Developer: Easygamestation
Publisher: Carpe Fulgurites LLC
Rrp: £12.99
Available on Steam
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to run the item shop in a rpg? If the answers yes then Recettear: an item shops tale may be the game for you.
In Recettear you take on the role of Recette, a young girl who’s father went off adventuring and never returned. The money for all the gear he would require had to come from somewhere, this is where Tear comes in. Tear is a fairy, and a debt collector for the Terme finance company.
The aim of the game is to pay off your fathers debts in installments that will increase every week for a month.
This is a game about buying low and selling high, working out the habits of your customers and, yes some dungeon diving.
You start off slowly with just the basics of buying, selling and adventuring. As time progress more features are revealed to you, such as news flashes that let you know if certain items are in more or less demand and being able to take orders in advance.
There are also features within the game that unlock as you grow in merchant level, which are increased by buying and selling items to your customers.
Of course, the game is a bit more complex than that, there is a story line, several of them actually, to follow. Each revolving around a adventurer that you can hire once you reach a certain point in their story.
The combat within the dungeon crawling sections is basic, with there being only two types of attack, those being the normal attack and special move. As your adventurer grows in power more special moves will appear but you can only use one at a time.
On every fifth level these is a boss fight, usually these fights are more like puzzles which must solve to defeat them. For example destroying one of two types of mushroom so the boss will eat it and faint, thus making it vulnerable to attack.
Each of the adventures you can hire has different weapon types they use. There’s a fighter who uses a sword, a archer, a mage, a thief, a monk and a priestess. They all have varying powers and you need to use different tactics to use them effectively.
Now what would happen if say, you were just shy of the amount of money you needed to pay off that weeks debts. Well sadly it’s game over… Sort of. What actually happens is you enter your second ‘loop’ which essentially is new game + except you didn’t complete the game. All you items, experience, money, levels and shop state pass over and you get to start the game anew from day one week one.
There’s no shame in that happening, sometimes the game just doesn’t go your way. Maybe you bought a heap of items cheap and the game ended before you can make a return. Or on the last few days it seemed that the only thing your customers wanted to do was sell things to you (this happened to me). Either way it doesn’t leave any form of mark against you.
Once you do complete the game it opens up a few new options for playing again. There’s New Game +, Survival Mode or you could just continue with your last game where you left off but this time without the debt.
As you would expect New Game + starts the game again! but this time with all your gear and experience.
In Survival Mode you pay back increasing amounts of debt, week after week without end, until eventually you fail.
This game is by no means perfect, there are a few of things I can gripe about;
* The fact that there isn’t a full screen mode, you can only maximise the window.
* the translation is for the most part fine! but there are some moments where whole conversations make no sense.
* That saving in a dungeon and loading that save later WON’T BRING YOU BACK TO THAT DUNGEON. It drops you in town at the beginning of the day.
Game-pads are supported and I found it best to okay with one, I used a 360 game-pad but apparently other ones will work just fine. I found trying to use the keys to be awkward, which is unusual for me.
The humor is great and there are many moments where the game breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the player or about the game itself.
The thing about Recettear is that I think you have to be a fan of anime to get the most out of it. And If you’re looking for a free roaming adventure like any of The Elder Scrolls series then your all out of luck. The scope of this game is very narrow, but that is it’s greatest strength. You’re not trying to save the world, stop a plague or anything of that ilk. Your simply trying to pay off a debt. It’s actually quite refreshing.
