I'm a sad man. I'm late-40s and I still like cute things. I also love RPGs, so you can see why I looked at Recettear and liked the look of it.

The game wasn't quite what I thought it was though.... but in a good way. I was pleasantly surprised.

You'd probably be forgiven for thinking as I did - this is a typical JRPG with the theme being centred somehow around a shop. Well, yes it is... and it isn't. The game essentially has two parts to it. The RPG part takes the form of a fairly typical top-down dungeon crawler a la Chocobo's Dungeon, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and a host of other similar ones. That's about as standard as it gets though.

Recettear does things rather differently - you are a young girl who has inherited her father's item shop which serves the local townsfolk with equipment for their day-to-day use and more importantly, stuff to go a-dungeon-crawling with. You also have a guardian of sorts (who also turns out to be a debt collector too) who's a fairy. Well, this is a Japanese game - 'nuff said. The relevance of this is that Recette (you) have also inherted some burden of debt too, who naturally you owe to your ward. So, the crux of the game is to run the shop, and earn enough each day to enable you to pay off your monthly debt payment.

I know, that might sound a little boring, but it isn't. It's actually where the game really shines. Your day is divided up into a maximum of 4 sections, which you can "spend" by either visiting town for certain things, visit the adventurer's guild (more on that later), or open the shop. Your shop has certain shelf spaces laid out, and arranging the stock so your best stuff is visible from the window is an essential trick. Put the boring, common and cheap items in the window and you'll attract less passers-by. Put the really expensive stuff in the window and you'll also attract less passers-by. It's a balancing act.

Once customers come in, they'll flit around looking, and approach you with items they want to buy from the shelves. As with any real-world store, the trick is to maximize profit, while retaining custom. So, sell higher than you bought it, but low enough so they don't get annoyed and never return - another balancing act. Some customers will ask for certain special orders in advance, which you almost always never have the stock at the time to fulfil, so you make a gamble on whether you can acquire the stock they're asking for - accept and fail, and they'll get annoyed, but refuse and they'll get annoyed too. You can't please everyone...

So where does the stock come from? This is where the adventurer's guild and the dungeon crawling comes in.

Instead of opening the store, you can toddle off to the adventurer's guild where all the adventurers hang out. You can recruit them, for a fee to go and dungeon crawl with you. There's a great element of risk/reward here, as at the end of each level, you can choose to duck out with the loot, or proceed onwards with the chance of more and better loot, but with the added risk of costly failure. As Recette, doesn't fight (well, she's only a girl), you take the role of the adventurer here. Her role is to tag along and store your part of the loot.

So, you fight, you level up your adventurers, you gain better loot to sell for better prices, you get money to pay off your increasing debt, and so on.

There's also some added little nuances such as it being wise to look after the adventurers you are hiring by selling them stuff cheap when they visit your store, as they'll use that stuff when crawling the not-so-murky depths. As the game progresses, you'll need to get a bit inventive in how you manage your stock and customers, but I won't elaborate on that as that would be spoiling things!

It's not an easy game to describe, and it probably sounds a bit dry on the face of it, but if you like the straight up old-school action-RPG dungeon crawler, I wouldn't hesitate to grab this - it does that part of it very well, but the light startegy side of shop management and how it dovetails so very, very nicely is what makes this game utterly unique. I can't recommend it highly enough.

So I have no hesitation in saying this is easily worth £15 on my value-for-money scale.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is, without exaggeration, my favorite game of all time. The art and characters are absolutely adorable, the protagonist is even more so, and the gameplay is incredibly addictive. You not only get to spend plenty of time squeezing every last possible cent out of your customers, you get enormous dungeons to go adventuring through and plenty of amazing spoils to bring back to the surface, craft into amazing items, and sell right back to the adventurer who helped you acquire them. And once you pay off your loan, you unlock Endless Mode and get to finish exploring those dungeons and becoming a billionaire. I have 225 hours of this game under my belt, and I STILL haven't finished finding every item in the game. The plot(that is, the plot that isn't related to your loan - yes, there's more!) is definitely fun, although you won't be able to see the whole thing during your first story mode, but since Endless Mode allows you to pick up right where you left off, it's not a problem.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that Recettear is an amazing game, I love it, and you probably will too. Base price for hours of entertainment? It's a bargain. Capitalism, ho!

Oh god I'm such a scumbag I just sold a candy to a little girl for several hundred dollars.

My good friend Louie found an interesting taiyaki and sold it to me for 500 pix. At the end of the day he was hungry and bought the same taiyaki for 2000 pix.

I think I understand how life works now.

Was short 500 pix to pay back a debt I owed.

Now I'm living in a box.

I thought we were partners Tear.

CAPITALISM, HO!

A game with enough charm and simplicity to be appealing to kids, but its higher levels are a challenge even to adults.

The game is broken up into two parts: One is a store-management game, where you have to learn the tastes and the size of the wallets of your customers, so as to exploit them as much as capitalistically possible. The other is a real-time roguelike dungeon crawler you go through for loot and glory.

The dungeons are ostensibly in there for the loot you can then turn around and sell, and they work in that regard, but they serve as the real point of the game once you've actually completed the story, when you're trying to equip adventurers to be able to survive deep explorations against the most challenging dungeons.

Colorful, fun, and with a degree of challenge for all but the most hardcore of players, it's an easy "recommend" for most players who enjoy having a game that keeps a lot of variety in their play.

Capitalism, ho!~

My my. What a fantastic journey it has been, exploiting every poor soul that has dared to enter the hellish realm of lust and greed, also known as "Recettear". You, "Recette", are set to manage the finest establishment in the depths of the town slums, and together with your obligatory assistant-tsundere fairy, "Tear", the two of you seek to put the common folk in as much debt as YOU currently are.

Does the idle life of multitasking an item shop not sound appealing to you? Fear not, for it is the "adventurers" that roams the Adventurer's Guild, that you will be sending to a certain doom, with the simple aim of personal profit. These adventurers are the lowest of the low. Forced into a life of servitude at the snap of their employer's fingers, they also have to buy their own equipment for what money they may not (or at least, soon will not) possess.

But, where would an adventurer purchase their gear? Why, at your shop of course! You see, like any good patron, a shop tends to have regulars, these being a select handful of adventurers you are introduced to throughout the story. So not only are you the hand that feeds them, but you also are their liege and go-to person when poverty hits. Ironically, this works the same way around, as your business would be somewhat weakened without their patronage. Be good to your regulars (non-independed individuals), and they will be good in return. A minor occurence of Stockholm-syndrome may be present, as they are bound to your will, yet seem to have a somewhat carefree mind of the things they choose to do (such as purchasing lower-quality adventuring gear, replacing their already suffiecient pieces).

Running a pawn shop (this is a very accurate term), you (the player, "Recette") will come to meet the variety of generic NPCs willing to buy whatever you may have on display or they ask for.
These townsfolk are: Old man, Man, Girl, Woman; which all have their own unique threshold as for how high/low you can haggle with them.
Lower the price? Get out of my shop, plebian scum.

All in all, I rate this Mercantilism / Capitalism - Exceeds expectations

- Seldanas, a satisfied customer

Daylight robbery: The game

Buy this game if you have no soul and can smile while you clear out someones wallet.

You can buy hats. You can sell hats.
10/10

I'm reposting some of my old reviews because I adopted an easier to read format (and because for some reason I can't edit my old reviews)

We all played the Armored Knight, the Raging Barbarian, the Wise Wizard or the cunning Rogue, going into a glorious quest for honor, wealth or fame. But have you ever wondered what's the life of the regular citizen of the fantasy world, specially the all important Item shops who sell you armor, weapons and potions? Well here is Recettear, a game who will answer just that.

Recettear its a retail simulation game with an RPG twist to it. You'll have to maintain your shop, restock your supplies and go on quests along side adventurers and receive items during the adventure. This is, for me, a pretty fresh new take on the genre.

+ Lots of Items to sell, both generic shop items and special custom made items by you
+ Well implemented crafting system
+ Customizable and upgradable store which directly affects how many people visit and what kind of people visits. (People who are rich and pay more, or people who will haggle)
+ A lot of interesting characters with varying personalities, traits and abilities.
+ Good time management system where you are constantly under-pressure to either open your store or go raid a dungeon.
+ A surprisingly advanced economy involving supply and demand.
+ Easy enough learning curve.
+ High replayability. Different modes are unlocked after the initial story campaign as well as a new game plus.

- Campaign (Story Mode) is short, although New Game+ and other game modes are unlocked later on, it should not be an excuse to totally limit the Story Mode, specially in an RPGish game.
- A bit too simple combat mechanic
- Art Style is not for everyone. This game is clearly made in the Japanese Anime art style which means some people love it while others hate it.
- Character sprites are low resolutions
- No Widescreen Support
- Limited enemy and npc designs: Some of them were clearly just reused and palette swapped
- Restrictive map: There are different areas of the town you can visit but activity in those places are limited and only event triggered. Meaning, visiting a place (ex. Pub) without an event will just be a waste of time.

FUN GAME. Highly recommended to JRPG fans who is looking for a fresh new take on the genre, or those who are genuinely curious what an Item Shop is like.

Although I feel like, given enough time or funding, the developers of this game could have expanded the world and given more complexity on the mechanics that this game is based on. Still, as it is, the game is good and well worth its price.

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http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6861651-Miyumi%27s-Review-Corner/

Recettear is essentially two games rolled into one, and neither is particularly deep, though the store management aspect is still pretty fleshed out. What it does, it does well (minus a few gripes) but somehow manages to both drag itself out and rush you to the "end" of the game. The problem with the end-game is that, while it has plenty to offer, it arbitrarily bars you from it with unnecessarily padded goals.

So the shop sim is the meat of the game. There's no point detailing the mechanics, so I'll just point out the failings and oversights I didn't care for.

Patrons have a finite amount of money when they enter the store. This value is influenced by how much they "like" you, or what "patron level" they are. The maximum amount of money they have when entering your store is a very important number and it is also completely invisible to the player. So when a patron says "I don't have that much money!" there's no option to say "Well how much do you have?"

Buying items: some patrons will sell YOU things. You have no option to politely decline; you either make a reasonable offer for something you may or may not want, or you make a terrible offer and piss them off. Patrons also have their own dialog style, and occasionally it is unclear whether you're buying an item from them or selling an item to them.

The goal is to do a capitalism until you pay off all your debts. This happens rather rapidly and they kind of rush you through this section of the game so that your time limit is over and you can go at your own pace. This is particularly good for the dungeon-crawling portion of the game, as entering a dungeon will consume most of an entire day and leaves little opportunity for vending.

The dungeon crawling plays very smoothly and each of the playable characters has enough uniqueness to their playstyle to give them all a wholly different feel. There's a considerable number of dungeon and environments. And they're all the same randomly-generated box rooms and hallways given fresh paint at regular intervals. After a short while, it gets stale, and as much as I enjoyed the gameplay, I did not feel compelled to complete even the Obsidian Tower. They just don't keep it fresh or interesting, and that kind of killed the game for me. There's lots of end game content and no motivation or reason to experience it.

All said, I'd still recommend the game if you can nab it for a few bucks because the first 5 to 10 hours are a pretty fun ride.

This is my favourite game on the whole of steam. buy it. you wont be disappointed. the graphics are very cute, and the storyline is good, and i love the fact that theres a shop and a dungeony bit and ... there are just so many good things i could say. SO MUCH FUN!

i just wish it were longer!!! (this isnt a negative, the game has plenty of hours of gameplay, i just never wanted it to end)

Speaking of games I think are good, here's a game I totally forgot to write a review for.

In this RPG, you are not the adventurer killing the horrendous monstrosities in dungeons.
You are the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shopkeeper from your average RPG that buys stupid items regardless of how useful they are or how many you have. Capitalism, Ho! (Seriously you can't review this game without putting that phrase in it)

I kinda feel silly phrasing it that way, but it's so much more fun than it sounds and with that said, unless you have an uncontrollable hate for everything that looks even remotely like it came out of japan you should just buy this game next time it's on sale.

This game is about a girl who's father left to follow his passionate dream of becoming a Hero. To top it off he left his daughter with an amazing debt.
10/10 Parenting

Best loli Jew simulator on the market

NOTE: This is a shortened review without screenshots.For my full review, please visit RealGamerReviews

This is the worst game I’ve ever been addicted to.
No, I don’t mean it’s the worst I’ve ever been addicted to a game. I mean this game has the lowest quality-to-addiction rating of any game I’ve ever played.


You play as Recette Lemongrass, a young girl doing her own thing when suddenly, a fairy named Tear (get it? Recettear) pops up and tells you that not only is your dad missing, but he’s also left a humongous debt that you have to pay off. The fairy then comes up with the bright idea of turning your house into a shop, so that you can earn money to pay off the debt in instalments. Of course, the shock of your missing papa and the huge debt does absolutely nothing to dampen your spirits and enthusiasm. You open your shop without any semblance of despair and carry on earning money for the rest of the game.

Throughout your journey, you’ll meet some very odd and annoying characters that will either help or ridicule you, none of which are particularly memorable or likeable. Thankfully, the game gives you the option to skip all the dialogue (or at least scroll through it really fast).


There are two main gameplay modes available in Recettear – the terrible plain item shop simulator and the repetitive randomly-generated dungeon crawler. Let’s examine these two portions separately.

Firstly, the shop. This is really mundane. You display a bunch of items in your shop and throughout the day, assuming you choose to have your shop open (which takes up ¼ of the time you have for each day), people will come in and buy it. A bartering system exists that allows you to adjust the price depending on how much profit or loss you’re willing to take. If your price is too high however, the spoilt morons in town will get unhappy and leave you without a sale. Successfully selling stuff to the idiots in town will reward you with experience that goes towards your “merchant level”, with bonuses experience awarded if you’re able to chain a few successful sales in a row. Increasing your level opens up additional features that you can play around with. For example, whilst at the very beginning customers can only purchase the items on your (limited) shelves, higher merchant levels will allow customers to request an item from your inventory, sell you items or even order multiple items that they want to pick up on another day. Other bonuses include larger shop sizes, wall/floor/counters/layout customisations and even the option to put a vending machine down, to make all the hassle of selling items just that little bit easier on you.

There are several factors that influence which kinds of customers and how many customers enter your shop. The first way is through your showcase display, also known as the “table-next-to-the-window-that-people-can-see-from-outside”. You want people to look at the junk on your table and think “Damn, I wanna go in there!” So your first instinct is to put all your expensive, high-in-demand stuff on that table, but by doing so you risk alienating the poor little girl that can’t afford anything. So in the end I have no god damn clue how you’re meant to attract the most people. The second way to influence everything is by changing the walls, floor, counters and so on in your shop, which is collectively referred to as the “store atmosphere”. I’m not 100% sure of how it works, but I imagine light and gaudy things attract little girls that can’t afford anything and call you a big meanie poo for marking up the price even slightly, and the more plain and dark ones stores some other weird population. Who knows?

So where do you get the items that you sell? Well there’s two ways to get your hands on some goodies. The first one is to buy them in town, either from the Market or the Merchant’s Guild. It works just like real life – buy low, sell high. Every so often you’ll hear a news bulletin saying that the cost of this is temporarily decreased and the price of this other thing is increased. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to approach the situation.

The other main method of obtaining items (which incidentally also makes up the remainder of the game) involves dungeon-crawling. Rather than having your useless little girl go out and magically have the ability to fight, the game allows you to visit the “Adventurer’s guild”, in which you pick from a number of heroes-for-hire who will go do the dungeon-crawling for you. Once you’ve made your choice, you take control of whichever hero you pick and embark on what has to be the most monotonous and tedious dungeon-crawling game in existence. If repeatedly killing incredibly inspired and original enemies such as slimes, bats and bunny rabbits appeals to you in any way then, boy, you’re in for a treat. Each level is set out so that there’s a number of chests, enemies and a goal to get to, which takes you to the next level. Every 5 levels, you’ll generally encounter a boss battle.

Did I say it was monotonous and tedious? Because it is. You’ll encounter the same enemies over and over again (with slight variations from time to time). None of the boss fights are particularly interesting or challenging and although you do eventually unlock a handful of different adventurers to choose from, all of them are limited to a maximum of three abilities, none of which are particularly impressive.

Whilst torturing yourself in the dungeons does reward some goodies for you to sell, the main purpose of dungeon-crawling is actually to collect ingredients, which can be used to craft (or “fuse”) better items or equipment.
Every week or so, you’ll be forced to pay off a part of your loan. This begins at 10,000 pix (the currency used in the game) and increases exponentially for every week that passes. If at any point you fail to pay up, the game is over and you’ll restart. This would be horrible except for the fact that you restart with all of your items and upgrades. As a result, losing the game just makes it infinitely easier next time.

For those that have paid off their debt and want more for whatever reason, you’re in luck – The game allows you to play on in endless mode, start again in New Game + mode or even a survival mode, where the debt keeps becoming exponentially larger until you get overwhelmed.

All in all, there’s a lot of “game” to be had here, although whether or not you enjoy what you’re playing is another matter altogether.

To be honest, the game looks like an early PS2/Dreamcast-era game. There’s no support for wide-screen or any resolution higher than 1280x960. The aesthetic is certainly cute, but otherwise unremarkable. Also worth noting is the fact that alt-tabbing appeared to glitch the games graphics so that one half or more of the screen is completely whited out when selling items. I can’t say for sure if that happens to anyone else though.

The music is adequate but also unremarkable. I’d liken it to a poor man’s version of the music in Pokemon games.


Despite crapping all over this game in this review, it’s the intangibles that really matter. For whatever reason, despite all its flaws, Recettear was a stupendously addictive game that I just couldn’t put down. It takes a bunch of repetitive, unoriginal and uninteresting ideas and meshes them into a unique game I both love and hate simultaneously. All that said, I do recommend that you give it a try, because if nothing else, it really is a unique title and one that you should experience for yourself.

The only thing i'll ever need to put in this review is about the little girl. the little girl cannot be expressed using mere words of the english language. the closest word to describe what she is? Devil. She is Disgusting. D-i-s-g-u-s-t-i-n-g. I've never seen such a small demon child. Why does she walk into MY shop trying to BUY things without money? lil fkin bich gtfo of my shop. Why is there no GTFO OUT OF MY SHOP BUTTON? the combos are RUINED by this GUT WRENCHING VERMIN THAT THIS GAME CALLS A LITTLE GIRL! "Miss Recette, can i buy a bracelet?" bracelets are 200% right now. I could sell my spiked bracelet for 3000 pix but i only charge her 1000. the base price of it is 1600 pix. SHE CANT AFFORD IT
I AM LOSING MONEY WITH THIS OFFER, AND SHE CANT AFFORD
GET OUT OF MY SHOP
I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN.
why do you choose to come in day after day, trying to haggle my prices down to 10%? IF YOU LIVE IN POVERTY, DONT COME IN. ALL OF MY ITEMS ARE WAY OUT OF YOUR PRICE RANGE YOU LIL ♥♥♥♥, I HAVE A DEBT TO PAY OFF I DONT HAVE TIME OR MONEY TO GIVE YOU MY STUFF FOR FREE.
oh, you're here on an errand? go tell your ♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ parents to stop sending you
dont come back
you're not welcome.

btw nice game

edit: i managed to sell something to the little gorl for 21000k pix #miracle

This game may have a select fan base but it does provide for those that love even one of the aspects of the game.

The main point of this game is running an item shop, you can either buy, craft, or hunt for items to stock it with, but one is all that is needed.

if you like dungon cralls you will like the hunting aspect of the game, takes a few game days to start and you have keep diving or interact with others in shop keeping to get more characters to enter the dungons with.

if you like being an auntipanure (dont hate for the spelling) you will love the shop keeping aspect of the game.

if you like vitural novels you will love the simplistic and intreaging story. even the characters could be pulled from a weekly manga.

basicly this game is a few of a good things, but nothing extreame or hardcore enough to grab those that have to have the best of set genres.

Live the life of a character that is the staple in classic jrpgs: the item shop owner. You find stuff, you buy stuff and you sell that stuff so you can have your profit, upgrade your store and repeat that cycle. Sounds tedious, but the different customers' habits and the dungeon crawler part of the game (where you hire and equip heroes to risk their lives for - of course - rare stuff that you can sell) keeps the game fresh and entertaining.

Plus, if you fail, you are responsible for making an orphan kid live in a box.

CAPITALISM HO!