Each of my playthroughs of Recettear are characterized more by what tv I was watching at the time than anything else. The first Recettear playthrough, back in probably 2017, was accompanied by Harper's Island, a trashy horror mystery from the late 00s. The show centers on the wedding of Henry Dunn, who's invited all his friends to his childhood home of Harper's Island. The destination wedding to his old fishing town is interrupted by the arrival of a serial killer, connected to a series of murders from some twenty years prior?
Much like Recettear, Harper's Island is trashy fun. The show knows what it is and isn't exactly striving to be more complicated than that. We're here to watch stupid teens get murdered. That's it. Any complicated nuance or variety isn't really in the core writing. Recettear isn't trying to write a compelling plot either. Its an anime rpg parody. The characters are thin, the dungeon crawling is mid at best, and that's sort of the best the team knew they were capable of.
My second playthrough, back in 2021, was accompanied by And Then There Were None. Much like Recettear, you have to admire the mechanics of And Then There Were None. There's a careful math that has to be calibrated for the mystery to work. The psychology is carefully crafted for the reader to analyze how much each character is worth. In terms of mysteries, the murders are planned for the specific purpose of delivering punishment attached to the severity of their crimes. The first murders are aimed at targets who will never analyze themselves. Incapable of ever reflecting on their villainy. The final victims are people who knew they committed wrong and are choosing to ignore it. Knowingly acting as innocents. The killer has determined their worth and has provided the necessary fate they deserve.
In a similar fashion, Recettear asks you to carefully consider the worth of both products and customers. If you gouge them too much, try to squeeze too many dimes from them, you've proven to their internal AI that this business doesn't respect them. Your customer reputation (an invisible stat) will drop. They won't have as much money to spend next time. Only by understanding the inner workings of each customer, understanding their needs, can you provide a reliable service and encourage them to spend more at your shop. You have to make sure everyone gets what they deserve.
This third playthrough was accompanied by the dropout online series Um Actually. Its a charming enough game show, where nerds are given franchise-based statements and make corrections to those statements based on those franchises. Its funny and cute. Sometimes the jokes are a little pedantic, but that's par for the course. Joking about intricate details of fantasy worlds and how they don't make sense is the theme of the show, you know? Its not supposed to be a pleasant conversation about themes.
I didn't have much patience for Recettear's dungeons this time around. Every time I switch computers, the save doesn't carry over, so my playthrough can't include New Game +. I finally threw up my hands, launched CheatEngine, and blitzed my way through the dungeons harm-free. I beat the game two times already! I earned that right! The game is a lot less frustrating when you don't have to deal with the grind, but it does show the strings of the parody. The pedantic mindset feels more apparent. The attempts to "explain" the world and add "logic" to dungeons and adventuring is just... not what this game is built for. Its built for intense shop mechanics and shallow parody. That's not to say I'm not glad they took a swing at a story. If this didn't have any kind of story progression, I would never touch this game at all. But I think if you're making a parody game and you want to go for a sincere story at the end, working more on making the characters endearing beyond the same three jokes would be the better path forward to me.
Its hard to say why I keep returning to this game. It ultimately comes down to the crunchy mechanics, that feeling of satisfaction. The balance between goofs and the in-depth shopping system is a careful needle to thread and I think it mostly accomplishes it. But the actual collection of items and dungeon crawling is so profoundly miserable, I couldn't handle the actual battle system again. I just wanted to tune out my brain to some tv and watch number go up. That's all this game has to be. Not something big or even perfectly polished, but a enjoyable enough mid-experience with minimal levels of frustration.
I think I should rewatch Harper's Island.
Much like Recettear, Harper's Island is trashy fun. The show knows what it is and isn't exactly striving to be more complicated than that. We're here to watch stupid teens get murdered. That's it. Any complicated nuance or variety isn't really in the core writing. Recettear isn't trying to write a compelling plot either. Its an anime rpg parody. The characters are thin, the dungeon crawling is mid at best, and that's sort of the best the team knew they were capable of.
My second playthrough, back in 2021, was accompanied by And Then There Were None. Much like Recettear, you have to admire the mechanics of And Then There Were None. There's a careful math that has to be calibrated for the mystery to work. The psychology is carefully crafted for the reader to analyze how much each character is worth. In terms of mysteries, the murders are planned for the specific purpose of delivering punishment attached to the severity of their crimes. The first murders are aimed at targets who will never analyze themselves. Incapable of ever reflecting on their villainy. The final victims are people who knew they committed wrong and are choosing to ignore it. Knowingly acting as innocents. The killer has determined their worth and has provided the necessary fate they deserve.
In a similar fashion, Recettear asks you to carefully consider the worth of both products and customers. If you gouge them too much, try to squeeze too many dimes from them, you've proven to their internal AI that this business doesn't respect them. Your customer reputation (an invisible stat) will drop. They won't have as much money to spend next time. Only by understanding the inner workings of each customer, understanding their needs, can you provide a reliable service and encourage them to spend more at your shop. You have to make sure everyone gets what they deserve.
This third playthrough was accompanied by the dropout online series Um Actually. Its a charming enough game show, where nerds are given franchise-based statements and make corrections to those statements based on those franchises. Its funny and cute. Sometimes the jokes are a little pedantic, but that's par for the course. Joking about intricate details of fantasy worlds and how they don't make sense is the theme of the show, you know? Its not supposed to be a pleasant conversation about themes.
I didn't have much patience for Recettear's dungeons this time around. Every time I switch computers, the save doesn't carry over, so my playthrough can't include New Game +. I finally threw up my hands, launched CheatEngine, and blitzed my way through the dungeons harm-free. I beat the game two times already! I earned that right! The game is a lot less frustrating when you don't have to deal with the grind, but it does show the strings of the parody. The pedantic mindset feels more apparent. The attempts to "explain" the world and add "logic" to dungeons and adventuring is just... not what this game is built for. Its built for intense shop mechanics and shallow parody. That's not to say I'm not glad they took a swing at a story. If this didn't have any kind of story progression, I would never touch this game at all. But I think if you're making a parody game and you want to go for a sincere story at the end, working more on making the characters endearing beyond the same three jokes would be the better path forward to me.
Its hard to say why I keep returning to this game. It ultimately comes down to the crunchy mechanics, that feeling of satisfaction. The balance between goofs and the in-depth shopping system is a careful needle to thread and I think it mostly accomplishes it. But the actual collection of items and dungeon crawling is so profoundly miserable, I couldn't handle the actual battle system again. I just wanted to tune out my brain to some tv and watch number go up. That's all this game has to be. Not something big or even perfectly polished, but a enjoyable enough mid-experience with minimal levels of frustration.
I think I should rewatch Harper's Island.