Trading Legend

I'm playing a game because I like the art. No, really. And it isn't an otome game either. Who even am I? No, seriously. It's a slightly AFK (but not really), um, commerce game? Set in Ancient China? 

Wait, actually, the official line is that it's a Business Sim. Okay, we'll go with that. I'm honestly not sure how or when I became aware of it or what made me try it. Maybe the Ancient China thing?

There's a lot going on in it and I'm not going to go into all of it. The story (if you can call it that) is that you're a young Mr. or Miss and have to go to the city to make your fortune because of the ill finances of your family. I can't actually remember now -- is your dad a gambler? Maybe. 

Anyway, once you get to the BIG CITY, an Uncle helps you out and you slowly start to build your empire, making your city better one shop or market at a time. You open an infirmary. You get married. A LOT. You have heirs. A LOT. They all contribute to your fortune. You go on trade missions. You collect retainers and beauties. You build up your estate. 

There is a bit of a fighting component to it as your retainers have a "Trade War" function, but as you don't get to pick your opponents (in fact, it can often be your guild members), it's just sort-of a PvP thing. 

Anyway, I really like the art. Sometimes it is charming. Sometimes it is funny. Sometimes it is even sweet. 

There are at least 3 events going on at any one time. It can be a lot, especially in the beginning. And there are Cross Server events as well, when you're competing oftentimes with more established servers. So even though there's a definite AFK aspect to it (funds keep accruing and you can just log in periodically to grab them), there's also reasons to pop in throughout the day.

There's also a fair bit of humour and...wisdom(?) in the game. Take these very random "conversations" you can eavesdrop on.

When you first get levelled up enough to join a guild, you kinda just join a random one. Then I moved to another one after asking if there were any with openings (there's a World chat function). And it was okay. Then the guild leader had to drop the game for whatever reason and promoted me to the leader. Which was unexpected. So I was growing it, not really knowing what I was doing, and being weird in the process. I dunno why, it kind of lends itself to that. Anyway, long story short, another guild just above us asked if we were interested in merging, so a bunch of us jumped ship and did that. So now we're the number 2 guild on the server. 

I normally avoid like the plague any kind of chat function in a game. But now I'm playing this with people from Italy and Poland and the Netherlands and all over. It's fun. It might also be because I downloaded it when we were all down with COVID and not leaving the house. I'm not even normally a big "collecting" things game person. This is all out of my wheelhouse. So I'm not really sure why I'm enjoying it. I've also been spending some money on it (it's my treat to myself). Will this last? Not sure. I've only been playing it for about two months. We'll see.