Very sensitive and thought provoking.

The prose in between story segments are true highlights: some bring an otherwise unachievable depth to the characters you meet, others describe the history of this world and the implications of its nature in a very human light. I look forward to them more than I've looked forward to tertiary texts in most games.

I wish the animator spent just one hour more making the walking animations less janky, at the very least the one on the loading screen that you see all the time. There are highlighted words in the text you can get extra info about but it was seemingly written by a random teenager and provides nothing but banal and/or asinine remarks on the otherwise interesting dialogue. I wholly recommend just never reading them, as every time I do I regret it. They try to be quirky and drop flat every single time, it feels like an insult to the writer.
The main character's model is routinely irritating in that the coattails on the shirt are totally extra and that the lanyard clips through just about everything in every scene - you know they could have just left those out and just chose not to, for some reason.
There is a surprising amount of typos for a game so text heavy, I wish they would have reached out to more people who actually cared about proofreading. None of them are bad enough to ruin it, just grammar/punctuation/spelling things.

Complaints aside, the characters are more interesting than I expected and I find myself stopping to consider a lot of the text, and there is a rewind option which I am very appreciative of. The implications of culture and ideology are extremely sound - that is why I hate those side descriptions. This setting is alive; you follow a handful of people, but their stories shape a world that doesn't need specifics or even faces. It feels like the game is just an example of a few key incidents within a larger picture, and that this universe exists before and after the story.

Something feels very special about this one, I think this is the first real review I've ever left but they deserve the attention.

Story 8/10:
I love the characters in this game, each one is written so well, so well in fact that even with the 4 hours it had it managed to make me care deeply for all of them, the story itself is really good too, even though it bound itself to a single cafe.
Also, they made Ned Kelly an enforcer for the Council of Death and I find that hilarious.
In terms of the content of the story, it questions the ethics of necromancy really well through the main events of the story, even questioning and incorporating different questions surrounding death, 'what is on the other side after death?', 'How would you react if you knew that your time was finite', it really delves deeply into these questions with the newcomer Keshan.
Gameplay 5/10:
It's an average visual novel, my only true gripe with it is that there's no History or Log, meaning I couldn't go back to text I accidentally skipped over.
Visuals 8/10:
I really liked the visuals and artstyle in this, especially the fact that its all in a 3D environment, it's kinda like how Steins;Gate Elite does it, but it reads better because, A. the text is intergrated into the scenery and B. things still move when its waiting for you to continue, just leaving it more coherent in execution.
Music 8/10:
The music really sold the vibe this game was going for, the calm pieces held this melancholic feel that really connected it to the story.
Overall 8/10:
NecroBarista is fleeting, it's really short but feels like it used its time perfectly, I loved how it incorporated Melbournian culture into its story, Melbourne is a place known for its coffee culture, its inclusions of Melbourne culture from Avocado toast, to Pool, really hit for me, it sold the setting, as a Melbournian myself.

tl;dr - Good story, don't actually think it qualifies as a game.

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This is a difficult review to write.

I was not un-entertained by the story of Necrobarista. It definitely got to me and made me root for the characters and their struggles with the situations they were.

I'm just sure you can actually call this a game.

The only times you get control are between chapters when you can go about the Terminal cafe and search for side-stories to read or mini-games which are literally just paint and clipart modes.

The main story, the one you should care most about, doesn't actually offer anything that I would call 'gameplay'. The main story is told entirely through cutscenes.

Now, it's a visual novel so some people might say that's okay, but every other visual novel I've played has had points where you could affect the overall story by making choices. Those are completely absent here. There is one story and one story only in the main game, and it will play out in its entirety the same way each time. There is zero variation (which some would argue means zero replayability).

Again, story's good, but that's all there is.

I don't regret picking it up, because it was on heavily-discounted sale, but I'm one-and-done with it.

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