AL-FINE Review

Platform: Steam
Players: 1

Did you play Recettear? It was a weird Japanese indie game that was part not great dungeon crawling, mostly intense item shop running. It was easily one of my favorite games in college, and I bullied most of my friends into buying. AL-FINE, developed by CrimsonRabbit and published by Sekai Project here in the west, tries real hard to capitalize on the cult status of Recettear, and honestly fails miserably in the process.

AL-FINE is quite a bit more “visual novel” than Recettear, but the premises are eerily similar: a kid, more or less abandoned by their parents, has a run-in with some sort of magical creature, ends up owing said creature a lot of money, and opens an item shop to compensate. The controls are the same on mouse and keyboard, they both have a “time passage” mechanic, there’s a market to buy stock from and a merchant’s guild and a way to hire adventurers to get items for you, price fluctuations occur, you can change the mood of your shop based on decoration. Heck, even Louis from AL-FINE looks suspicious based off of Louie from Recettear. This could almost be a Recettear reskin if the gameplay was as enjoyable.

The different mechanics that exist in AL-FINE are admittedly enjoyable: food has a lifespan before spoilage if you’re trying to sell it; items take up weight on a shelf, allowing you to place multiple of an item down at one time; you can restock already placed items mid-sales period; there’s seasons and weather that affect what you can sell and to how many people; you have rival shops you can do sales battles with (a rather important part of the story); upgrading your shop costs “selling points” instead of money. But for those few interesting pieces, you’re left with a game that cut out everything that made Recettear enjoyable. Instead of haggling for sales prices (one of the most fun game mechanics I’ve ever run into), you set a price and go from there. Adventuring seems to be cut completely from the game in a dungeon crawling sense, and instead you send out your adventurers and after 3 days they bring you back whatever they found. Time passage feels very unbalanced; your day has 3 segments and every little stop you make takes a segment of time up. Also, the town map is poorly laid out. It’s quite easy to misclick between Town Square and Al Fine the shop, wasting valuable selling time.

What story there is never feels pressing, like Recettear’s did. Sure, you owe a sprite that can fly around your shop money, but instead of paying her back, I was paying dues to the merchant’s guild. Rival shops want to do battle with you, and failure to win can lead to game over, but that’s no “haha now you’re homeless” a la Recettear. Everything feels less charming and more harem building-y, as if your real goal is romancing instead of making them dollar dollar bills.

I wish I could like this game. I really do. But it painfully tries to be “Recettear with more anime tiddy” and fails at both. It even gave me a “Captialism, Ho!” achievement, knowing who its target audience is. The art is nice, there’s no camera to really worry about, but the music gets repetitive and the gameplay is a watered down business simulator with no real drive to continue. For your actual dollars, spend it on Recettear over AL-FINE. It’s a better way to utilize your time and feel like you’re actually getting somewhere.

A long way to go, indeed.

-Janette (anarchymarie)

You can check out AL-FINE now on Steam at the link below!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/545330/

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Graphics: GOOD+
Sound: QUESTIONABLE
Gameplay: QUESTIONABLE
Value: QUESTIONABLE
 
OVERALL: QUESTIONABLE

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FULL DISCLOSURE: This game was provided to A-To-J Connections free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of review.

AL-FINE Trailer