As soon as I heard the concept for this game, I knew I had to give it a try. Combining economics, visual novel elements, and a zelda-esque dungeon combat system, Recettear is a breath of fresh air, and will hopefully open the floodgates for Japanese indie localizations.
You play as Recette, a girl who inherits a huge debt from her missing father. Thus, she's given two choices: Sell her house and get kicked into the streets, or turn their house into an item selling shop. She obviously picks the latter, and is accompanied by the fairy Tear who coaches her on how to manage a store. Every week a payment must be made to the collection agency, or it's game over.
The economic aspect is basically summed up like this: Buy low, sell high. However, this is when things get interesting: Deciding how much to haggle the price. A lot of factors play into this: How rare the item is, how expensive the item is, who the customer is, and how badly they need the item. If a player keeps setting their price too high, customers will quickly get insulted and leave, while also harming the store's reputation. As you make money, you also gain experience points, which in turn give you levels. Each level opens up a new aspect of trading, such as people selling their goods to you, being able to recommend specific items to customers, and crafting your own goods. Needless to say, the new additions keep things feeling fresh.
Players can buy items to stock their store at various points around the city, or they can take the risky skill based route: Hiring an adventurer to go into dungeons, and receive goods that way. This is when the 2D zelda-esque combat comes in, letting the player control their adventurer. Combat is pretty simplistic with only two basic attack buttons, but it still manages to be fun with it's varying enemies and high risk stakes. If an adventurer clears a dungeon, Recette recieves all the loot. However, if you fail, all your goods you plundered are lost, and you lose a day that you could have used maintaining the store.
As for the writing, I didn't expect much, but I was very impressed with the wit and humor, especially between Recette and Tear. They both are incredibly likable, and contrast each other surprisingly well. Witty commentary is packed everywhere, with plenty of satire that most anime fans will appreciate. I can't remember a time where a visual-novel actually made me laugh, let alone smile. Now that, my friends, is a job well done.
I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a fun and (surprisingly) addicting anime-styled indie game. The "company" who localized this game are two dudes who couldn't find a place in the game industry after college, so they decided to make their own niche. Needless to say, please buy this game when it comes out on the 10th. Not only will you be buying a great game, but you'll also be protecting the indie industry from greed-ridden cancer like Kotick. And who knows, if the game does well, maybe these guys will bring us even better indie games from Japan.
Capitalism, Ho!
If you want to try the demo or preorder Recettear, you can check out the steam page here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/70400/
