First Impressions: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

I sat down at my laptop on a day where the internet seemed to be dead. Nothing better to do I opened Steam and started browsing around the store's demo area. I read the information on this game and was intrigued so I downloaded it and played it. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is a JRPG with a twist. Instead of being the hero like in most JRPGs, you play the oft visited owner of the titular item shop. It's your job to run the shop. This doesn't just consist of you standing behind a counter and buying and selling items to anyone who might drop in either.

Running your shop consists of several core activities: buying items to sell in the shop, organizing items in a way that's appealing to your customers, and haggling with your customers. Haggling with your customers is actually quite addictive. They bring the item they want to buy to the counter and ask you how much it costs. Every item has a base price you can sell it for but you won't gain any profit if you leave it at that. You're going to want to bump the percentage cost up a little bit at a time. Customers will actually get mad and leave your store if you're not careful with your prices though. Organizing items is important to the quality of sales as well. You place items you want to spotlight closer to the front window so that customers can see them more easily. Not sure how your shop looks to others? Ask Tear. She can give you a helpful breakdown on if your shop is: Light, Dark, Gaudy or Plain.

On top of these base activities you can do dungeon runs as adventurers you hire out of either the pub, church or local Adventurer's guild. These dungeon runs facilitate even more item gathering so that you can expand your store. Combat is simple enough and follows conventional action rpg fair. One button for your main attack, another for your SP attack. After amassing a number of items you can take them to the Merchant's Guild and fuse them together for better, higher valued items to sell in your shop.

Now, you may be wondering why you're running this quaint little item shop. Recette Lemongrass has been approached by the fairy debt collector, Tear, and told that her father (who has run off on some wild adventure) has left her in debt. She's forced by Tear into running the shop. That's seriously all there is to the story. If you were expecting some epic tale you should look elsewhere. It isn't here.

I'm very torn on the art direction in this game. On the one hand there are these awesome sprites and backgrounds. On the other there are these really brightly drawn, cutesy, anime characters during the actual dialog segments. I hate them. I almost wish they'd have just used the sprites for the whole thing. That's just me though. If you look at the screenshots and decide you're not bothered by the art direction more power to you. Just not my cup of tea.

Despite not caring for the art, I've enjoyed what I've played of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale thus-far and might even buy it in the near future. There's something satisfying about getting 50% higher than the normal price of an item. Adventurers are suckers.