Strawberry Vinegar
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Critic Reviews for Strawberry Vinegar
Thanks to the unique perspective and concept of the tale itself, the setup of Strawberry Vinegar leaves room for all sorts of potential.
Strawberry Vinegar tells a weird story centred around a graphic passion for food that is genuinely funny and unexpectedly wholesome despite some subtly suggestive undertones.
Telling a tale as sweet as its graphics, the aptly named Strawberry Vinegar is a positivity-boosting read, with food and friendship at its core. Living with a demon is far from easy, but Rie learns to live with, and even like her, and ends up playing a special role in her life that changes it for the better.
Strawberry Vinegar might not be as emotive as the previous creations of Ebi-Hime, but it's entertaining nonetheless. The things that it does well? It's cheerful, well-written, oh so sweet and cute, has some heart-warming scenes, and is full of pictures of food that look so tasty that's it's hard not to experience a bit of stomach rumbling after a couple of minutes. The things that it lacks? Being the harmless easy-going tale that it is, it won't exactly shake the foundations of the genre. It's good… and that's just about it.
When Rie, a cynical and insular 9-year-old, finds Licia, a young demon from Hell, stealing cookies in her kitchen, her life undergoes a sudden and dramatic change. Just how things develop is up to you in Strawberry Vinegar, a slice-of-life (and cake) visual novel.
Strawberry Vinegar is a visual novel focused on friendship and food, lots of food. With a 'cute' aesthetic, quite heavy, with six endings and a duration that can exceed five hours reaching the normal end, they make up a title of more than 80,000 words with an operation that does not depart from the canons of this genre, and that nor does it need it for those who like it.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The artwork is just as amazing as the story, and the music is cute and sets the mood for every single scene nicely. In common visual-novel-style, there are different choices you can make (do you want to make pancakes for Licia, or go buy her a crepe?), these choices will lead you to one of six different endings, making for plenty of replay value. On top of that, there are your standard artwork collectibles (which are all beautiful artistic creations) of the characters and your more-specific-to-this-game splendid drawings of food. I can feel how much love went into this game. The author clearly loves each character, and the artist clearly loves food! Ratalaika Games hits another home run for publishing this one, and the developer ebi-hime is an excellent author. Ebi-hime has other visual novels under their belt as well, and I am really looking forward to checking them out too. Strawberry Vinegar has such a modest price point that I would highly recommend it to any fan of visual novels. Also, I think it’s an excellent starting point for any young gamer looking to try out a visual novel.
Strawberry Vinegar ends up being incredibly straight forward if not a little messy with some of its story elements. I thought the writing was comical and engaging, but then the pacing would be hurt by Rie’s unbalanced characteristics and overly mature attitude. In the end, it’s a visual novel about food and friendship, and you’ll get plenty of that here.
