An RPG with a slightly different beat
Recettear is the story of Recet Lemongrass, who open a shop to pay off her dad's loan and avoid living in a cardboard box. This innocent girl must earn ever increasing amounts of money to make payments to the faerie who guides her, Tear.
As an RPG, Recet gains levels as she buys and sells. There is some small bit of haggling with customers, but the real meat is in managing inventory and responding to local demands. Recet buys and sell from a variety of markets and invidiuals, and can also hire adventurers to loot dungeons for her.
The dungeon looting is pretty straightforward, but is also fun. There's an exit every 5 levels, and your inventory fills quickly. Because the dungeons are randomly generatred and there are several characters to choose from, the dungeons don't get too repetitive. Searching for items in them can be a minor headache, though, when you have a particular customer request that you are supposed to fill.
The game controls well too, when using a gamepad. Recettear supports playing with the keyboard or with a gamepad, although I strongly recommend using a gamepad if you have one. The game doesn't use the mouse in any way, but does allow for customization of the controls through a separate program.
There's at least 10-12 hours worth of gameplay here in the primary story mode alone. After completing the game, both New Game+ and Survival modes open up. There's also an item encyclopedia that players may want to fill out after finishing the game, and when watching the credits I realized I hadn't befriended or even met all the adventurers in my first play through. It seems that there is a healthy amount of replay value here.
The localization is also pretty good, and there's a fair dash of humor in the dialogue. I would strongly recommend this game to fans of RPGs, as Recettear is both familiar enough to hit on the high points of the genre but different enough to feel like a new experience. This game also has a demo, which was what sold me on it (I never would have bought it from the screenshots). I think Recettear has been worth its cost to me, and I recommend people check it out.
