Cabernet has stats that can be applied each time Liza levels up and the opening of the game has her uncle delivering a eulogy over her grave, where Liza’s first stats are chosen by the player, affecting the words said by her uncle. It is a shockingly emotional scene, especially for a character that the player hasn’t even met yet and it does a great job of preparing you for the game to come.

Liza herself actually wakes up in the basement of an opulent manor, far away from her family home. Her clothes are crusted with dirt, it feels like she has been sleeping for a very long time and she is hungry. Climbing the stairs up to the manor proper, Liza meets with a group of high-society vampires and quickly learns that she has become one of them. Liza has no memory of her death and is told that she can never see her family again; instead, she will be travelling to a remote eastern-European town and working side-by-side with the local doctor, who is also a vampire.

I found myself becoming attached to pretty much all of the characters in Cabernet; all of their stories are engaging and emotional. Liza has great chemistry with all of them as well, meaning that conversations between her and another character always feel very natural and real. Cabernet is also fully voiced, which is impressive for any game with visual novel style elements, and even more impressive for a game with as much dialogue as Cabernet. I really loved the voice for Liza, she covers a whole range of emotions and has such good rapport with all of the other characters, I found myself becoming very attached to Liza throughout.

Other than progressing relationships with other characters, quite a few mechanics are operating at once in Cabernet. Being a vampire, Liza learns most of the basic vampire traits; she is able to turn into a bat which essentially works as a sprint because it is much faster than her walk speed. She is also able to turn invisible and put human characters into a trance. These two abilities are mostly relevant during the main plot, but the trance mechanic is also very useful for probably the biggest element, blood-drinking. Liza has a thirst meter that slowly empties as days pass, as this happens she begins to move slower and her face turns ashen, if it becomes completely empty, Liza will starve to death. This means that drinking blood is very important.

There are a few options offered to her; Liza can go hunt for rabbits in the forest, but it takes some time and is not as fulfilling as human blood. She can purchase the titular Cabernet, a distilled human blood that costs quite a bit but is easy to obtain. Or finally, she can of course drink blood from a person. Any characters who are friends with Liza can be convinced to move to a private location and then be entranced so they don’t realise exactly what Liza is doing. Even though these characters don’t remember having their blood slurped up, they still recall the uncomfortable feeling of it happening and that makes their relationship with Liza degrade a little. I had one character that I decided was my little juice box and I pretty much only fed on him until I realised he actively hated me because I had done it so much, and I spent the next few days trying to get him to like me again. Cabernet does a good job juggling all of its mechanics; in fact, they all help to cement all of the rules that must be followed in vampire society, because the player actively has to figure out how to navigate them. Liza even needs to get invitations before being allowed in houses, which I love, as it’s honestly an underrated vampire element.

While I loved all of the characters and their stories, I found that the main plot did wrap up a little quickly and change direction in a way that felt discordant. Most of the narrative surrounds Liza’s attempts to adapt to vampire society and to come to terms with her new life, but then it suddenly shifts to be about political revolution among humans. I do think that it comes back around with the final chapter and I especially loved the epilogue, but I just think this narrative element would have been better if it was foreshadowed throughout the game up until that point instead of just slotted in towards the end.