Sword and Fairy Inn 2 (Switch)

Geoffrey Wright | August 18, 2023 | Review | No Comments

Sword & Fairy series has been gradually making its way to PC & consoles in the west lately, but its mainly the RPG games. This one here though is a spin off which sees some of the characters running an inn for a change of pace. Worth a stay? Lets find out.

If Sword & Fairy sounds familiar then that’s because as an RPG series, that’s seen several of the games localised in recent years, you’ve probably come across it before. This game sees some of the characters from those same games (Li Xiaoyao, Zhao Ling’er, Lin Yueru, Yun Tianhe, etc) taking a break from adventuring and opening up an inn together instead, kinda like an Avengers but with fried rice & spring rolls.

Having not played the previous game its somewhat good there’s no overarching plot that has been carried over and you can get to know the characters through 3D animated visual novel style story sections. You’ll be unlocking these story segments as your inn reputation increases too, something of a progress marker I guess as folk come from far & wide to sample your hospitality.

There’s a surprising amount of detail put into the inn that gives it a homely feel, and even the village you can head out in to will also surprise Sure its not a huge open world but its good to see the effort has been put in to impress a little. Surprisingly the characters take on a more Chibi style than the rest of the game would suggest, but that just gives the game a more edge to go with the punchy colour palette.

Audio is quite good too. The voice acting is done natively without an English dub, which I prefer, and the music compliments this perfectly as well. Performance is fine whichever way you play, the lack of a docked boost is annoying as always though, but each method does have its perks. Docked makes the UI more readable for sure, but then portable has the option of touchscreen controls which works extremely well.

What you’ll be doing is there in the name, managing an inn. You’ll start off with a few staff that you can assign at will to a few jobs, go through the menu, and then open the store. There’s a few minutes of business as you try to keep customers happy and make some money to keep the doors open. When you close shop its time to train staff and work on bettering your dish quality to net higher profits, before everyone can finally get some rest. Rest is needed to keep staff energy up so you can’t always do these improvements, yes it does kinda feel like a mobile game in many ways.

You can use up a bit of energy before opening to head into the village as well, here you can explore a little and talk to villagers and shopkeepers to buy supplies and hire more staff. Those staying at the inn can also be visited or head to the inn’s farm to grow & rear your own ingredients for dishes, there’s plenty to do outside of just dealing with customers during opening hours. Hell, you can can even head outside of the village to gather new & exciting dishes to really bring the customers in. Just prepare for cooking battles to spring up occasionally with other chefs as your renown grows. The game does gradually wean you into all this stuff, its not as overwhelming as it sounds here, by the time time you heading out of the village you’ll have a good grasp of everything.

In some ways I got exactly what I was expecting from Swords & Fairy Inn 2, and in others it had a charm to it that would surprise me occasionally. It most definitely plays like one of those management mobile games, but as it doesn’t have the monetisation focused nature of those, this one has additional charm of the characters and depth to the gameplay that will keep you returning to open the inn – once you have a handle on how it all works.