Teahouse of the Gods
By Naca Rat
“I will make you my friend,” she says. With her monotone, the statement can be a question, a promise, or a threat.
So, I’m a fan of Steven Universe… basic premise without any overt spoilers is that Steven is special, but is also very human outside of the gem on his belly. He finds out that he is far more powerful and integral to a whole society that he knows nothing about and must come to terms with how to appease everyone as best he can and help solve the corruption surrounding his world. Bit of spoiler in that his past self was responsible for a lot of it.
Makes me wonder if there is a Chinese analogue of Cookie Puss.
General Story:
You are a new apprentice to a teahouse owner in China. You may also be a god. Scratch that… you definitely are one. Hope you brushed up on dynastic Heavenly politics, and know the number to a good Qi cleaner.
This is a slow starter, but once you make it into the title, you begin finding yourself embroiled in a world that existed before you did and have to find your place within it. It presents itself slowly to begin with, but sprints forward in each chapter as the new wondrous thing happens to you.
And I am going to have also add in that the whole place just feels… real? For a story surrounded by mysticism, the locations feel grounded (not an earth spirit pun) well before the supernatural seeps in.
Format and Typos:
No typos in the English as far as I can tell, and I’ll let someone who has more experience with the Mandarin characters tell you about those. I did notice a few coding issues, mostly revolving around checking the wrong stat.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
You’ll balance the paths of your Qi, and real world skills through accumulating skills and alliances. Personality is handled with opposed pairs. This all seems to work, except for one personal glaring issue.
About halfway through the title, something happens that boosts all of your Qi skills up by 50%, and then reduces them by 50%. The problem here is that it doesn’t just set them back to what they were. After checking the code, I was no longer able to pass most checks regarding Qi because of the reduction. For example, and I’m running from memory, so forgive the approximations as I recorded this after noticing it for the first time.
Mind, 80%, after increase 90%, after decrease 45%
Body 33%, after increase 66%, after decrease 33%
Environment 60%, after increase 80%, after decrease 40%
As you can see, this basically dropped every Qi stat I had below the threshold of 50% at a time in the story where checks against Qi were testing around 55 or 60 on average. This left non-Qi stats, which seemed to be especially difficult to meet difficulty thresholds later in the title. (The issue with the percentages is known by the author, and is in progress to be fixed.)
Replayability:
Replayability seems a little low, honestly. This is not because of a lack of content, but the opposite actually. There is a lot of content in between the beginning and many of the big story choices… and romantic content is not your usual fare, according to the author’s announcement thread.
Dislikes:
- A specific percentage-based stat change punishes characters who focus. According to the author, this was not intended and a fix is in progress.
- Pacing sometimes feels off, as if I’m reading a treatment for a series of episodes in a TV show.
- The character you portray can sometimes feel like they weren’t necessary for this to be a complete and competent story.
Likes:
- This is an extremely well-written story and narrative on top of a place that might really exist. Absolutely worth the time spent with the story side.
- Some of the fourth-wall breaking in this title was well done, and thematically appropriate.
- The amount of work that went into making sure the world reacted to the character you made in the title is super appreciated.