Review by: James Fudge

Time is money in Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale. Time management is at the heart of this mixed-up role-playing game where adventuring takes a back seat to capitalism. Players decide what to do, when to do it, all at the cost of time. Protagonist starlet Recette (and an adventurer of her choosing) can wander around dungeons kicking the crap out of monsters and collecting items, or spend all day procuring and reselling items to adventurers for fun and profit.

Recettear begins with a missing dead-beat-adventurer dad on the lamb, an abandoned item shop and a massive amount of debt. The missing father has really screwed the pooch, and while the game tries to say he is "on an adventure" or "lost in a dungeon somewhere," I am inclined to believe that he has shacked up with an Elven prostitute somewhere smoking whatever heroine-equivalent is available in this fantasy world. The administrator for the property - a ruthlessly efficient fairy (Tear) whose business acumen is equal to her haughty demeanor - encourages the demure and bubbly girl (Recette) to take over the shop and pay down the debt. The girl happily agrees and gets to work on making the shop earn enough money to survive.

The goal of the game is to make a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time to pay off the crushing inherited debt. This debt starts at a meager 10,000 ‘Pix’, but by the end of the payment cycle, it balloons to a staggering 500,000! When you get to the last week in the game on your first playthrough (the game calls it a loop), you may not be able to accomplish your goal. This fact might frustrate some players, but the game is designed this way for a reason.

This all leads back to time management, because there are many things to do in Recettear. Some of those fun activities (outside of buying & selling) are done to the detriment of financial progress. It’s okay. Take a deep breath, and relax. The design lets you find success later. When you miss that last massive payment I mentioned earlier, the game simply restarts you on the second business day – like your screw-ups were the product of some bad dream.

You do not leave the previous loop empty-handed either: your merchant level and your store's stock carry over, and (if you have a card - an item your adventurer gives to you) your adventurer's progress and inventory remains the same. The advantage to all this carry-over is that you can start the game with all the benefits of a high merchant level (all your store’s upgrades) and a powerful adventurer that can tackle those early dungeons with ease. Sure, you will have to roll through all the events again and plod through the same dungeons, but you will do it without too much trouble. Once you figure this process out, the game becomes infinitely more enjoyable.

Extracurricular activities aside, the real heart of the game is your store and fluctuating prices. Customers and their purchasing preferences are also important factors in making money and earning experience that goes towards merchant levels. The key factors of the economy are changing prices, supply and demand, and comfort levels when making offers to customers. Buying items cheap, price fluctuation and selling at the right time are of paramount importance. When an item is in particularly high demand, customers will not even flinch when you double the price. Obviously, some customers are cheap and being too greedy will cause you to lose sales, so you have to find the right balance. The market’s ebb and flow is broadcast to the player multiple times per day by in-store news alerts, so figuring out how to game the system is as easy as simply paying attention.