Review, ho!

Let's start off by noting that if you don't have Steam, then you are falling behind in your gaming and should just denounce any right you have to playing games in the future. Steam is every PC gamers dream come true: easy access to wonderful games, regular sales with hit titles going at 66% off, and a great way to set up multiplayer games with others who own Steam. Plus it all runs on the cloud, so as long as you have access to a computer, you can sign in to Steam and download any game you've previously purchased. Truly a wonderful mechanic.

That being said, we're going to look at a game I've been playing thanks to Steam. Today I'd like to introduce you to a little game called Recettear. Actually everything about this game is little - little characters, little plot, little music. But don't let that sound like a bad thing. In this case little really is going a long way to make something fun and enjoyable.

Recettear follows the story of a young girl suddenly swamped with her missing father's debt. The agent from the finance company suggests that our heroine Recette start up an item shop, and by making weekly payments widdle down the massive debt she has inherited. The size of that debt is the only big thing in this game, really.

With surprising enthusiasm for a girl who can't be more than 12 (if even, it's always hard to tell with Japanese games)and who will likely never see her father again (and doesn't have a mother anywhere in sight), you open up an item shop. Capitalism is the name of the game, as young Recette never fails to mention. Your job is to display a showcase of items you collect, either by purchasing them from the merchant's guild or collecting from dungeons, and then sell them off to the moronic saps who think that a watermelon costs some 3 000 pix. An apple is about a tenth of that price. I don't want to do the conversion rate to figure out how that translates in comparison to the American dollar, but I think we can all agree that inflation is rampant in this town of hers.

As you progress, the amount you have to pay for your debt increases rapidly. You've got about five in game weeks to pay it all off, with the final installment reaching 500 000 pix. If that sounds like a lot, even with the amount of currency you can pull in for fruit, then you're starting to realize that this game is nearly impossible on the first run through. A game that you can't beat, sure does sound fun, huh?

Well that's why you're given the wonderful opportunity to restart from the beginning, with all your items and levels. That way you'll carry over some of the more expensive items and have a better start. And how does the game loop itself like this? Turns out the first run through was all a dream.

Ya, I hate that cliche. Passionately.

To be fair, there's a nice foreshadowing to it. When you start off the game, Recette is asked why she is smiling one morning, and states that she thinks she saw something wonderful in a dream. It's at that point where a failed game restarts. Technically speaking, you can fail any number of times, so the game never really lets you lose. It just makes you grind from the beginning and onward.

Oh, grinding. That is what this game really comes down to. You grind items by sending adventurers you hire to dungeons. You grind money by selling items you get. You grind items by spending money on buying them from the market and the merchant's guild. You grind your teeth when people refuse to buy things for the perfectly reasonable price of 130% of the normal value.

Despite that, Recettear manages to add in so much cutsieness and humour that it's hard to be mad at it. Your starting adventurer is poor and seedy, the thief is a drunk, the lancer has no sense of direction. Everybody is just so goofy and adorable you want to pluck their sprites out of the game and stuff them. Recettear plush dolls - collect the whole set!

I'd hate to spoil all the jokes this game has to offer, and I don't think I could even cover half of them if I tried. Even the plot relevant conversations are more humourous than informative. This isn't terribly surprising, though, considering the main plot consists of nothing more than "collect money, pay off debt, don't end up in a cardboard box in the street".

Actually, plot rears its ugly head only after you've completed the main storyline. There is so much post game material to Recettear that if you enjoyed it, you'll find yourself continuing to play along just to see what else it has to offer. And though the game mechanics never get too innovative, things stay just challenging enough to keep you on your toes.

There are, however, some useless things the game has to offer. You can customize the look of your shop, and in a sort of feng shui balance the interiors feel between Light, Dark, Plain, and Gaudy. If it gets too close to any extreme, you'll get fewer customers, but you'll generally see more of a certain type of customer. In general this just felt like a tedious thing to keep track of, and the wall and floor designs were not terribly appealing anyway.

You can attempt to collect all the items in the game, as it does keep a library for you. But sometimes trying to 100% a game is just a waste of time, and Recettear exemplifies that. Monsters have a relatively low chance of dropping certain types of ingredients that you can use to make your own items. And when you need sometimes 30 or one type of ingredient to make an item? Bring out the grindstone!

Musically, Recettear offers some fairly appealing tracks. Breezy tunes that offer a nice accompaniment to whatever you are doing, be it strolling through town or selling your ill gotten wares to the local children (remember: it's totally safe to sell sharp bladed weapons to little girls!). Only one track really stands out as truly an impressive composition, and since this is a blog, there's no reason not to link you to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poNlmB1Kt4o From as much as I got through, there was only two locations that this track played, and both times it was in the post game material. It definitely fits the sense of rising tension that comes up in those two spots.

Recettear is a great game if you want something light, different, and funny. You can play it for about 10 hours and complete the main game, but you'll probably find yourself pressing onwards anyway to see what else it has in store. Considering how cheap it is, and how often Steam has the game on sale it seems, the game is worth grabbing. You'd almost think they were trying to offer you a deal at some sort of item shop, but that would be ridiculous.