Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is a game on PC by indepdendent Japanese game developer EasyGameStation. The game finds Recette Lemongrass responsible for an enormous debt left behind by her father, who abruptly left to "become a hero" and has not been heard from since. Tear - a fairy who is contracted to the Terme Finance Company as a loan shark - proposes that Recette launch an item shop from her home to take advantage of the large amount dungeon-crawling heroes that visit the town of Pensee.

Old Man is Angry

This game has been available for digital download for some time - however I finally caved in the recent Steam sale and picked this up. As odd as running an item store in an RPG world seems - this game is very very addictive. The main gameplay revolves around the shop, each time someone wishes to purchase an item you get a couple of chances to haggle, after which if you haven't managed to sell the item the customer leaves the store (often in a huff). Every sale earns you experience, and every level obtained as a merchant unlocks new ways of trade and the ability to customise the shop.

Dungeon - Hall of Trials

To obtain more stock for the shop, you can purchase from the town or alternatively play what is essentially the other half of the game; dungeon crawling. You contract a hero who fights for you - they level up with experience and can equip items in order to boost their stats. This portion of the game is somewhat unforgiving; you must complete five floors of a dungeon before you can go back to town and if the hero dies you lose all of the items you've obtained bar one. The crawl while repetitive (it IS a dungeon crawl) is well executed with a number of strange and humorous bosses to shake things up a bit.

Boss - Reginald Drisby

The localisation in this title by new company Carpe Fulgur is superb - bright humour and well flowing text accompanies a small amount of Japanese voice acting. Very interesting choices were made - an example is the choice to use 'merde' (French swear word) for 'mattaku' (Japanese for 'good grief') as they both sound somewhat similar (starting with m) and the world seems somewhat French.

Recette's Cardboard Box

But what of the core gameplay? Selling items is surely very boring! Actually it's not - it's very addictive. Hours can easily be lost with these sales. Each week in the game you need to pay back a portion of the debt (which increases every week) so Recette needs to work furiously to meet the amount required to avoid getting her house sold off and moving into a cardboard box (which is essentially a game over sequence). Similar to the seemingly innocent concept of being hit with a nasty item in Mario Kart Wii I find myself swearing profusely at customers who refuse to pay my exorbitant markups or who demand above 50% of the cost price when they want to sell an item to me.

Girl being cheap

The young girl is especially irritating since she has a limited amount of pocket money to spend - this is why I shout with glee when the market for an item she normally buys increases prices - I get to sell her items for over 200% and she pays every time. Take that little girl! Few games make me so angry then seconds later overjoyed in this way - and here I am selling items in a shop instead of being the hero going out on the adventure.

Alouette Disguised

The game's ability to continually entertain you in a variety of ways is the key here - there are a number of main gameplay elements that are so different you don't find yourself bored at any point. That coupled with an odd sense of humour makes this a great game to pick up - highly recommended.