[h3] Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale ★★★☆☆ [/h3]
I've played plenty of this sweet management game outside Steam, and it gives you as much you give to it.
The game follows the titled Recette, a neglected child trying to pay off her absent father's debt, and Tear, a softhearted loan shark, who decides to help Recette keep her home by assisting in the opening of a shop, both hopping to clear the mountain of debt papa Lemongrass has accumulated; the girls themselves are quite the racket, and like most characters you meet, despite having depressing backgrounds and troubled lives, have goody and fun personalities, specially Recette, this hungry airhead never let's the world get to her, she has this contagious cheerfulness and hopefulness that makes everyone around her better people, this lightheartedness and good humor, in contrast to surprisingly serious story beats and world make for an enjoyable tale.
The gameplay itself is divided in two parts, town and dungeon, in town you can visit a handful of locations to witness some story events, combine items to get new ones, acquire your shop's stock, prepare for customer orders, hear the news to predict, or react to supply and demand, but most importantly, manage your shop, what to sell, what items are going to be the eye candy on the window shelfs, what to stock vending machines with, what decorations to use; all of that contributes to what sort of clientele you attract, each client has different disposable income and interests, thankfully, regardless of chosen decorations and shop stock, each character also has also a improvable reputation level, which decides how much they are willing to spend on items.
In the dungeon, you can play as the adventurers you hire, to explore, fight monsters, and collect items, but most importantly, meet new potential employees and clients, thus unlocking most of the available story content, new characters start with reputation on 0, so you must sell them cheap stuff, before going back to your usual stock, all of that would have been fine, if not for the fact that the dungeons are repetitive, and the rewards are meager at best, I consider it a complete waste of the player's time, thankfully, most of the bosses you fight have actual mechanics instead of stat checks (already better than 3/4 of all RPGs), and the player may take useful items to dungeon with them, reducing some frustrations.
But the dungeons are still a pain point that may decrease a player's patience, and reduces the chances of paying your weekly debt installment, it's much better just to resell town items, it's baffling how much of the game is locked behind it's worst feature, even if the trouble it gives vanishes after the debt is paid, I have some reservations about trying to guess the customers allowances, the overwhelming effectiveness of vending machines, on how the game could have been one week shorter, and how the difficulty vanishes after you have a basic understanding of the mechanics, but games that grasp the town merchant aspect as well as this one are few.
Ultimately, Recettear has fun management gameplay and story, leaving a sweet aftertaste, despite some disagreeable bites, certainly, a dessert Recette herself would approve of.
