Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

classic old school. love it

Goodnight sweet SpaceDrake.

Capitalism, ho!

I hate having to give this game a negative review, but for how much charm Recettear has, both in its gameplay and anything that strictly isn't, after having to restart it twice i really don't think i care enough to go for another run. I'm fully aware that i'm missing out on a lot of entertaining story/gameplay content i've yet to see, but the way the progression is structured, sending you back at day 1 every time you fail to pay your debt, nearly invalidates most of the good things i'd otherwise have to say about the game. I like how the shop mechanics evolve and expand over time depending on how much grinding you do rather instead of how much progress you're getting from the story, at least. It's a much bigger motivator to optimize every action you make than the money requirements needed to advance the story, especially since the game expects you to go through it multiple times, offering nothing to make each playthrough any different from the last bar all the resources you accumulate, that serve at trivializing a larger and larger part of your runs the more times you have to repeat them, with no way to skip past the days quickly enough, that i know of. Another annoying issue is how the companions that join you have to be recruited each time, and each time you have to fulfill specific requirements that might take a while to even be available. I can imagine for a lot of people the repetitive and semi-impermanent structure of Recettear is one of its biggest draws, way i see it though, there's more than enough content in this game to ditch the whole groundhog day pizazz and maybe add a bit more depth to the stuff you have to repeat even in a linear story that takes a bit more effort, like the dungeons or the crafting. When's that remaster coming?

extremely charming, definitely some grind but worth it for me

a very enjoyable game with charming characters, great music and a colourful cast i really love this game haha, i only found it recently by pure chance but its so charming i would absolutely recommend this game to anyone willing to be corrupted by capitalism

we need more games like this.