(X) manager games have plagued our market shelves for decades, heck I remember getting addicted into games such as Theme Hospital, Sim City and Theme Park World when I was a kid, and they all had one main purpose…. to have a great enough income to keep whatever it was you were running open. However, this grew old, and therefore, the creative minds of Japanese game companies decided to implement what I call the Atelier system in, in which you collect items to either sell or create new items for quests. However, these was a fully fledged expensive games which were not cheap…. therefore the people at EasyGameStation used the best bits of the game to create Recettear, a game where you collect items from either shops or dungeons, place them in your shops, and sell them for profit. What is the main goal of this game? Interact with explorers, sell overpriced items and achieve total capitalism! The question is….. does this game match or better other similar games by the big companies, or does it fall short of the mark? Well, I can tell you right now that you most probably will not be disappointed, but as for why, you will just have to read on.
If you read the blurb about, you will understand the primary principle of the game, buy/collect, sell, profiteer and that is pretty much all you do during the game. The underlying 
storyline is that you play as Recette, a girl who until recently led a rather posh life, that was until her father decided to run away to play hero and leaving her with a great big debt. Her solution to pay back this debt? Run an item shop out of her own house in an attempt to make money to pay back the ever increasing debt. Her assistant is a fairy named Tear…. and the pronunciation is quite unknown to me as tear could either mean her watching people cry as she takes over their stuff or tear as in ripping a persons life to thin threads. Yes, that is right, she is the one who has been sent to collect the loan repayments however out of the goodness of her heart, has decided to help Recette pay back the loan.
As I have hinted however, she does not have to essentially buy items from the local shops and then sell them at an inflated price, even if the game encourages you to. Instead, you can befriend (This is a non-hentai game for the record) different explorers and then send them into the dungeon to collect items which will aid your quest for the all mighty dollar. Originally you are only provided with one, a swordsman named Louie who is apparently the role model hero, however he is broke and has more common sense then Recette’s father. As you progress, different classes of characters unlock and offers a much more diverse dungeon crawling experience. You unlock these characters through storylines pertaining to the individual characters and item quests which are usually fairly tedious.
The character designs of this game are very cuteish, bordering on loli-ish considering that almost every dungeon crawling and main character looks like a child, however with the loli characters, there are one or two more adult looking adventurers. The main character herself looks far too young to uphold an item shop, but surprise! In true gaming fashion, everyone’s rate of growth is stunted by about 5x. That aside, the clothing designs of all the characters are suitable for the gender, class, species (Yes, I said species – if you would class robot as a species) and besides the beforementioned note, the setting of the game.
Overall design of the town….. bright, cheery, and not a single person visible at such as close angle.
The town design is overall appropriate, however does not offer that “hustle and bustle” I was expecting from the game, a flaw that extends to almost every game that has towns in the first place. You are not free to wander around town disappointingly, however you are allowed to visit each of the locations which range from adventuring hire, event sequence locations to the market and merchants guild where you can buy items to overprice at your store. Your shop is one of two places you are allowed to walk in and consists of a few counters where you can place items on with customisable carpets, floors and wallpapers. It keeps the small shop look but at the same time, is frustratingly small as you progress in the game. The customer designs are essentially the same four or five repeated with the occasional adventurer.
It is rare for me to dislike an opening theme, however this is one opening theme I am glad is easy to miss, since it is just not what I like in music. However, going on from that, the sound effects are good and suited the scenery, monster or character controlling them. The actual music in the game wasn’t anything stunning, however was suitable enough for the game, and if it got annoying, there is always the handy mute button. Voice overs are only in Japanese, which is semi disappointing as I always prefer, whenever applicable, both Japanese and English voice acting in a game… the Japanese so I can feel like I am playing the original game and the english because sometimes you dont want to read text and admire the environment. However, considering this was the first translation project of Carpe Fulgur, it is an expected issue, and a minor one at that. The Japanese voice acting keeps with the graphic design, cute…. and a lot more cute.
and you can now tell why I never did business as a degree….. only 238,095% price increase through….
As said before, the main purpose of this game is to make as much money as possible. By the end of the week, you need to have reached the payback amount which increases weekly, or you will lose your house and be forced to live in a cardboard box for the rest of your days, and that is NOT an end we would want Recette to receive…. right? So you have two options…. purchase the items from the Merchant Guild for minimal profits or alternatively, going into the dungeons with an adventurer and seeking out rare items for the entire profit. Purchasing from shops has two primary benefits, you can buy upfront, and you can buy a sufficient number. However, this gets problematic later on when you need a high profit margin and the shops have limited stock of the good items, which results in you having to buy cheaper items.
Never has killing slimes been so profitable…. of course, ranged characters are a hassle.
The second money making means is dungeon crawling, these are sets of five floors within various dungeons in which you have to travel around, open chests (A considerable number of them booby trapped), kill monsters and progress to the next floor, as you would expect in dungeon crawling. On the fifth floor, there is always a boss which are in my opinion, relatively difficult. The first two I found were easy and had HP bars of 20 something, however the next one I was against a much harder boss, who most of the time took 1-2HP hits, could heal himself for 60HP, oh and had 300HP to start off with. The bosses are easy if you realize their pattern, however you may find that you get killed before finding their weakness. In the event you do get killed, say goodbye to all your rare items as you are only allowed to keep one of them, even if you brought it in there in the first place. Healing items are definitely a necessity.
The final system in the game is the actual shop management system. You use the items you collect in the dungeons and stores to display them on cabinets and sell them to customers, with window items taking the biggest predominance in customer numbers. When you start, you can only sell the items you have, which are usually safe to sell at around 130% the normal cost, however there are also child NPC’s where you may have to sell under store price or NPC’s that will try to trick you into lowering the price. Later on, you are able to buy items off NPC’s, take custom orders and have an NPC try to sell you average items way overpriced. This may sound fine, but you get bonus EXP for each item you sell, therefore, if you break the combo chain by such NPC’s, you lose EXP bonuses. As you gain shop levels, you can do extra things such as move or modify the shop, gain more space or unlock store benefits.
Honestly, if you are into the tycoon or atelier game series, then I doubt you could go past a gem such as this, it has enough to get you through the entire game at least once, potentially many times. This should keep you entertained for several dozen hours. Personally, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it to everyone, it is the perfect mix of dungeon crawling and marketing, just like how Persona 3 matched dungeon crawling and dating simulation genres together very well.
Final Score
Storyline: 7
Characters: 6
Graphics: 8
Music: 7
Gameplay: 9
Replayability: 9
Personal Opinion: 8
Overall Score: 8
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