Great Games You've Probably Never Heard Of -- Recettear

What happens when you cross a solid RPG experience with the fun (and the challenge) of running your own store?

Well... you get this game.

"Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale" is a lighthearted, comical RPG/market simulation game that was developed by EasyGameStation, and published by Carpe Fulgur for the PC. The original release date in Japan was in December of 2007, while we in the Western world didn't see the game until almost three years later -- in September of 2010.


The story of "Recettear" is a simple one: a young girl named Recette Lemongrass is approached by a member of Terme Finance to repay the debt left behind by her father, who's gone off to become an adventurer. The agent they send to collect the payments is Tear, a fairy who is amazingly stern, yet caring.

As can be inferred by the title, Recette's (and Tear's) idea to pay off her father's debt is to open an item shop in Pansee (the town in which the game takes place), which the young girl dubs Recettear -- a creative portmanteau of her and Tear's names.


So, how does Recette collect the items she needs to run said store? The game offers two main ways: You can either buy your stock from the local merchant's guild or market, or head to the adventurer's guild to hire someone, which is where the RPG element of the game comes into play.


While most of the game is spent behind the counter of Recettear, there are times where the brunette merchant and her finance-focused fairy friend must accompany their hired help into dungeons.

Dungeons in this game are all randomly generated, meaning that each trip through one of them will never use the same route twice. Before each trip, you can lend your adventurer equipment from your own stock, and give them healing items that they can use while fighting off the various creatures that will inevitably be roaming around.


Of course, there's more to Recettear than just shop-running and monster-slaying. There's humor of all sorts hidden in the game: from drunken thieves, to down-on-their-luck adventurers, to references of other little known games.

While it may not have super-high-definition graphics or anything of the sort, Recettear is a quality game that doesn't get as much praise as it deserves.

[For those interested in giving the title a shot, the demo is available for free through Steam. And, if you like it enough, the cost for the full game is an admittedly affordable $20.]

Comments

[coolman229]

Interesting. I think I'll check this out.