sleeping0dragon
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
June 13, 2022
Platforms Played
Library Ownership
*Review on Reddit with Images
IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:
-No voiced dialogues
-Turn-based battle combat
-Tavern Management Sim hybrid
INTRODUCTION
Published by Kemco and developed by Rideon, Marenian Tavern Story is the sequel/spinoff to the Adventure Bar Story games that takes place in the same world. Marenian even has a similar gameplay loop that involves managing a Tavern and engaging in standard JRPG exploration and combat.
For fans of the Atelier games, there are some similarities such as the slice of life story, emphasis on gathering ingredients and being able to craft/cook a large variety of items. The main character is also female.
STORY
The game begins with the main character, Patty Maggioni on a stroll with her younger brother Gino. On their way home, Gino accidentally knocks over a statue and releases Coco, a cat like creature from his seal. Coco is the God of Poverty and immediately forms a link with Gino which quickly leads to the family’s misfortune. The Maggioni family are very wealthy and owns a successful 5-Star Tavern. However, in the span of mere minutes, the family loses all of their fortune, gets their home repossessed by the bank along with their 5-Star Tavern.
With their home lost, their servants gone (except their head butler) and their father sudden escape to the unknown, the siblings were left with nothing. Fortunately for them, the mayor of nearby Cookoro Village offers them the use of an abandoned tavern where they could live. From there, the siblings start up a new tavern business hoping to someday repay their debts and get their home back with Patty serving as the cook.
The story doesn’t really see much development past this point. New gathering and dungeon locations will continue to unlock, but offer very little story relevance. There are about 2-3 crisis in the story, but for most of the game, there isn’t much story progression outside of events discussing how the tavern is getting popular. It is overall light in story presentation which have similar vibes to the Atelier games and their nice lighthearted feel to them.
CHARACTERS
Like the story, the characters here don’t have particularly amazing depth. Patty is a likable and kind protagonist with a near obsession with cooking. Her background is fully explained in the beginning and she sees no real character growth. Much of the other party members are similar as well although the latter ones do have backstories with a little more depth in comparison.
I personally enjoyed all of them and found them all likable. Their chemistry were nice and the cutscenes between each other were fun to watch. It is also amusing how the characters treat Coco like a pest to get rid of.
MUSIC
The game’s soundtrack fits the comfy laid back atmosphere and tone of the game although most are quite generic and forgettable. There were a few standout dungeon and town music that I enjoyed though.
GRAPHICS
The character and monster sprites were decent although fairly generic among some of the more well known modern games that employs retro sprites. On the other hand, the 3D backgrounds are fairly simple and don’t mesh that particularly well with the sprites.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay loop is where Marenian Tavern Story shines. The game has a day progression system with four days in a week and four weeks in a season. Each day ends when you open the Tavern for business. Once per day, you are limited to explore only one dungeon OR visit another town. Once you exit the dungeon or town, you cannot go anywhere else other than back to Cookoro. I personally dislike how going to another town counts as an exploration.
A typical gameplay loop for me consists of going to a dungeon and reach the exit. Along the way, I would get all ingredients from the gathering spots (which won’t reset until the following day) and fight all enemies along the way. Once I return to Cookoro, I would cook some food and register them on the menu before opening the tavern for business. This process would repeat for most of the game.
TAVERN MANAGEMENT
The tavern management itself is not a particularly deep mechanic. It’s actually quite basic compared to another game that is all about the management side. Here, you just put food entries onto the menu for the day and when the tavern opens, you get a short generic cutscene with customers before you get a sales report of how many items were sold, the total amount earned on the day and whether any item’s tedium level has decreased.
While you can register only up to 10 specific items on the menu, you can set how much of each item is available. Obviously, you can’t set more than what you have in your inventory. Despite the simple process, you have to keep in mind a few things on what to put on the menu.
The first is the base price of each item since you want to make the most money you can after all. The second is the demand for each item. The more in demand the item is, the more it is expected to sell. This is indicated with the arrow notation and is based on the current season. The last is the tedium. Even if an item is high in demand, if it’s on the menu too often then people will become tired of it and sales will plummet. This is indicated by the various face symbols. Tedium can be reset by simply taking the item off the menu for about a day.
COOKING
A big portion of the game and the Tavern Management process is the cooking itself. You can cook from a recipe or freestyle it by manually selecting each ingredient and hope for the best. There’s 600+ different foods you can make and a large amount of recipes are obtained from shops, talking to NPCs or getting them from books or magazines lying around. Oftentimes, you will also get “recipe hints” based on the items you have. The hints will usually fill in part of a new recipe which may or may not include the cooking tool needed.
Speaking of cooking tools, there’s a number that you need to cook everything. All of them are fortunately obtainable in shops. Each cooking tool comes in three grades, but each subsequent upgrade are not required for any specific dish. They just increases the base price for each item.
As for the specific foods, they all varied in selling price, EXP obtained when eating (only way to obtain EXP), the hunger value, and a battle effect if applicable. The battle effect only lasts for one dungeon visit. Each character also has a hunger gauge that fills up at 100. Once they’re full, they can’t eat anything else until the next day with the exception of using stomach medicine to reduce the gauge.
Eventually, you’ll get accessed to the farm which includes a field, orchard, fish pond and pasture. You can upgrade them, plant seeds, use nets and feed for the animals to get items in return. Better quality items used will give better quality returns. It takes a week for the items to be ready.
EXPLORATION
When you’re not in the tavern making food or setting items on the menu, you’re spending most of your time in the dungeons. The dungeons themselves are fairly simple and straightforward and won’t take very long to reach the exit usually. There are a few alternative paths available and some dungeons have hidden rooms and pathways for treasures so there’s some incentive to explore.
Eventually, you’ll get the fishing rod where you can fish at certain locations. There are also a few paths blocked by large rocks that are inaccessible until the post game.
BATTLE
The battles are fought in a formation comprising of 2 rows and 3 columns. Only 3 characters maxed are usable during battle (and for dungeon exploration). Prior to battle, you can rearrange which characters to put in the front or rear. Their position offers different bonus passives.
While the battles are turn based, there is a dynamic turn order bar that shows what enemy or character’s turn is next. The dynamic part involves the character’s agility stat which determines how fast a character moves on the turn order bar. A character that might initially appear last in the bar may still get their turn first over the others if their agility is very fast. This sometimes turns into situations where a character may go twice over another character which gives more emphasis on the agility stat compared to other turn based games.
Most battles in general are on the easy side so long as you’re at or above the recommended dungeon level. Regular mobs can be defeated with the auto battle function most of the time and most battles usually don’t last longer than a minute or two. This can be a good thing considering the random encounters are (annoyingly) very high in this game. The final few dungeons however are more challenging even when you’re many levels over the recommended level.
As mentioned before, you don’t earn any EXP in battle or even money, just items and EP. EP comes in each of the different elements used to unlock characters’ skills which are surprisingly a lot in the game. They are quite varied from multiple area effects, buffs, debuffs, offensive magic and healing magic. Offensive physical skills are weapon dependent as well. Each character can equip two different weapons type, but can only access the specific weapon skill they have equipped during battle.
Overall, the battles themselves are fairly standard, but solid and still enjoyable without any complex mechanics to them. Boss fights tend to be more challenging and more drawn out as well. I just wished that we could bring more than thee characters into battle. Three just seems limited.
GAMEPLAY PROGRESSION
The goal for each story segment remains pretty much the same throughout. To advance the story, you need to meet 3 conditions. The first is to satisfy Coco’s hunger gauge which gets significantly higher as you progress further. You just simply feed him the food you make and each week, a specific food type will get an extra boost in filling the gauge. In turn, he’ll grant you various useful items, equipment and ingredients.
The second condition is to meet the sales quota. It starts out relatively low that you can reach it within a week, but the latter portion of the game will require multiple days and possibly weeks due to the significantly higher quota.
The third condition is to defeat the boss of the dungeon that’s unlocked during that story segment. Once you meet all of the conditions, the tavern level goes up (max lv10). A higher tavern level will change the interior decor a bit for the better and you’ll get more customers leading to better sales and profits.
Despite the calendar and day system, the game has no time limits and no minimum menu requirement for each day. That means that you can take things as slow as you want in feeding Coco, reaching the quota and exploring dungeons.
I don't know what it is, but I just find the gameplay loop for addicting despite being so simple.
FINAL REMARKS
What the game lacks in a strong story, characters, and graphics, it makes it up pretty well with an addicting gameplay loop and solid (though standard) JRPG battles. It’s a comfy game where you can turn off your brain and engage in repetitive gameplay. The lighthearted slice of life story, emphasis on gathering materials and tavern management mechanics do give it a niche appeal that can be hard to find outside of the Atelier games.
The localization work is not exactly great and there are many sentences that could've been reworded much better. Although it doesn't bother me too much, but it can definitely affect another person's enjoyment of the game.
IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:
-No voiced dialogues
-Turn-based battle combat
-Tavern Management Sim hybrid
INTRODUCTION
Published by Kemco and developed by Rideon, Marenian Tavern Story is the sequel/spinoff to the Adventure Bar Story games that takes place in the same world. Marenian even has a similar gameplay loop that involves managing a Tavern and engaging in standard JRPG exploration and combat.
For fans of the Atelier games, there are some similarities such as the slice of life story, emphasis on gathering ingredients and being able to craft/cook a large variety of items. The main character is also female.
STORY
The game begins with the main character, Patty Maggioni on a stroll with her younger brother Gino. On their way home, Gino accidentally knocks over a statue and releases Coco, a cat like creature from his seal. Coco is the God of Poverty and immediately forms a link with Gino which quickly leads to the family’s misfortune. The Maggioni family are very wealthy and owns a successful 5-Star Tavern. However, in the span of mere minutes, the family loses all of their fortune, gets their home repossessed by the bank along with their 5-Star Tavern.
With their home lost, their servants gone (except their head butler) and their father sudden escape to the unknown, the siblings were left with nothing. Fortunately for them, the mayor of nearby Cookoro Village offers them the use of an abandoned tavern where they could live. From there, the siblings start up a new tavern business hoping to someday repay their debts and get their home back with Patty serving as the cook.
The story doesn’t really see much development past this point. New gathering and dungeon locations will continue to unlock, but offer very little story relevance. There are about 2-3 crisis in the story, but for most of the game, there isn’t much story progression outside of events discussing how the tavern is getting popular. It is overall light in story presentation which have similar vibes to the Atelier games and their nice lighthearted feel to them.
CHARACTERS
Like the story, the characters here don’t have particularly amazing depth. Patty is a likable and kind protagonist with a near obsession with cooking. Her background is fully explained in the beginning and she sees no real character growth. Much of the other party members are similar as well although the latter ones do have backstories with a little more depth in comparison.
I personally enjoyed all of them and found them all likable. Their chemistry were nice and the cutscenes between each other were fun to watch. It is also amusing how the characters treat Coco like a pest to get rid of.
MUSIC
The game’s soundtrack fits the comfy laid back atmosphere and tone of the game although most are quite generic and forgettable. There were a few standout dungeon and town music that I enjoyed though.
GRAPHICS
The character and monster sprites were decent although fairly generic among some of the more well known modern games that employs retro sprites. On the other hand, the 3D backgrounds are fairly simple and don’t mesh that particularly well with the sprites.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay loop is where Marenian Tavern Story shines. The game has a day progression system with four days in a week and four weeks in a season. Each day ends when you open the Tavern for business. Once per day, you are limited to explore only one dungeon OR visit another town. Once you exit the dungeon or town, you cannot go anywhere else other than back to Cookoro. I personally dislike how going to another town counts as an exploration.
A typical gameplay loop for me consists of going to a dungeon and reach the exit. Along the way, I would get all ingredients from the gathering spots (which won’t reset until the following day) and fight all enemies along the way. Once I return to Cookoro, I would cook some food and register them on the menu before opening the tavern for business. This process would repeat for most of the game.
TAVERN MANAGEMENT
The tavern management itself is not a particularly deep mechanic. It’s actually quite basic compared to another game that is all about the management side. Here, you just put food entries onto the menu for the day and when the tavern opens, you get a short generic cutscene with customers before you get a sales report of how many items were sold, the total amount earned on the day and whether any item’s tedium level has decreased.
While you can register only up to 10 specific items on the menu, you can set how much of each item is available. Obviously, you can’t set more than what you have in your inventory. Despite the simple process, you have to keep in mind a few things on what to put on the menu.
The first is the base price of each item since you want to make the most money you can after all. The second is the demand for each item. The more in demand the item is, the more it is expected to sell. This is indicated with the arrow notation and is based on the current season. The last is the tedium. Even if an item is high in demand, if it’s on the menu too often then people will become tired of it and sales will plummet. This is indicated by the various face symbols. Tedium can be reset by simply taking the item off the menu for about a day.
COOKING
A big portion of the game and the Tavern Management process is the cooking itself. You can cook from a recipe or freestyle it by manually selecting each ingredient and hope for the best. There’s 600+ different foods you can make and a large amount of recipes are obtained from shops, talking to NPCs or getting them from books or magazines lying around. Oftentimes, you will also get “recipe hints” based on the items you have. The hints will usually fill in part of a new recipe which may or may not include the cooking tool needed.
Speaking of cooking tools, there’s a number that you need to cook everything. All of them are fortunately obtainable in shops. Each cooking tool comes in three grades, but each subsequent upgrade are not required for any specific dish. They just increases the base price for each item.
As for the specific foods, they all varied in selling price, EXP obtained when eating (only way to obtain EXP), the hunger value, and a battle effect if applicable. The battle effect only lasts for one dungeon visit. Each character also has a hunger gauge that fills up at 100. Once they’re full, they can’t eat anything else until the next day with the exception of using stomach medicine to reduce the gauge.
Eventually, you’ll get accessed to the farm which includes a field, orchard, fish pond and pasture. You can upgrade them, plant seeds, use nets and feed for the animals to get items in return. Better quality items used will give better quality returns. It takes a week for the items to be ready.
EXPLORATION
When you’re not in the tavern making food or setting items on the menu, you’re spending most of your time in the dungeons. The dungeons themselves are fairly simple and straightforward and won’t take very long to reach the exit usually. There are a few alternative paths available and some dungeons have hidden rooms and pathways for treasures so there’s some incentive to explore.
Eventually, you’ll get the fishing rod where you can fish at certain locations. There are also a few paths blocked by large rocks that are inaccessible until the post game.
BATTLE
The battles are fought in a formation comprising of 2 rows and 3 columns. Only 3 characters maxed are usable during battle (and for dungeon exploration). Prior to battle, you can rearrange which characters to put in the front or rear. Their position offers different bonus passives.
While the battles are turn based, there is a dynamic turn order bar that shows what enemy or character’s turn is next. The dynamic part involves the character’s agility stat which determines how fast a character moves on the turn order bar. A character that might initially appear last in the bar may still get their turn first over the others if their agility is very fast. This sometimes turns into situations where a character may go twice over another character which gives more emphasis on the agility stat compared to other turn based games.
Most battles in general are on the easy side so long as you’re at or above the recommended dungeon level. Regular mobs can be defeated with the auto battle function most of the time and most battles usually don’t last longer than a minute or two. This can be a good thing considering the random encounters are (annoyingly) very high in this game. The final few dungeons however are more challenging even when you’re many levels over the recommended level.
As mentioned before, you don’t earn any EXP in battle or even money, just items and EP. EP comes in each of the different elements used to unlock characters’ skills which are surprisingly a lot in the game. They are quite varied from multiple area effects, buffs, debuffs, offensive magic and healing magic. Offensive physical skills are weapon dependent as well. Each character can equip two different weapons type, but can only access the specific weapon skill they have equipped during battle.
Overall, the battles themselves are fairly standard, but solid and still enjoyable without any complex mechanics to them. Boss fights tend to be more challenging and more drawn out as well. I just wished that we could bring more than thee characters into battle. Three just seems limited.
GAMEPLAY PROGRESSION
The goal for each story segment remains pretty much the same throughout. To advance the story, you need to meet 3 conditions. The first is to satisfy Coco’s hunger gauge which gets significantly higher as you progress further. You just simply feed him the food you make and each week, a specific food type will get an extra boost in filling the gauge. In turn, he’ll grant you various useful items, equipment and ingredients.
The second condition is to meet the sales quota. It starts out relatively low that you can reach it within a week, but the latter portion of the game will require multiple days and possibly weeks due to the significantly higher quota.
The third condition is to defeat the boss of the dungeon that’s unlocked during that story segment. Once you meet all of the conditions, the tavern level goes up (max lv10). A higher tavern level will change the interior decor a bit for the better and you’ll get more customers leading to better sales and profits.
Despite the calendar and day system, the game has no time limits and no minimum menu requirement for each day. That means that you can take things as slow as you want in feeding Coco, reaching the quota and exploring dungeons.
I don't know what it is, but I just find the gameplay loop for addicting despite being so simple.
FINAL REMARKS
What the game lacks in a strong story, characters, and graphics, it makes it up pretty well with an addicting gameplay loop and solid (though standard) JRPG battles. It’s a comfy game where you can turn off your brain and engage in repetitive gameplay. The lighthearted slice of life story, emphasis on gathering materials and tavern management mechanics do give it a niche appeal that can be hard to find outside of the Atelier games.
The localization work is not exactly great and there are many sentences that could've been reworded much better. Although it doesn't bother me too much, but it can definitely affect another person's enjoyment of the game.