Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Gameplay: Good! I enjoyed it. Colorful, just challenging enough to stay engaging, pretty good characters overall. That said... being saddled with a child-labor forcing snotty-ass fairy, even after you have paid off the heinous debt of your father, at threat of being homeless is INFURIATING. Never EVER forget that this scumlord was going to make Recette live in a BOX. I hate her, I loathe her, but the game's narrative doesn't allow me any way of getting rid of her. She's everything wrong with capitalism and the world. A pure narcissist who whips almost $100K US (assuming the prices are originally in yen) out of a ten year old in a MONTH, part of which involves life-threatening situations. The entire town, who love Recette, should have been sending Tear death threats to get the hell out once the debt was paid. She's not cute. I don't care if this is a hot take- it's the right one. Tear is AN AWFUL CHARACTER and we shouldn't just glean over it like it's fine because the character we're playing is naive. She's like, ten years old. I'm not. I don't want to see Tear ever again. I might play new game plus one day, if there's ever an update where Tear ACTUALLY f*cks off at the end! Until then, no recommendation, and if you do buy this? Wait for it to be like $5. I wouldn't recommend against the studio at all, though. I would def buy more of their games, but this particular one commits this terrible sin of like, pretending everything is fine with this character. I played a lot of this game while 'elevated' and even I can't overlook how terrible Tear is. For the sake of the player's meta enjoyment, she needs to be gone at the end of the game. That's it. That's all there is to it. This is just a singular, intensely bad writing choice and it was mostly good. Just... wow, did they ever screw that pooch with this one singular decision.