Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Reccetear's greatest strength might be its greatest weakness, and that is simplicity. The game's reputation proceeds it within the smaller western doujin game communities, the main character and some of the cast being a common exploited image macro back in the early 2010s. For no small part did Carpe Fulger play a hand in this, with an extremely light hearted translation that may or may not have taken its own Working Designs level of localization. But for another big part is an extremely compelling mercantile system that adds some much needed flair to its contemporaries, and strips it down to an arcade form. Reccetear is composed of 3 game modes that intertwine with each other mostly well. The first is the most famous, bartering. Buy low, sell high. By default you try to go for like 20-30% buying and selling, but the game introduces WACKY additions. Customers have archtypes, some don't mind haggling far, others HATE it. Items may gain or lose value due to random events in the world, some comedic, and even adds some flavor of worldbuilding. 2nd mode is store management, picking what to sell, choosing your furniture chooses your clients and what they might be most likely to buy (things at the window being the most likely). The final is COMBAT. Not for your main character who's max, like, 12 and has never picked up a sword, but with some special clients you unlock throughout the game. Throughout play you mix these 3 in a fun loop to beat your deadline of rent. It's extremely nerve-wracking but exciting. You want to make as much money not only to get new stuff in stock, new items for your hero clients, but also to avoid a game over. The combat is on the simpler side like EGS' last game, Chantelise. Except now it's a mystery dungeon affair. Random item loot, random square rooms. Linear pathways in between, very traditional rogue. Combat is on the easier side depending on which hero you use and if you prepped. Some heroes are... less than ideal. If your hero has stubby or slow normals it's a huge pain. I'd compare the gameplay to Zelda but with special mana moves. Thankfully one of the best characters is one you get at the start for doing everything just about okay, and there's some fun in the variety of trying out each character. But after a certain amount of deadlines, you beat the game! Except, story isn't over. And you have a post game dungeon with no deadlines to complete! Good and bad, though. Cuz the game arbitrarily puts certain meetings with random hero encounters in your shop as necessary gaps to get to more dungeons. So if you arranged your store a certain way, you may never get access to a new dungeon which can impede your shop selling. New dungeons means more expensive items to sell, after all. The post game dungeon, also frankly, is an absolute slog. 100 floors of the past dungeons with slightly remixed boss fights. And the random dungeons are incredibly barebones in variety. But it's worth it cuz all character plot threads get resolved, at least worth it for me. And more sweet worldbuilding for me and the dozens of Chantelise fans. In short, it's great somewhat flawed fun. Extremely charming writing, gameplay (barring post-game), graphics, with a unique game system that some games have since gone to attempt but none do it quite like Reccetear.