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Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜

Developer: EasyGameStation
December 2007
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale [RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜] - cover art
Glitchwave rating
3.27 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
175 Ratings / 2 Reviews
#2,007 All-time
#71 for 2007
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Title
Here are the things I liked about Recettear (and no this won't be one of those pros/cons reviews):

1. The running. It feels so good. The speed is just right and the animation is jerky in that Japanese way that gives your movements real impact. I spent a fair amount of time in this game running and I enjoyed it.

2. The young male customer. He's the nicest.

3. Decorating your store looked like it would be fun, but I stopped playing before that.


Here's what led me to questioning the 97% steam rating:

1. There is a lot of dialogue in this game and, while it's certainly well written for a translation, not much of it is very interesting. The characters aren't anything to care about and it's mostly a way of over-packaging tutorial instructions. Sometimes it was kind of funny, I guess. A tool-tip would have been nice, instead.

This said, I did have the sound turned off so I might've missed some quality voice acting, but I don't think it would have changed anything. I just ended up skimming all of the text after a couple of days.

2. The dungeons at first seemed like the most appealing part of the game, but the combat isn't fun and none of the mechanics ended up working. I didn't know what I was doing for most of it and gave up on them after a couple tries, which it turns out is the best way to go if you want to win (according to some guy).

3. If you just initiate at 130% and drop to 120% you will close every transaction. I mean, it's possible that the better strategy would be to go higher or something, but since I was haggling every customer at 130 I can't imagine you could go much higher. I didn't win (I gave up at Day 12), so I don't know if this will always work but it seems like it.

At first I thought there was something to "reading" the customers and determining how high they'll go, but I'm pretty sure they just have set responses that are either "too high" or "yeah good". And even if you could read them, who could read that woman? Her remarks were so vague I couldn't tell whether I'd closed the deal or she was walking away. That old guy could be a dick, too.

4. I have no idea how to play this game. I died at the first bill and for the next couple days I couldn't even tell I had died. (Yeah, it does say Game Over but right after that the characters are back to talking to each other like nothing ever happened. And your items are still there!) My second time around I looked up a guide (thanks again to some guy, noted above) which said the best way to play if you were just going for income was to ignore the dungeon and sell low, but even with that I barely scraped $8000 for the first bill. I think there are choices I should be making that I just can't see. Like, should I be buying only a few expensive items, or lots of cheap ones? Should I leave gaps in the windowsill to avoid putting cheap items there? I didn't even know you could scroll through items in the shops my first time. I think my brain just isn't wired for this game. I haven't haggled or stood behind a shop counter once in my life. Yeah, that would explain it.

Or maybe it's supposed to be hard - but you wouldn't pick it, would you? A "relaxing" indie game with cute images and not much in the way of strategy, so far as I can see. But hey, you might enjoy it more than I did. You'll probably do better than I did. Why listen to me, there's definitely lots of happy customers in the Steam reviews. I'm just some shitty old man with a moustache and a cane or something lower the damn price girl
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Hoskee 2016-04-27T14:09:49Z
2016-04-27T14:09:49Z
2.5
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Title
Recettear is not the game I expected it to be, so if you had different expectations than me you may find it more appealing. What initially attracted me to this title was its shared concept with Chapter 3 of Dragon Quest IV. For those unaware, this chapter is spent raising money to purchase a store rather than rescuing anyone, and the hero of it (Torneko) is a fat merchant instead of a traditional RPG fighter. Chapter 3 was always one of my favorite parts of that game, not because it broke formula, but because the twist served the larger game’s narrative. Everything advances like the rest of the game has; the player just has an abnormal short-term goal. You also develop better methods of gaining money as the chapter progresses, and because it is a brief section, Torneko’s tale comes off as a lighthearted peek from behind the other side of the shop counter, adding a sense of depth to the often questionable economics of RPGs.

Dragon Quest IV was released in the early 1990s, and its system’s limitations prevented Yuji Hori from taking the concept too far. Flashing forward to 2010, the developers of Recettear had the opportunity to make an interesting RPG/shop-keeping simulation hybrid, but the end result just feels like an offline MMORPG. The game promises that you’ll learn how to approach various types of customers, your haggling will have a mathematical method to it that you must master, and the side dungeon content will help to expand your shop’s repertoire. In theory, the idea of the shop-keeping taking the wheel and dungeons being off to the side is a good one, but I don’t care for its implementation. The dungeon section feels like a pointless grind, and yet it’s the more exciting part of the game, simply because managing the shop is not very thrilling.

I suppose one could argue that’s realistic, but effectively the game promises depth in the store management and delivers on very little. Characters come in to buy things, but don’t show much consistency in their habits beyond ‘little girls only buy cheap things’–the promise of adjusting to customers’ spending habits and learning to sell to them is very much overstated, at least if my experience with the game says anything. The game tries to mix off the uniformity of items by having certain types ‘trend’ in popularity over time, but really this has the opposite effect of highlighting how otherwise similar items are. There is no point I can discern in building a shop geared toward a certain thing, and since (as far as I was able to tell) the available dungeons get maxed out early on, there is also no point stocking up on a variety of arms. A game like Recettear could be something fantastic, but Recettear does not try to be. It’s content being a shallow numbers game with a mediocre RPG attached and ‘moe’ graphics to attract an audience without offering them something of any real quality. The game makes for an entertaining time waster, but with no aspirations of being anything better.
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jsh357 2016-04-09T11:49:03Z
2016-04-09T11:49:03Z
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Catalog

Gibbous RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-03-06T07:05:38Z
2024-03-06T07:05:38Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
cassio_ RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-02-29T23:13:50Z
2024-02-29T23:13:50Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
eightbaka RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-02-25T20:52:48Z
2024-02-25T20:52:48Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ShadooPheonix RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-02-11T23:18:47Z
2024-02-11T23:18:47Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
5.555598416172731e+23 RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-02-04T22:33:51Z
2024-02-04T22:33:51Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
aural Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale 2024-02-01T20:30:37Z
Windows
2024-02-01T20:30:37Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
o______________________O RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-01-28T00:59:02Z
2024-01-28T00:59:02Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
NibiruShiranui RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-01-12T19:07:14Z
2024-01-12T19:07:14Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
etsietsi RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-01-10T10:05:47Z
2024-01-10T10:05:47Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Yamari RECETTEAR〜アイテム屋さんのはじめ方〜 2024-01-04T13:14:05Z
2024-01-04T13:14:05Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
mickilennial Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale 2024-01-03T13:24:57Z
Windows
2024-01-03T13:24:57Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Fet Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale 2023-12-12T20:14:54Z
Windows
2023-12-12T20:14:54Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Player modes
Single-player
Media
1x CD-ROM
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  • i_am_shamed 2024-02-12 13:54:42.646095+00
    capitalism, ho!
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  • cassio_ 2024-02-28 06:36:56.890239+00
    this totally feel like a videogame Satou and Yamazaki from NHK Ni Youkoso would have made after they released a couple more VN in their catalogue
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