Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

A comfort game I always come back to!

It's super charming and cute and fun, but consider waiting for its HD release if you're thinking of picking it up.

CAPITALISM HO IS COMING IN HD YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Literally the best game on Steam.

补票，好玩，神作，bgm好听，什么都好

I was hooked till the end. Capitalism Ho!

Recettear's a pretty enjoyable game with a charming aesthetic, but it also carries with it some expected Japanese doujin jank. The main gameplay consists of stocking your shop through merchants, dungeon drops, or customers, and selling it at (hopefully) an insane markup. This can actually get very intense as you're trying to keep the prices from being too crazy so customers are happy (and thus will pay more later), make sales quickly (this raises your merchant level which allows you to buy goods for cheaper, among other things), and actually make a decent profit as you have a large debt which you must make payments on regularly. It's very satisfying when a long-time customer who (foolishly) places their trust in you decides to make a vague order for "3 metal items" only for you to hit them with 3 of the most expensive vending machines you can buy while they're in high-demand, leading to them paying out an absurd 200%+ markup for something they probably didn't even want. However, this does wear off a bit in story mode, as once you have your debt paid off there's really not much of a reason to mess with the shop outside of giving characters equipment after you have a decent chunk of change built up. Although if you're playing the story mode after paying off your debt, it's most likely to complete the dungeons. So, how are the dungeons? Well, it's a bit mixed for me, really. The dungeons consist of randomly generated rooms that go on for a fixed number floors. In these, the game turns into an action-rpg where you play as one of the adventurers that visits your shop. Any item you find in here is pure profit since you didn't have to buy it from the merchant or the townsfolk who ruin your chain because they think your store is a GameStop and it is your sworn duty to take in their unwanted trash no matter how worthless it is. The adventurers all feel surprisingly distinct and cater to quite a few different playstyles, so there should be at least one you like. Regardless of your choice however, you'll inevitably start to question it as the later dungeons are so infuriatingly long you will begin to feel your sanity be drained by their walls. This coupled with enemy variety wearing thin as you're dealing with 20+ room floors in a 100 floor dungeon and you will find yourself getting sick of the whole thing rather quickly, which is aggravating to say the least since most of the actual story content is locked behind this hell-hole. Oh, and if you want to upgrade your weapons and armor to make the whole thing less miserable, you're going to have to farm materials from the dungeon to craft them, because of course you do. That's not to even say that the combat is bad. I DO like it, I think, but the sheer amount that the game expects you to do, and in one sitting no less, is flat-out ridiculous. Despite having owned this game for years, I still have yet to clear the last dungeon at the time of writing this review simply because it just gets that incredibly mind-numbing in the late-game. It's a shame because I really enjoyed the characters and dialog. The world of Recettear draws from popular anime that were out at the time (Azumanga Daioh especially), and it also has a lot of heart that you can really only expect from a smaller work like this. I think anyone who's a big fan of 2000's anime would at least get a kick out of the game's writing. I definitely believe there's quite a bit more to enjoy here than not, but if you want to see the whole story then you'll have to put up with a dungeon system that could burn you out towards the end. Even still, I'd easily recommend this to anyone who has even a mild interest in it since it's a lot of fun for the vast majority of the time, and there just aren't many games where you play as a JRPG merchant, at least to my knowledge.