No, under its humour, the cut-throat mercantile gameplay and the unusual but welcome element of dungeon adventuring is a story that is surprisingly touching. It follows the story of Recette Lemongrass, a young girl whose father has disappeared. She is paid an unexpected visit by a fairy named Tear, who tells her that her father had a huge debt before he disappeared and that as the next of kin, she must now work to pay it off. How does a young girl make an enormous amount of money? By running a store, of course!
Players who have worked in the retail industry will find the elements of Recettear to be very familiar. Almost every aspect of working in such an environment you can think of is covered, save for crazy customers complaining about crazy things. The basics are, of course, selling and buying to and from customers. Each ‘type’ of customer, (or are they all the same person?!) although there aren’t too many of them, will buy up to a particular markup. For example, the little girl can only afford to buy items with a markup of up to 112% or so, whereas the young man will buy up to 130%. Just like in real life, offering customers good deals will eventually get them to like you more and they will gradually ask for more expensive items as well as accept higher prices. Annoyingly however, there isn’t any way to gauge how a customer feels about you, so most of the time you will be working to remember the price point they are comfortable with and the kinds of products they are most willing to throw money down on.
Whoa, whoa, whoa...
But why else would you offer customers good prices, other than gaining their loyalty? Recettear throws in a role-playing game element in the form of an experience bar, which upon filling will raise your merchant level. While each sale will net you some experience points, the only way to really rack them up is to consistently sell at good prices, which each subsequent successful sale acting as a multiplier. In addition to that, the game gives you a hefty bonus if you manage to sell at a markup close to or on their ideal price. The higher your merchant level, the more features of the game are opened up to you, such as taking orders from customers or being able to expand your shop to accommodate for more display shelves. In terms of the retail basics however, there aren’t too many to learn and some may find that the game will quickly become very repetitive.
There are other neat things you have to deal with in your retail adventures that are out of your control, such as fashion trends and food shortages. In these cases, the prices of such objects go up, meaning that it’s definitely the right time to break them out if you have them in your inventory. Likewise, certain conditions make the prices of objects decrease, which is a good time for you to buy but a lousy time to sell them to your customers. It’s things like these that give the impression that the world of Recettear is a living, breathing, dynamic one – just like in real life. This also applies to your customers; although their spending habits are usually routine, they can occasionally be rather unpredictable in terms of what they are willing to spend or receive for their items. Naturally, this leads to a lot of screaming and shouting, especially when you see that a customer won’t want to spend the same amount of money on an item they bought just a few days ago, instead expecting the price to be much lower.
Don't let this little girl fool you - she's probably the one who will make you swear uncontrollably.
As for obtaining products, the game gives you several options. The first, mentioned previously, is when customers offer to sell you various items of theirs. The second way is to visit the two other retailers you have access to: the Merchant’s Guild and the Marketplace. These stores have fixed prices which are less than the base selling price, which most of the time makes purchasing from them a good idea but selling to them a bad one. They are a good way of finding items that might be a bit hard to come across, such as books. The third and most involved way is to go dungeon crawling.
Of course, dungeons are full of nasty creatures and all sorts of dangers that poor Recette can’t handle on her own. So she hires adventurers, which you take control of, to go through the dungeons and collect loot for her. There are several different adventurers to choose from, each with their own playstyles and skills. Your store inventory comes in handy when dealing with them as well; you can lend adventurers some of your products in order to boost their statistics before heading out into the field. Keep note though, that each item you equip on your adventurers fills up their inventory space, which in turn means that you will be able to hold less items that you find. If you die however, you will only be able to take one piece of treasure back with you (much to your angered cries). Still want more treasure after a successful run? Recettear does allow you to return to previously cleared dungeons, but the layout is randomised each time.
A giant rat with a crowbar? Sign me up for that boss battle.
The problem with dungeons is that they do not unlock automatically. Often there will be a certain number of things you have to do, such as talking to the right person, in order to get the dungeon to show up on your map. This is especially annoying, and even harmful to your store operations if you sit back and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for news of a dungeon appearing. Less irritating (but a trial in time management) is the fact that visiting dungeons take up a large chunk of your day. Each day is divided up into four portions and dungeons take up two. That being said, the other two fractions of your day can still be used to make an adequate number of sales, especially if you return with some great loot.
Musically, Recettear does the trick nicely, although the tunes do get a little tiresome after a while, especially in the dungeons. The voice acting is comprised of sound clips that are played at various intervals. While decent, it’s not hard to see why some people will be muting the voices very quickly; all the Japanese voice acting from the original has been preserved and Recette’s squeaky voice blaring from the speakers every two seconds can get grating at times. The graphics are colourful, with the backgrounds looking remarkable, but the character sprites do look a little ragged around the edges at times, especially if you are playing on a high-end monitor.
Recettear is perhaps one of the most unusual examples of a simulation game yet; with its engaging storyline, large ensemble of characters and action-RPG sequences, this is a game that really stands out from the crowd. Highly recommended for any PC gamer looking for something beyond MMOs and FPS games.
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