Prince Rhys 83 wrote:I'm still quite stuck on Katawa Shoujo. I recall you saying you couldn't play any other game for at least two months, I want to at least match that.
Well, it wasn't for lack of trying, believe me.
I had finished all five routes in the few days following the game's released, but playing others left me with a kinda bleh feeling all around, so I couldn't really play others for more than a few minutes before quitting.
Also, do try other routes- but if you really can't get enough Hanako, do at least try Lilly's route if you decide to do another one.
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Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale.
Developer: Easy Game Station
Release date: December 2007 (JP) September 2010 (NA/EU)
Platform: PC
Genre: Item Shop Simulator?
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Yeah, that's not helpful, but that's largely because Recettear is a bit of its own thing. There aren't many RPGs out there that put your character on the other side of the item shop's counter- that is to say, the owner, manager, and salesperson dispensing items and equipment to various and sundry persons in a fantasy setting and taking them for all that they're worth. It's not a crowded genre, and English releases of such games tend to be even more rare. So, when the localization group Carpe Fulghur released Recettear onto Steam a couple of years ago, it made a bit of a splash, and for good reasons- it's not just enough to have an example of the genre available, it's just plain better for it to be a good one.
So, our story begins with our young heroine, Recette Lemongrass, living alone at her home in the town of Pensee. She soon receives a visitor, Tear, a loan-collection fairy working for Terme finance, who has come to inform Recette that her father, as he was preparing to runoff to become a great hero, took out a massive loan. Given that he was last seen falling into a volcano while fighting a dragon (yes, this is very deliberately a Dragon Quest 3 reference), Recette's house is now forfeit, as it was put up as collateral for the loan. But, Tear is not an unsympathetic fairy, so does offer to help Recette set up a way out- that is, convert the first floor of her house into an item shop. However, if Recette fails to meet her loan payments, there's nothing that can keep her from being booted out of the house.
So, the gameplay is centered mainly around time management. Each day has four time blocks- morning, midday, afternoon, and night. Most actions you take use up one of these slots, such as opening the store for business, or doing things in town. Doing things in town only uses up one time block no matter how much you do, so planning ahead is rewarded, as time not spent with the store open is time that you're not making money. Also, in town you can occasionally get little events of Recette and Tear interacting with townsfolk- while this is generally for a bit of fluff and comedy, this can occasionally lead to certain rewards, such as acquiring new adventurers. At the end of each week you need to pay up the part of the debt that has been assigned, or it's a cardboard box for Recette. So, opening up your store is the key to victory. Opening your store lets in customers, who will attempt to buy what you have or sell you just abut anything under the sun. You get to set the price both ways, but the real objective is to set the price so that you build trust, which cause customers to come back with more money so that you can really gouge them later for the big bucks. Unfortunately, the game gives you some bad advice as to how to go about it- in Tear's instructions, it makes it looks like haggling is a major part of sales, but it's very important to sell or receive on the first try- not only does it build trust, chaining sales also increases Recette's merchant level far more quickly, allowing her to bring in more expensive inventory and upgrade the shop to hold more stuff. Thankfully, it's easy to find a price that pretty much everyone will buy at, while netting you a good profit, as your prices already start up marked from what you buy them for. Eventually, prices for certain items will rise or fall, and contending with these market forces is a major part of determining victory or defeat. Selling and buying things is surprisingly addictive, especially since customers have a few stock phrases for whatever their buying or selling, meaning there are times when a dude will try to pawn his heirloom beef stew on you.
The action that will take up about half your day, however, is dungeon exploring. Not that Recette is adventuring material, but there's a whole guild of poor saps who'll do it for you. Dungeoneering plays well enough, and shouldn't be too much of a stretch for anyone who has played the classic Legend of Zelda games. It's a risky endeavor- while you can sell everything you find there at pretty much 100% profit, losing means you can only take one thing back with you, and you've effectively wasted a good chunk of time. the secondary benefit is that one can come across items that you can't actually buy from the wholesalers, and you also encounter ingredients that you can use to craft new stock or equipment, such as the time I ended up crafting a +15 Apple Pie. Adventurers do require advanced equipment above what they have as you move on, so either you will have o bring it along, or sell it to them when they visit your store. You gain new adventurers by doing things in down, or fully-clearing dungeons, and they do have a fairly wide range of abilities between them. The only unfortunate aspect is that dungeoneering isn't all that viable as a late-game strategy due to the time constraints involved.
Anyway, while the main story of the game is built around the month you spend paying off the debt, once that's cleared, there is a ton of post-game content, such as two new dungeons, but the major reward is ht there are no longer time constraints, which means you can pick up on all of the little story events you missed, clear all of the dungeons, gain all of the adventurers, and really just play around with the game as a whole. There is also a new game+, where you retain all of your stock, merchant levels, and adventurer levels, and dungeon levels cleared, so you can go back and earn a couple of things you could only get in the main story but without as much pressure. Losing the game also effectively puts you into this mode, as defaulting on the payment resets you back to the first regular day, with all of the above intact- which is good since it's a bit of a feat to finish the game on the very first loop.
The art design pretty much immediately telegraphs that this is a game that's on the lighter side of things- brighter colors abound, so this is definitely not a 'real is brown' sort of game. This is also not the sort of fantasy RPG that lends itself to sweeping, orchestral scores, so those are quite absent- while there are a couple of places with more serious tracks, the game's composers were not out of their depth. While the soundtrack is not amazingly memorable, it does the more important thing, and doesn't grate. I've encountered some people who have been put off by the art direction, somehow finding it
too cutesy, but again variety, is the spice of gaming- and it is a purely subjective point,at any rate. Hence, why I provide screenshots.
Recettear, apart from a couple of stumbling blocks in how it presents the game to the player, is still a game that is more fun than any game about time and and money management plus market forces really has any right to be. The game is available on Steam, but if you don't want to shell out $20 sight unseen, there is a feature-complete demo available that allows you to transfer your finished demo save over to the full version, so there's no excuse for you not to give it a try.
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Screenshots: