When you read the title I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa, you probably think one of two things: either “What is that nonsense supposed to mean?” or “Is that some sort of coffee Cthulhu joke?”
Yep, it’s a play on “coffee” and the “Cthulhu fhtagn” chant.
I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa follows a young man named Skar (or possibly Ska or Scar) who takes a job working a strange coffee shop recently taken over by a woman named Nako (or maybe Naiko). He meets two friends of hers and soon learns that something about this coffee shop is very strange…
…because the three girls are actually incarnations of Nyarlathotep, Hastur, and Cthulhu.
They’re fairly benevolent despite being eldritch abominations, which might be explained by there actually being more than one Cthulhu, etc., but since it also uses “Cthulhu” as a general term for all three, I’m not positive about that. You get a chance to back out for an early ending, but if you choose to stay on at the coffee shop, another choice will put you on the path of romancing one of these three entities.
When I saw this weird Cthulhu romance game pop up on Steam, I had to check it out. Unfortunately, the English translation is bad.
Really bad.
I’ve read visual novels with translation issues before, but in this case I believe it was machine-translated, because the whole script feels more like it was run through Google Translate than actually translated by someone.
It actually adds some unintentional humor, but it also makes it challenging to read. In addition to the awkward lines, the translation routinely mixes up pronouns and even changes character names.
There are a few other issues as well, such as a lack of proper text-wrapping, an odd screenshot delay that resulted in most of my screenshots having blank dialogue boxes, and a problem with the settings where the voice volume slider and the sound effect volume slider are swapped.
All of this is a shame, because it actually has the potential to be good. It’s pretty funny at times (when I understood what the dialogue was trying to say), the routes themselves are distinct from one another and have some sweet moments, and I’d recommend it… if it was readable.
For now, I sadly suggest passing on I’a I’a Cofflhu Fhtagnyaa, but if it ever gets a proper translation, it will be worth a look!
Oh. And you have to like tentacles. That comes up a few times.
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