Sushi Ben

A charming little game, 7 hour run time for doing just a few side quests and all of the main story, did not complete everything since it's not necessary for achievement or rewards other than decorations (as far as I am aware) Very cute little slice of life style story, fun to play after a long day and meet all the characters - though the end does imply there will be more in the future, which I hope for otherwise the story just feels unfinished. Played entirely on desktop w/ controller, did test on steam deck and works perfectly. No game breaking bugs, just that characters would sometimes have bad pathing and be stuck and would not appear during their scenes and dialogue. Only other bug I had was that the voice over wouldn't always match the text boxes and would sometimes repeat or miss entire lines of dialogue. Again, nothing game breaking and only a little annoying. Still a very sweet game, and I would absolutely come back for more.

Ok so, the good, the story is fun, the music is good, the art direction is great and the characters have great design. And the collectibles around town are simple and not that tedious. Now the bad: There's just so many bugs -The character paths are not working properly so sometimes they don't appear on the cinematics inside daruma-zushi until the scene changes and they are teleported inside. -There are some points where you get softlock, one of which occured where i delivered a photo and was too close to the character to pick the daruma up, and since you can't move when someone is giving you a daruma then you are stuck -One of the targets in the forest doesn't dissapear when you shoot at it and spawns daruma as long as you keep shooting -The possessed object quest is bugged for many players -The tutorial achievement not marked as complete until the game is reloaded -After the "finale" when you meet ben on the beach he would just walk back and forth while for some reason i can't open the inventory anymore. Now most of that didn't bother me as much as when i completed the game and was recieved with "this story will continue", which was a surprise because in the store page of the game it doesn't stablish that is early access, or still in beta or anything. Then there's some feedback i have like, add something so the npc don't become hollow husks after their introductory mission, let us invite npc now and then to eat sushi, or participate in activities again like freely challenging Aika to a table tennis game. But the most important one is if the npcs have nothing to say on the way to Daruma-zushi then is better if we are just teleported since walking or running adds nothing, or if you really want us to walk wit npcs, add something that encourages the players to do it. I do really like the game but at this point it ain't something i would recommend,

Let me start with I do recommend this game and I think it's worth giving a shot. The game looks good and the music is nice too. I think the character designs and their personalities are really good and the voice acting is pretty nice too! There is a variety of things you can do in the game and there is a lot of collectable. The story is alright and I really enjoyed my time here. Took about 10 hours for me to complete so a couple days worth of gaming was just about right, I think if it kept going I might of dropped it for overstaying it's welcome. The bad parts that I find that it gets a bit buggy when trying to collect some collectables because the lil Frog guy just would refuse to then spawn at me and just would be there. If I would drop an item then it wouldn't let me move so then I either had to hard call the frog with something else so he was spawned around me or I would need to reload the chapter. And the further in the game you go the more you have to do this so the more it would happen to me. More of a nit pick but there are bits of the voice acting where it does not quite match the written text in the boxes. Like the English Voice acting will say the full English terms but the text would leave the Japanese words instead. I would of just had the voice actors say the Japanese words they decided to leave in, Also when the game gives you credits I felt the story was at an unsatisfying plot until you do the tiny bit that's post credits then it's more of an ending. I noticed multiple times the pathing for characters would mess up so they just wouldn't walk where they need to so they would be in the scene or they are talking THRU walls to where it probably would of just been better to just warp us from the NPCs to the Sushi Restaurant or have them spawn in right outside the door and walk in or just in the room if your camera wouldn't be locked over in that area. I also laughed when I walked thru the sushi restaurant and was like what is this little square room?! It's a character despawn room, it's a room where NPCs walk to when they are done and leaving the scene instead of having them walk out of the sushi restaurant and just path back where they need to go. Originally while playing thru the game I was like I would give this a 4/5 then at a certain point it went down to a 3.5 then eventually settled on a 3/5. The main issues can be solved if they patched characters pathing or the frog spawning to you to turn in collectables.

Aaaah, te amo juego todo estúpido con bugs y personajes wapos. El juego esta bien, lo jugué sin VR, tuve ciertas facilidades y al mismo tiempo ciertos inconvenientes, no se si al no jugarlo VR se generan muchos bugs como a mi, o ciertos minijuegos se sienten algo pesados al estar ligados a no hacer mucho por jugar a punta del mouse. El juego me encanto, de principio a fin me gusto la historia, las actividades extra, los coleccionables, e incluso solo pescar para darles el pescado a los gatitos del pueblo y que empezaran a hacer un ritual sobre el. La historia sencillita, es básicamente comprar a las personas del pueblo a través de sushi y al mismo tiempo ayudarles o directamente competir con ellos para que acepten el sushi gratis, por lo que sea hay que rogarles para que coman. El estilo artístico, 10/10, incluso a veces se ve tan vacío pero lleno de colores que es precioso. No tengo la fortuna de tener un VR pero siento que el juego se disfrutaría mas con ellos, y pues ser pacientes con los bugs, porque de verdad que fueron tantos y algo me dice que no los parchearan, entonces tener paciencia o aprender de ellos para evitarlos (porque si, literal hay algunos que hasta se pueden evitar con maromas pero weno). Recomendado totalmente :D

Wonderful Game! Loved this! Couple glitches, but was a lot of fun

Sushi Ben is a super fun and very exciting "anime/manga" style game (as I call it)! The characters are all very unique and the voice acting in Japanese is AMAZING! I loved the story and I was always itching to hop back in and push further along each time I signed off. The activities and side missions are all fun, clever, and excellent for VR! lots of things to do with your hands and lots of tools to use. Also, whenever your not "in the action" the dialog moments are broken up with the COOLEST anime/mange style boxes that show expression or emphasize certain things! Never seen that in a game before and I absolutely enjoyed the characters talking as much as I enjoyed any other part of the game, and that's a great feat to pull off! It's probably my FAVORITE part of the game! If you're looking for an entertaining single player story driven adventure, LOOK NO FURTHER! I highly recommend this one!!

Sushi Ben is first and foremost a Virtual Novel in VR form with a variety of mini games attached to it. The primary thing you will notice is how amazingly stylish the visuals are. They are perfect for the VR platform given how low fidelity they are while still pulling off some great decisions in terms of shape and color language. One thing that particularly stood out to me was the flare from staring at the sun in the game, simply being a sprite that became bigger the more focus you had on it. It's efficient, impressive, and looks great. The same can be said for the characters, where texture work is simple but solid, the models are low poly but convey the characters directly, and the lack of any real lighting allows them to color code them with the environment very nicely. It can all be said the same for the writing, voice acting, music, and overall story... Simple, clean, and all in all efficient. Perhaps too efficient? There are some problems that are worth pointing out, however. The game is pretty short, took me about 5 hours while fooling around a little bit between the mandatory story sequences. For the asking price I don't think it's entirely TOO short, but with the story not really meeting a definitive conclusion and setting up for some sort of sequel, the short length does leave a bittersweet taste in my mouth. There is stuff to do after it's over, and you could probably spend 1-2 more hours on doing everything, but with how it was handled I kind of expected to at least tie a neat little bow on things before I had to wonder if the studio was even set to be able to finish the story with a sequel at all? The other core issue is that the game, while visually refined, is pretty buggy. Sadly, I had my fair share of bugs that would put me in weird positions during cutscenes, not have NPCs spawn during certain ones while still having dialogue, and most damning the occasional soft lock. Given how long it took to port the game from Quest to PC, it makes me wonder if it's a remnant of that process in some way? Either way, the further I got into the story, the more frustrating it could turn out, especially when I had to restart from checkpoints and redo minigames. In terms of minigames they are of varied quality. I was not a huge fan of the combat minigames involving evil spirits, while fishing and table tennis were pretty fun barring occasional control issues. Smaller story sequences were without huge issues, but could still come with some confusions. Still, they did manage to provide thematically appropriate activities for each sequence and area. This is a game that sadly I feel is not going to convince people who's already a bit on the fence. I carried myself through it for the love of the art involved here, but I did find that the simplistic pace also made it pretty hard to get through it patiently. Luckily it's still an inexpensive game, and there is a demo to try out, so I find you'll likely have a good grasp of what you're getting into when you try that out. It's a mixed recommend from me.