AL･FINE

So people compare this game to Recettear but it's totally different: it's a shop management mixed with (a relaxing) visual novel. It has some flaws like the lack of fullscreen (however you can play it in 4:3 near-fullscreen by setting your desktop resolution to 1024x768).
The story isn't bad, the characters are super cute and the management part is very simple but quite fun (you need to buy things to resell at the right price, or equip/pay adventurers to bring back some things to sell from their quests).
This game deserves a better rating.

A very annoying game to play, Needs a lot of quality of life improvements (like fullscreen!? or at least change resolution, sound volume etc) . It somehow requires you to have your hands on both sides of the keyboard and the mouse to play so I'm constantly having to move. Just play reccatear instead.

Lack of fullscreen and controller support is annoying but it could have been saved if it felt unique and charming. Sadly it just seems to be a budget Recettear clone. It is not something i would recommend.

AL･FINE is a mix between Visual Novel / Shop Management. It is a nice game but it's not quite like Recettear. The VN story is about a boy that destroy a Pixie's jewel and to pay it back he reopens his parents shop. There is other NPCs present in the story but this game doesn't have any romance or NPC route.

The main purpose of the Shop is to sell a lot of items and compete with others shops in commerce battles. You have 100 days until the end of the game and 4 commerce battles to win.

Difference between Recettear:
･ You don't haggle with customers
･ You can't visit the dungeon
･ Every town building visit will waste a time period
･ No other modes are present in the game (Endless, Survival, etc.)

I enjoyed playing this game but there is some issues to keep in mind.

･ Fixed game screen / No Fullscreen
･ Sometimes when you enter the shop it gets bugged
･ Lack of other modes or a way to keep playing beyound the main story

By mistake I closed the game and lost 40 minutes of progress. As stupid game was not giving any warning like "do you want to quite and loose all unsaved progress"?

Very cute game. Not as complex as Recettear, but still amusing.

A Few bugs ( i recommend save often also with second or third saves, when you wanna be sure to get the achievements, also restart game when picture or text goes blurry)

I think this is a fun enough game Idk why everybody's tripping out. You run a shop, dialogue's pretty cute. Not recommending this because Recettear exists is like... ok??? Is there only room in this world for one of those types of games? Recettear and Shop Heroes were slightly better imo but this game was fun and worth the cost to me as I love these types of games.

Unless you are desperate after a Store management game there are others which are superior in every way.

This game is simple, without any real management, the game is about selling items, upgrade store and beating rival stores over time.

I'm only saying "Not Recommend" because there is no middle ground for Steam reviews.

As many other reviewers have stated:

Recettear is better in every way compared to AL-FINE. If Recettear didn't exist then I'd at least recommend this game for what it is. However, every second I played of this game made me want to go back to Recettear. So, I did. It isn't, neccisarily, a "bad" game. However, there is a much better alternative on Steam that deserves your money much more than AL-FINE.

If you've played Recettear a hundred times and a hurting for something the same, but different. Go for AL-FINE. Otherwise, just stick with the cute girl and the loan-shark fairy.

Semi decent game but its a cheap copy of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale(recommend you play that first before this)


If you fix the annoying bugs will be a lot better
Bugs: Cant full screen
Will randomly switch languages
Textures bug out and will go black requiring game restart

Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f81rLNZ1rCk

In Summary: I really enjoyed the art and characters but sadly the gameplay isn't as deep as Recettear. I had fun with this but I do wonder if that was because I really wanted another shopkeeping game. The lack of graphical and sound options is big issue, particularly the sound as it is INCREDIBLY loud.

I'm pretty lukewarm about this one but I'll give it a recommend because I didn't hate it.. However, I'd say only give this a shot if it's cheap or if you badly want a game like this.

AL･FINE is a good game, But some small modifications would have greatly changed the aspect of the game.
I suggest to wait for a sold -30% / -50% for have the real price of this game


Positives :
- You need some strategy for get points and upgrade your shop.
- The story is good.
- Good Waifus (ﾉ^∇^)ﾉﾟ

Negatives:
- No Endless Mode, you have 100 days and the game finish after that.
The "bad" ending is better of the "good" ending.
Good ending : Well, It was fun, Farewell!
Bad ending : Let's go to a trip together ! (Damn, I want to have a trip with Hina too !)
- Dungeon Expedition too booooring
- No Full screen
- No Gamepad Support
- You can't skip the Events (It is very annoying during a replay)
- Many Texture Bugs, I restart the game after about 0h30 to 1h00 of gameplay (They will probably fix it soon)
- No romance... I wanted to have some dates with Hina :'(

So many glitches, at one point all the English turned off and it became only Japanese and as I cannot read Kanji I was at a bit of a loss. Seeing as I spent MONEY for this... Not a fan. I'll give it another try because it's a waste if I don't, but so far I'm dissapointed.

Pros:
→ features are refined.
→ Easy to load up and play a day or two
→ Cute store graphics
→ auto save every in game day
→ game starts very fast (requirements to play the game are pretty low)

Cons:
→ not a lot of features and gameplay. very simple mechanics, I think i would enjoy it more as a kid.
→ Wish it has more aspects for dungeoning in the tower rather than just choose a tower level where they will go away for 3 days....
→ Not entirely sure if its worth $16.99 CDN. Stardew valley has a lot more to do..
→ minor bug every couple hours w/o restarting, not a big deal since it has auto save and the game starts quite fast


I don't mind the error that pops up since its quick to close and reopen. It also has a auto save every in game day so you wouldn't lose much.

You can do 3 things in a day. Two of the main activities is going to the market to buy stock to sell or going to your store to sell the items.

The store itself is very cute but it is a bit too limited in terms of what you do inside. Basically, you setup what you want to sell and the price. Then you can change your 4 store decorations which also feel very liimited. Finally you open your store and sit and wait until the day is over. While the store is open, you can click on a shelf to make the sprit refill stock. In the store, there is one cashier(yourself) and a sprite that is VERY slow at refilling stock on the items you indicate. It isn't that big of an issue but does't feel fulfilling when it takes a couple hours in game time to refill one shelf... If you don't open the store you can go to the market to buy

Plot is light and cute, nothing dramatic nor emotional. I think this is more of a kid's game which I wouldn't mind getting if i had a kid since you can tech them economy. Or if you want to learn supply and demand or any other merchant scenarios, this is pretty good for that :)

Anyways, I'm only 8 hours in, I have enjoyed it so far, but I feel like I'm already almost done the game? Not sure why but some 'parts' of the game feels like i've unlocked everything already? I'm hoping there is more content and gameplay so I can at least get another 10+ hours from this game. I'm at chapter 6... maybe I can google to see if anyone knows how many chapters there are... :P

tl;dr - I can't recommend this game at it's current price for the content it provides.

It's like a more technical and casual form of Recettear. I would recommend trying Recettear first before trying this one out. The story is very similar to Recettear as well, both Main Characters start up their family shops to pay off a debt. It's still a fun little tycoon game.

I would recommend getting the game when it's on sale and when the vram error issue is fixed, because it can ruin many in-game days of progress in an instant if you haven't saved before it just randomly happens. The vram error issue becomes more frequent the more I had progressed into the game making it almost unplayable.

I played the game on Hard for a challenge and it wasn't an impossible task to get to day 99, except as for my first time there was no way in hell I was going to beat Ornate Brand with the RNG like buyers. I could be bad at the game and there is probably a how to guide, or not.

Edit: 12/12/2016
The game is still filled with bugs, like the game having all the UI Text turning back into japanese and the store missing textues so it's just a black void, but maybe someday the port will be fixed. Still no trading cards available and it would make this buy a bit better if there was.

Only recommended if you've already played Recettear and desperately want another shopkeeping game. If you haven't played Recettear, it's a superior experience for just $5 more. Al Fine involves too much clicking and not enough thinking.

The market you buy your items from has infinite stock and their prices rarely change. Exploring dungeons consists of selecting an adventurer and waiting 3 days for the game to tell you whether he succeeded or failed. And selling your items basically consists of setting the same items out at default price 98% of the time and occasionally clicking their shelves to restock them. The biggest change of strategy is during one of the 4 Commerce Battles in the game, where the easiest way to make a bigger income (not profit; spend as much money as you like) than your competitor is to sell all the expensive loot you've stored from the dungeons at a 10-20% discount.

It feels like they cut a lot of corners with this game: it only gives you information on the buying preferences of less than half of your customers, all of the information about the other stores in the Top 10 list (not to mention the Top 10 list itself) is worthless, and there's a persistent bug where after an hour or two of playing it, it'll start maxing out your VRAM and refuse to load textures (and also switch to Japanese).

The story itself is too bland and light for its own good. All of the characters are caricatures that barely get any development and the only major conflict is a plot to monopolize the town's economy that only takes up 10 days of the 100-day duration. The other 90 days basically involve the meek main character deciding he wants to be a merchant and making friends to help him. Nothing is really done with the 3 different races or the floating island setting.

It took me 14 hours to finish the game. I wish I hadn't invested that time (or my money) into it.

Mediocre. No real dungeon exploration mechanics. Like Recettear except uniformly worse in every respect, whether by gameplay, graphics, or repetitive, unpleasant music. No fullscreen option.

If you love this sort of game, you will like it. If you only like this sort of game when it's done well, you won't.

I can't recommend the game at this time (Unless you're a die hard waifu lover.)

I understand that this game has only been out for less than a day, but there's just too many things the devs left behind.

User is unable to configure options, you're stuck in window mode (In my case, I either have to play a feet away from the screen, or squint my eyes until I resemble Brock), and the cursor in-game takes awhile to get used to.

The worst part of the game for me is that player is unable to skip the tutorial in the beginning. For a game very similar to Recettear, if not a remake, I'd have thought the devs would let the players be able to skip something they already know in the least. Pretty much spent the first half hour just reading what I already knew.

To close out, the game is just missing the very basic features that would otherwise make me keep the game.
Until then, I would keep that $15 for now, if I were you.

Al Fine is a shop management game similar to Racettear, but is unfortunately inferior to in every way.

Many mechanics are similar:
- Each day is broken up into 3 time segments: morning, day and night. You can spend this time either opening shop, or choosing to visit one of the town's locations.
- Locations are exactly same as Racettear - town center, market, pub, adventure and merchant guilds. Access to each location are restricted by the time segment of the day (ie pub on accessible at night).
- You obtain goods to sell by either buying from market, or obtaining through dungeons. Unlike Racettear, there is no combat or RPG element. You just hire the adventurer and send them off. They'll return 3 days later and bring back loot.
- You can upgrade and redesign your shop to change the mood and type of customers that visit shop.
- Every 10 days you have to pay a fee to keep the store open.

The differences
- Weather and seasons. These affect the number of customers but in reality the effect is only cosmetic. Even on a bad weather day, with nothing else to do, you are still going to open the shop regardless, just means you make a little less profit that day. It does not affect your decision making hence I describe it as cosmetic.
- Commerce battles. You have to make more profit than your rival within x days. This is also cosmetic since you're still going to sell things and make profit anyway. The battles dont change your course of normal actions.

Poor implements:
- cant change resolution. there is no fullscreen option, so the game at 800x600 (i think?) is just a tiny window.
- The game allows you to speed up time, but you have to manually restock shelves. If you speed up time, by the time you notice the shelf is empty and click on the shelf to restock, the store is already closed. So you can either watch the slow shopping process and be more efficient in restocking, or you can fast forward the boring parts but possibly miss out on sales. I don't understand why restocking isnt an automated process.
- unlike Racettear where all customer types will buy pretty much everything, but have individual preferences towards price of certain goods, Al Fine customers will only buy the items they are designed to buy. It is not fun to see alot of customers walk in, look around and not like anything then walk back out and waste your time.

I also encountered a game crashing bug where an error message popped up and said something like "out of VRAM unable to load scene". Game does not autosave, and I lost all progress.

Its another game where I wish there was a neutral button. I'll hit recommend but really Racettear is the same but much better.

If you enjoy Recettear, you'll probably enjoy this. It's cute, funny, and has some mechanics (food spoiling, for e.g) that give it an interesting take that make it different enough from Recettear. I'm only 2 hours in, and I can see myself playing this a lot.

It's like Recettear, but with (even more) waifus.


Edit: WAIT A MINUTE THIS GAME IS A CRAPPY PORT THOUGH:


- No configuration screen: No muting the repetitive music.
- No Full screen mode: Enjoy squinting at your 800x600 box
- Occasional texture fart: sometimes the background, walls, floor etc will be pitch black until you restart the game.

I know some of you hate these kind of half-baked ports, so you are hereby warned.