Some recipes sell for more, and you’ll need to cook up a variety to make sure you have a constant flow of cash.
Money is used to buy ingredients, cooking tools, and fighting tools. You’ll also need to cook up extra food to eat, because that’s how your characters level up. It’s a lot to do, but it sure is nice to have a break from the monotony of fighting and the monotony of cooking. It’s like some super fantastic hybrid of an RPG and a game like Cooking Mama, which, as it turns out, is a fun and addictive combination.
My one complaint? There’s no autosaving. If you venture out, forget to save, and meet your doom from an overzealous rat, that’s it. Game over. It loads from your last save. It’s not easy to remember to save, so this is a really frustrating gameplay element. Autosaving should be a part of every iOS game.
Aside from that minor downfall, Adventure Bar Story is a fantastic mashup with action and simulation elements from several different games that work amazingly well together. If you’re a fan of RPGs, simulation games, or both, you will want to download this title.
