So, after the relentless brutality and unsettling violence of last week's Hotline Miami review, I decided to play something a little lighter and fluffier. I chose Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale.
What the fuck was I thinking?
What were my expectations going in?
Light. Fluffy. Cute. The Steam page makes it sound like a fairly in-depth Sim game with a lot of detail and packed with humor. Hell, I bought it dirt cheap just because I got a giggle out of a screencap I saw that said "Capitalism, HO!"
So how was it?
Okay allow me to preface this. I hate anime. Fucking loathe it. I hate JRPGs with a fervid passion. This wasn't always the case; these used to be some of my favorite things back when I was just the Cranky Young Gamer. But as I matured I developed a hatred for them both that has only intensified over time. I've been known to say on various internet forums, "there's nothing in this world that anime can't ruin". So admittedly? Take a lot of this review with a grain...nay, a boulder of salt. I'm biased.
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| Me too, Tear. Me too. |
So yeah...Recettear, an indie anime-themed JRPG from Carpe Fulgur, a company that specializes in games like this one. The concept of the game is actually a decent one, though apparently done before. Unlike most RPGs where you play as the hero, this time you play the proprietor of the item shop that the heroes buy their gear from (hence the name of the game). You set your prices, draw in customers, and manage your stock. Do you buy generic goods from the Merchants Guild, or do you hire an adventurer to go out and find special items for you? The latter is the only combat aspect of the game, in which you use items from your shop to equip a hero, then take control of them and explore incredibly bland randomly generated "dungeons", and fight cutesy monsters for experience and item drops.
Driving the game's momentum is a weekly goal system, in which the shrieking, squealing dimwitted Recette must make weekly payments to the dour and sarcastic Tear, the fairy that Recette's father owes a huge debt to. Each week, the payments get bigger and bigger, forcing you to sell bigger and better items. Dungeon diving with an adventurer is really the only way to get these high-ticket items. I was really looking forward to dungeon diving, until I actually played the game. In reality, it is mind-numbingly dull, boring, and slow. The mounting debts aren't even much of a threat; should you miss a payment, Recette wakes up from a bad dream, and the game restarts from Day 1, but you retain all of your money, items, and level. There is almost no punishment for failure, whatsoever.
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| Oh look. Slimes. How original. |
Seriously, what was I thinking? I mean, if you like this genre, I suppose it's probably not a bad game. But it just annoyed the piss out of me from beginning to end. I will say that I would like to give a big thank you to whoever felt they should include the option to mute all of the dialogue, which is only in Japanese. This game, like a lot of anime and Japanese themed games, follows the logic of "high pitched squealing and shrieking = adorable hilarity". I spent this entire game wanting to stab Recette in the face. Hell, even without the audio, her dialogue is so fucking stupid, I just couldn't take it. The game is filled with cardboard anime stock characters that made me roll my eyes at every turn. My only respite was Tear, whose sarcasm and bitterness reflected my own.
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| Stab you. In. The. Face. With a shovel. |
The item shop itself doesn't really have any depth to it whatsoever. Buy low, sell high. Stock whatever you have or find. There's barely any market system built up at all, apart from the occasional news bulletin saying certain classes of items are in demand or in low supply. You don't even set your prices in general, you just name a price when someone brings something to the counter. Better items on display and store layouts will bring in more customers, but that's just as simple as buying the next most expensive thing, not requiring any strategy at all. The haggling mechanic seems a bit...dumb, as there are no indicators as to how strict someone will be on your prices. Equally frustrating is when someone comes in to sell you an item, because you can't just tell them "no thanks". The best you can do is piss them off by offering to buy their item for $1, and have them storm off in a huff. Given that this is the core of the game, I was really expecting some kind of creativity or depth, but instead the game gave me what basically amounts to an unnecessarily padded minigame.
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| That's really about it. |
Graphics and sound are average to cheap, but never flat-out bad. The visuals on the game are generically cute, but do their job. Monsters are cutesy, NPCs look like every single anime/JRPG background character you've ever seen. Even key characters are pretty uninspired. The music is mediocre to the point of being unnoticeable, but thankfully not obnoxious. It is very repetitive, though. Overall, the entire game feels like it was made in an older version of RPG Maker, with stock art and prepackaged midi music. I couldn't help thinking the whole time, "this would make a halfway decent Facebook game".
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| "HueyaiYAIYAI!" That's comedy, man. |
I don't know what I was thinking, honestly. It seemed cute and fun and harmless. And that's about what it was, only not in a good way. I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped I would...I enjoyed it as much as I knew I would. Thank goodness my roommate loaned me Far Cry 3, or this would have been a really crap week for gaming. But then again, I fully admit that I am not this game's target audience. I am the polar opposite of their target audience, really, so take this into consideration. But even if I loved anime and JRPGs, it wouldn't change the fact that this is a very shallow, simplistic game that doesn't have a lot to offer anyone beyond the most casual of gamers.
Honestly, I will probably never play this game again.
Play time: 5 hours
Finished: No
Recommended: No
Available For: PC
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