Recettear - An Item Shop's Tale

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Meant to point this out a while back as I haven't seen anyone else mention it, but since they've just announced a release date of September 10th (ish)....

Recettear - An Item Shop's Tale. It's basically an RPG/management game in which you have to own and operate your own "generic fantasy item shoppe" in order to pay off your father's debts, with a bit of rogue-style dungeon crawling and "princess maker" style time management to boot. The (fairly big) demo is well worth a download.

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/10/july/recettear3.jpg)

Kind of reminds me a bit of one of the Dragon Quest games (I forget which one) where in one of the chapters you control a merchant rather than a typical JRPG character.

Couple of RPS write-ups of it here:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07/19/capitalism-ho-recettear-an-item-shops-tale/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07/22/talking-shop-carpe-fulgur-on-recettear/

and the demo is here:

http://www.carpefulgur.com/recettear/demo.htm

hopefully it does well, the studio behind it seems keen on taking a lot of these obscure little japanese games and giving them a proper localisation job for the west...

RPS wrote:

What are those other projects you’re hoping to work on?

Well, it’s still a little early to think about that – we need to get Recettear out the door after all – but if we let our heads drift into the clouds, we’d like to do EGS’ upcoming project Territoire. It’s really interesting and is rather like the illicit lovechild of Civilization and Final Fantasy Tactics. We’d also like to work on our own release of Chantelise, the game EGS made prior to Recettear. It’s a bit more of a traditional, Zelda-64-esque dungeon experience, but it’s still very well made and the music is incredible. DHM Interactive did their own version for Europe, but we’d like to take a stab at a dedicated English version.

Tagged so I can get this demo when I get off work. This sounds interesting enough to give it a whirl.

The Dragon Quest game was IV - you play Torneko the merchant for a chapter. Also he had his own spinoff Mystery Dungeon game.

Wow, that demo is great! Definite purchase as soon as it ships. Argh, September 10 is almost a month away, and even that's not absolutely solid.

Recently played through this and had a lot of fun!

I wish it was coming out on Steam, but the carpefulgur forums seem to indicate that they've not gotten any response from their attempts to solicit an invitation.

Anyone find any secrets or hidden things in the demo? It seems you can easily make the money to pay the first week's payment. In particular, Dungeon delving seems to be pretty lucrative (as long as you make it out). Failing a dungeon run is costly, though more from the time lost than the materials!

I had a blast with this! We talk about it quite a bit on the show next week. I know at least a few folks at Valve listen, so here's hoping.

Certis wrote:

I had a blast with this! We talk about it quite a bit on the show next week. I know at least a few folks at Valve listen, so here's hoping.

Yes, Certis! Use your Gaming Media powers for good! Thanks for the heads up about the podcast content, I'll definitely be checking it out.

This looks interesting. I should download it.

Oh man, this game looks awesome, and the demo plays absolutely beautifully! This would make for a great laptop game for me, except that the "adventure mode" piece is rendered in 3d (the rest of the game is 2d sprites), and runs like crap on my laptop. Seriously, a rock-steady 60fps for the entire demo right up until heading into the dungeon; then, 4fps. Makes me sad.

Excellent demo for what looks like a great game. Looking forward to the 10th.

FYI- I was able to improve performance in "adventure mode" up to 25+ fps on my laptop (which has only Intel on-board video) by running custom.exe and checking some of the "dungeon-only" checkboxes. For me, I was able to get away with leaving the first one ("Display trees...") unchecked, but the rest are checked.

It's not perfect, but it's very tolerable.

Edit: Just watch out when moving from a big room to a dead-end corridor; fps can increase quickly to 60 and result in enemies moving MUCH "faster" than before.

Recettear will be distributed on Steam and is currently 10% off ($18, normally $20) for pre-order. Cool.

Awesome...preordering right the heck now.

This game is strangely fun. I failed to make the first house payment though, I'm not sure if that's a good sign.

Hypatian wrote:

Recettear will be distributed on Steam and is currently 10% off ($18, normally $20) for pre-order. Cool.

Ah, ya beat me to it!

That's great news. I was always getting it, but now I can get it on Steam!

Tagging this so I can download it when I get home.

Hockosi wrote:

This game is strangely fun. I failed to make the first house payment though, I'm not sure if that's a good sign.

I had more trouble than I liked in the dungeon crawl section when I tried the demo, and had the same problem. A day with no sales and no items gathered is NOT good for the income.

I've since figured out how to remap the key layout (custom.exe), which should help, I hope.

Yayifications!

This game is so sweet I'm going to need a root canal.

On a side note, anyone getting a lot of screen tearing? The FPS counter holds steady at 60. But character portraits rip a bit when they move from side to side.

I really enjoyed the demo but I'm afraid the item store gameplay schtick is going to get old very quickly. I think I'll wait for other people to test the waters on the full version first.

One thing I'm not quite clear on. When you beat up monsters in the dungeon they leave behind gems. This is money that goes to the adventurer right? So in order to buy anything from my shop he would need some of his own cash?

It seems that it also makes sense to sell upgrade items to the adventurer at a deep discount as well as refuse the sale of downgrade items. Though I'm not sure if this would make them angry.

Tamren wrote:

One thing I'm not quite clear on. When you beat up monsters in the dungeon they leave behind gems. This is money that goes to the adventurer right? So in order to buy anything from my shop he would need some of his own cash?

It seems that it also makes sense to sell upgrade items to the adventurer at a deep discount as well as refuse the sale of downgrade items. Though I'm not sure if this would make them angry.

The gems that the adventurer picks up are XP. Collect enough, and s/he levels up.

They do appear to gain their own cash as the game progresses, and will often show up in your store looking for equipment. Selling it to them at a low price is advantageous, as they will be using it the next time you hire them for a dungeon crawl.

Also note that you can equip them with items found during a dungeon run. If/when the run is over, the equipped items will be returned to your inventory.

Ah I get it now. But then if they have a limited purse... Doesn't it hurt me to sell them downgrade items? Or would they even switch out if they came off worse?

The one time my adventurer didn't pick a crap item was when he asked me for some armour. So I offered him the best item I had on hand which were the iron bracers (tier 2 I guess). But even at a 10% discount from his dialog it sounds like they were way out of his league financially.

This is one anime-ass anime game.

Capitalism, ho!

Been loving the demo so far. Man, that was a fast two hours.

Tamren wrote:

Ah I get it now. But then if they have a limited purse... Doesn't it hurt me to sell them downgrade items? Or would they even switch out if they came off worse?

The one time my adventurer didn't pick a crap item was when he asked me for some armour. So I offered him the best item I had on hand which were the iron bracers (tier 2 I guess). But even at a 10% discount from his dialog it sounds like they were way out of his league financially.

From my experience with the demo, the adventurers will happily buy anything you offer. However, they will only equip items that are better. They also don't seem to hang onto food items that you sell them.

The fairy breaking the fourth wall and telling me to buy the full version was enough to tip me over.

Pre-ordered before I went to sleep last night. Had a great time with the guildmaster telling me about all the lewt I'd get.

So, I'm not as enamored with the game as the rest of you. I think it's an interesting mix of gameplay elements, but taken as a whole the demo didn't grab me. I'll still give it a shot somewhere down the line, but it just didn't hit home.

garion333 wrote:

So, I'm not as enamored with the game as the rest of you. I think it's an interesting mix of gameplay elements, but taken as a whole the demo didn't grab me. I'll still give it a shot somewhere down the line, but it just didn't hit home.

It's certainly not for everyone, as it's a very niche style game. If it hadn't been on steam, I likely would have waited on purchasing (just for ease of acquisition).

I admit, I was surprised by how much fun I had with the demo. Something about the style of play appeals to the min/maxer in me.

So, which shop sells the insulin? This game is giving me diabetes.

Best. Game. Evaaaaar.
I think this was a niche what could really use some filling. Another game that's not coming out nearly soon enough and seems to be very similar is Iron Master: Legendary Blacksmith, which looks to be like this game but with cooking mama in. More of the good things from Japan need this sort of proper-humor-carryover localization treatment!

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