Recettear is certainly an odd case when you step back and look at it. It was released at a time when western RPGs were becoming highly popular and JRPGs were in decline (for comparison, the biggest name in the genre that came out the same year was Final Fantasy XIII... blech), and was the first game of its type to appear on Steam, with little promotion and a localization by a two-man team who met on the Something Awful forums. Yet somehow this tiny indie RPG was a surprise success, paving the way for other Japanese RPGs and indies to get Steam releases, and ensuring the genre would become a pretty large presence on the platform and not just get relegated to increasingly-niche releases on handhelds.
As the title implies, rather than playing as another RPG hero, you play as that hero's daughter, saddled with his debt and trying to keep up on escalating payments by running an item shop. While you can simply buy items at wholesale and sell them at a markup, or take advantage of fluctuating market prices to turn a profit, this is a rather slow and not particularly exciting process (and probably won't be enough to meet your quota on its own). Dungeon crawling thus becomes a key component of the game; gathering items and then selling them in your shop becoming your primary way to rack up cash. You're not combat-capable yourself, though, so you have to hire an adventurer and outfit them to fight for you. The action's pretty basic - just move around and attack with special powers that run off an SP meter, avoid traps, collecting treasure chests and fight the occasional boss battle. Selling items at a profit increases your "Merchant level", which gradually unlocks benefits like being able to expand your store, take custom orders that have big payoffs, and even unlock the ability to fuse items together to create new goods that sell for high prices. Hirable adventurers also show up at your shop occasionally and will use equipment you sell them from then on, letting you dive deeper into dungeons and score bigger hauls. It also seems extremely difficult (if not impossible) to hit each week's escalating point total on the first attempt, but if you get a game over and are forced to restart you do keep your shop level, which will steadily allow you to improve your store, wares and customers and eventually complete the game over the course of multiple restarts; a bit like Dragon Quarter with its SOL Scenario system.
Recettear isn't a particularly deep game by any measuring stick, but it's well designed and surprisingly fun. The gameplay loop from turning profits, upgrading your shop, outfitting adventurers, acquiring new stock and making your way through the game's dungeons is satisfying and addictive enough to keep you invested, and the brisk runtime (roughly 15 hours for a playthrough) ensures it doesn't wear out its welcome. The game's dialog is also surprisingly strong, with a lot of sly references and jabs at RPG clichés (including a very prominent Dragon Quest 3 shout-out) and plenty of absurd but funny dialog as Recette and Tear play off one another in their day-to-day interactions. For those seeking a relatively novel twist on the dungeon crawler format, Recettear is one you should give a try.
There's also a remaster of the game slated to release in 2025 if you want to wait for that!
Developer: EasyGameStation
Publisher: Carpe Fulgur
Released: 2007, 2010
Platforms: PC