Chantelise

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Chantelise is a game made by Easy Game Station. While it is the predecessor of the more famous Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, it was similarly localized by CarpeFulgur following the commercial success of Recettear.

It follows the story of two sisters: the loud-mouthed and obnoxious Chante, and her level-headed but dopey little sister Elise. When the two siblings defied the warnings of their mother and wandered outside during a red moon, Chante was cursed by a witch and transformed into a fairy. Now the two sisters are on a quest to track down the witch responsible, crack her shins open, and make her un-curse Chante.

The gameplay itself is an Action Adventure Hack and Slash similar in style to the Ys games.

Tropes used in Chantelise include:
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Every time you buy an item, the price for subsequent examples of that item doubles. Every time you sell an item, the sell price for that item drops by 3%.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Subverted and probably lampshaded. At one point, Chante needs to go do something without the character you control, Elise (who with Chante is effectively a Magic Knight). Elma (basically a Cute Witch) unexpectedly volunteers to go along with Chante, and on the way out of town brings up that they've never traveled together and need to get used to working with each other. Chante agrees, and right as the player is expecting to start a new tutorial for controlling a magic user, Elma casts a spell which transforms her into a near-perfect copy of Elise! Elma then comments in Elise's voice that by now she should have all of Elise's movements and sword skills down perfectly as well.

Chante (paraphrased): "Okay, so you've been secretly watching us for days in case you wanted to look, sound, and act just like my little sister. Not creepy at all..."

    • Head back into town to freak Chante out even more. Everybody will immediately recognize Elma-as-Elise and address her as Elma (even one person who's apparently never met Elma), and nobody will think that this is the least bit unusual.
  • Badass Adorable: Elma, a vaguely cute fortune teller with the ability to summon giant monsters. And Chante, who will cave in the shins of anyone who even thinks about hurting her sister.
    • Don't forget about Elise, she is the one who does the bulk of the combat between the two sisters.
  • Black Magician Girl: Chante and Elma.
  • Blob Monster: The various faceless slime monsters the player faces throughout the game.
  • Blow You Away: The Tornado spell, which... summons a tornado to damage the target and other enemies around it.
  • Bonus Dungeon: Remember the "Familiar Forest" that unlocks itself very early on in the game? The only thing there is a man selling stuff (the only place you can buy an Air Crystal) and- oh look over there, right beside him! Oh wait, it's sealed. Come back after you've unlock all the secret treasure chests, and a Bonus Dungeon awaits you...
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Like Recettear, the demo ends with the fairy companion warning the player not to pirate the game or she "WILL find you and cave your shins in."
  • Camera Screw: Tons of it.
  • Charged Attack: The elemental crystals throughout the game (except the Air Crystal) give Elise different charged effects, depending on the element of the crystal.
  • The Chessmaster: Fortuna, the previous owner of Aira's item shop.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: After Elise ends up in a coma. Elma takes over and transforms into person in said coma. With a different hair colour!
  • Colour Coded Elements: The four kinds of gems you can collect for Chante to use her magic.
    • Red = Fire.
    • Blue = Water.
    • Green = Air.
    • Yellow = Earth.
  • Colour Coded Wizardry: Averted. Chante is dressed in green but she can do so much more than just wind magic alone.
  • Continuing Is Painful: Averted. A Game Over sends you back to town, everything still intact. The only painful part is having to run through the stages again.
  • Critical Annoyance
  • Critical Hit: Elise has a very small chance to land this on a third hit of her combo.
  • Curtains Match the Window: Chante.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Elma, whose choice of clothing is a purple witch costume. Justifiable as she is the local Fortune Teller and probably wants to have a dark and mystical feel about herself.
  • Death Cry Echo: Die and the last sound will be Chante doing the classic of this.
  • Digital Piracy Is Evil: See Breaking the Fourth Wall above.
  • Easy Amnesia: A side effect of fairy dust. Elma suffers from this on account of being drugged by Aira, but doesn't realise until she retraces her steps with Chante in the Aquan Ruins.
  • Electric Jellyfish: One of the bosses that can shoot a line of electricity out of its Combat Tentacles
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The Air, Earth, Fire and Water monsters take double damage from their opposites, and reduced damage from attacks of the same damage type.
  • Fairy Companion: Chante, obviously.
    • Elma was this to Aira the last time the seal weakened. In fact, this is an effect of the so-called 'curse', which selects a pair of sisters and turns one of them into a fairy.
  • Familiar: Using four of the same coloured gems, Chante can summon these that follow Elise around.
  • Fishing Minigame: And it may be unique in that with no bait or lures available, Elise fishes by casting her older sister. Who gets used to it.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: One of capturable fishes in fishing minigame is called Sperm Whale, whose sprite showcases white liquid ejecting out of it.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: One of the bosses is one. To beat it, you flip it over, and... you know the rest.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: With a fishing pole equiped, Elise throws out Chante like bait. If an enemy is in the way, she does a small amount of damage to them.
  • Guide Dang It: There's a treasure chest hidden in every area in every dungeon. Figuring out how to make it appear is rather difficult.
    • And they go to lengths to rub it in: an early area contains a nice piece of equipment that will save you a few pix in it's hidden chest. By the time the hint system become available, you very probably already have it.
    • You can fish in lava! And there are plenty of fish that can only be caught in lava lakes.
    • There are spells besides just the standard 2-4 gem combinations shown in the menu, by adding in other colors you can change the effect of the spells somewhat. Red gems add power and size or extra attack power during Super Armor, Blue gems add various Standard Status Effects depending on how many were used, Green gems add more projectiles, and Yellow gems cause spells to penetrate enemies. For example, casting Aqua Splash, and adding in all three other colors will give you three massive homing projectiles that will turn right back around and hit the target again as they pass through.
  • Here We Go Again: The post-credits scene, indicating that another pair of sisters have been "cursed" despite Elise and Chante breaking the Vicious Cycle.
    • This is mainly because that new pair of sisters got cursed before the cycle was broken.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Fortuna pulls one before the events of the game as part of her plan to destroy the Vicious Cycle, sparing Elma's life and creating the opportunity for a future swordmaiden to have two fairies.
    • Averted with Aira, who tries to pull this, but is stopped by Elma.
    • Subverted with Chante. It looks like she pulled this off at the end of the game, but it was revealed that she survived.
  • Homing Projectile: The Aqua Splash spell.
  • Jack of All Trades: Elise is effectively this when adventuring in story mode, since you can respec her freely by changing her equipment. In practice mode, she's a little less versatile, since you need to restart the level in order to do so. You can buy or find equipment for basically anything, from giving Elise new skills to boosting her damage or changing the frequency of certain drops.
  • Level Grinding: Averted, sort of. On one hand, there is no level system; as in, you cannot level up no matter how much you kill. Of course, on the other hand, you can grind for money and buy Ferromins to boost your max HP. But then, considering the fact that Ferromins cost tens of thousands (the cheapest starts out at 2000pix, but since Adam Smith hates your guts oh so much, will reach exceed 10000pix after buying your third one) and will reach several hundreds of thousands and possibly even millions... uhh... good luck with it, then.
  • Life Drain: The Darkness Crystal which gives Elise a charge attack that heals HP equal to the damage done but can only affect a single target.
  • Little Girls Kick Shins: Chante loves to use this as a threat. She even mentions it while she sleeps.
  • Mirror Match: "The Silhouette", a boss from one of the main quest's dungeons. Designed as an intense danmaku battle rather than a Puzzle Boss, using nastier patterns and summoning a double of herself as the fight goes on.
  • Nintendo Hard: The early game especially, where Elise is incredibly fragile, you don't have many equipment slots or choices for items to put in them, and you depend almost entirely on random food drops to recover hit points.
  • Playing with Fire: Chante can cast these using the red gems. The silhouette boss can cast a trail of fire aimed at Elise when it picks up a red gem.
  • Shock and Awe: Some spells cast from the green gems. The silhouette boss does this too.
    • Also, the Electrojelly boss.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Super Drowning Skills: Deep water is one of several hazards -- the others being void and lava -- which instantly kill most enemies. If Elise falls into them, she gets a free trip back to the area entrance, sans some hit points.
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: Demonstrated by Chante, Elise and Elma in the Aquan Ruins, parts of which are entirely underwater.
  • Supreme Chef: Aira is able to make slime livers, ghost ectoplasm, killer bee larvae and other horrible ingredients taste good. Aira isn't afraid to share what she's used. While she uses saner ingredients, Elise is implied to pretty damned good as well.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Employed against a rather irritating boss who decided to park himself some distance across a void and flick bullets at Elise.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: Happens twice with the final boss. When switching to the second form, your Summon Magic changes so that instead of summoning it changes the boss's element and renders it vulnerable for a few seconds. Once you push him into the third form, the fight becomes a nearly unlosable over the shoulder Bullet Hell.
  • Vicious Cycle: The witch's curse, which afflicts one pair of sisters every few years.
  • Water Is Blue
  • Wham! Episode: Eventually, Elise is viciously attacked and put into a coma that no one is sure she'll recover from, forcing Elma to take up the mantle.
  • Wind Is Green
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: All human characters have black, brown or blonde hair while Chante has green hair and Elma has pink hair. Though this can be justified as they are both fairies.
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