• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $16.99 until August 17th)
• Developer: Softstar Entertainment
• Publisher: eastasiasoft
• Release Date: July 27, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by eastasiasoft on behalf of Softstar Entertainment. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I’ve always enjoyed simulation games, and the screenshots for Sword and Fairy Inn 2 really appealed to me with the chibi character designs and lovely Asian architecture. To my delighted surprise, the game also includes Mandarin voice acting to accompany the English translation. With all of those elements combined, I was excited to start running this inn.

The story begins with a young woman named Xiaoman asking “Mistress Nuwa” to allow her to change her grandfather’s fate. Xiaoman then travels back in time using the “Soul Reversal” technique. She says that she’s stopped Xiaoyao from leaving Yuhang and saved Ling’er from the Black Miao.

There’s not too much context here – I assume there’s an explanation in the Chinese-only Sword and Fairy game on Steam? But I understood that Xiaoman’s actions seem to have prevented some tragedies from occurring.

Anyways, now that Xiaoman is back in time/in another dimension/timeline, she decides to run an inn. At first, you only have the chef and “clerk” (waiter) jobs unlocked; as you upgrade your inn, more jobs and job slots will become available. Every day, you’ll have to decide who works at each station. When you have more employees to choose from later on, it’s best to place them based on their stats.

After setting the staff’s schedule, you must then set the menu. They conveniently tell you how many servings are available for the day for each dish based on your current stock of ingredients. The menu includes rice, noodles, meat, seafood, soups, tea, and alcohol at various prices, which are preset and can’t be changed. However, you can choose one signature dish to increase that item’s price.

When you open the inn for the day, customers will slowly trickle in. Until you unlock the manager job, you’ll have to greet customers yourself. They display the dish(es) they plan on ordering, and if their desired dish isn’t on the menu for the day it will appear in red text. You can turn them away instead of bringing them to a table and having them get angry that they can’t get what they want. 😅

Customers also have an emotional gauge above their heads based on how long they’ve been waiting for a table or for their food. I think it’s best to turn away the ones who start getting angry so they don’t affect your rating?

The pacing is pretty slow at first since you don’t have many tables or employees, so you may get a few angry customers. Besides greeting and escorting them to tables, it doesn’t seem like you do much during business hours – especially once you get the manager, who can perform these tasks automatically. Apparently you can increase the game’s speed by pressing the right joystick, so that does help the pacing a little.

It took me a while to get used to the controls because you swap between areas and tasks using the L/R buttons instead of the directional buttons. Initially, I also didn’t realize that I could have employees train after hours instead of immediately choosing to rest for the night. You can train employees to improve their strength or speed stats, or you can have them work to improve dish quality.

Once you’ve fulfilled the conditions to upgrade the inn, you will unlock more tables and new areas, such as a backyard to increase friendship levels between employees or a farm area for growing your own ingredients. Putting two employees together in the backyard increases their friendship a little, but sometimes you can trigger events with adorable CGs, which increase their friendship even more. The game helpfully tells you which characters have events together under the “guide” section.

Your farm can be upgraded too, which unlocks access to additional areas on the farm and increases the amount of crops, livestock, and seafood you can grow/raise. I think it’s better to grow ingredients and wait a little longer to save money. It may have been helpful to have the game display your current stock of ingredients for each item you plant so you don’t have to go back and forth between your warehouse menu and your farm.

This is a game where you run an inn, so when you upgrade the inn you’ll also get additional rooms to rent out. You can challenge guests to timed culinary or “clerk” battles after hours to win ingredients and/or money. I preferred the culinary battles because they were easier for me, and it was kind of hilarious watching my employees throwing food at guests. The “clerk”/waiter battles felt more awkward to control.

There are also two activities outside of the inn. Naturally, one would be going to the market to buy any ingredients, livestock, or seeds you need. Some ingredients can only be acquired by trading another ingredient to get them. Besides ingredients, you can also buy materials for inn upgrades and hire more employees at the market.

If you send Xiaoman to the market, you’ll get free gifts from each merchant when you purchase something from them. 🤩 Take a look at your employee skills to see what other benefits you can use.

Eventually, you’ll also unlock the other activity that you can do outside of the inn: exploration. Send your employees to the different areas you’ve unlocked, and they’ll return with a lot of ingredients, some money, building materials, stat-boosting equipment, or special furniture items to change the inn’s decor. The employees you send will not be available for other activities for 1-3 days, depending on the selected area’s time requirements.

It is important to note that all work and other activities – including the backyard socialization – cost “vigor” (stamina). Training employees and exploration cost both stamina and money. You need to check how much your payroll expenses are so that you can pay them and still buy ingredients. If you run out of money, it’s game over! 😱

Although the game starts off a bit slow and boring, once everything was unlocked it felt pretty fun. Before opening for business, I got into the habit of harvesting crops/ingredients and planting more, sending employees on explorations, and restocking ingredients at the market.

Then I’d check if my menu had enough servings for the day’s selected dishes, and make sure employees were set in their roles. If no rooms were dirty, I’d remove employees from the cleaning schedule. Then I would open for business and watch my employees serve customers. Afterwards, I’d have characters interact, train, and have culinary/clerk battles with guests.

It really felt like more of a proper inn management game once things got going and my routines were set. And you not only get to play through the inn management portions, but also get to experience a semblance of a story!

Some characters are keeping secrets from the others – especially the time-traveling Xiaoman, who knows older versions of a few characters at the inn. There’s a decent amount of interpersonal drama amongst the “inn-habitants,” 😉 and a local competitor frequently attempts to sabotage you.

The cast is fairly large, so sometimes it can get confusing. Also, the English translation is not 100% there, with some errors and odd wording:

• “I dare you to a match” instead of “challenge”
• “spirit servant leaved” vs “left”
• calling waiters “clerks”
• calling stamina “vigor”

Outside of those examples, the English imperfections made it kind of hard to fully understand the plot, although I pretty much got the basics down. It’s not the best translation, but it’s workable. Perhaps it could be updated in the future?

Putting aside the story’s translation issues, the characters are absolutely adorable in their chibi style. The character models’ facial expressions and gestures are animated as they speak, which I really enjoyed – they were quite entertaining. And the voice acting and soundtrack certainly added another layer to the story scenes.

The game goes on for one year, and then you get to see an ending. There seem to be multiple endings. I was excited to see that there is a New Game+ option, where you can use some points to carry over recruited characters, recipes, unlocked exploration areas, equipment, furniture, skills, etc. That was an unexpected yet awesome feature to have!

Sword and Fairy Inn 2 is not without its issues. I would have wanted a more active gameplay style during the inn’s business hours. I also could have used more context for the Sword and Fairy characters, a better translation, and easier controls. That being said, I loved the characters even with those issues; everything is super cute, and the game does get more engaging as you go along. I’d love to see a Sword and Fairy 3 that improves on these critiques, because I think the potential is there.

7.5/10