Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
Worth it · RPG · 2010
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
WAIT.
Worth it today. The Winter Sale opens Dec 17, and it was discounted in 7 of its last 8 seasonal sales; 80% in the Winter Sale 2025.
Today
$19.99Worth it
Typical seasonal cut
$3.9980% offBANGER
- Cost per hour▼
- $1.51/hr
- ReviewsS
- 96% of 7,538
- Critics
- 82 players 14 higher
- Genre rank
- Top 2% RPG
Holding it back: Cost per hour
Why
Watch this gameOne alert at $3.99 or less.
Time and effort
- Main story
- 13.2h
- To 100%
- 44.4h 3.4x the story
Price and sales
- Sales
- 48 on record
- Typical cut
- 80% off
- Steam low
- $1.99 June 2025
- Sale every
- 105d last October 2026
Players and genre
- Online
- 14 now
- Cheaper than
- 10% of its genre
- Better reviewed
- 99% of its genre
Price and player charts
The value story
The value story
Across all 48 discounts in the 14 years tracked, the median cut is 80 percent, about 15 weeks apart. Past sales have already crossed the $17.57 BANGER line 48 times.
Its score sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 90 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 99 percent. Among the games that feel like it, WitchSpring3 Re:Fine - The Story of Eirudy - ($9.99, scores 86) beats it on value, while it beats Dragon Cliff ($9.99, scores 77).
More about Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
The press gave it 82; the people who bought it give it 96 percent. A 14-point gap in the buyer's favour.
2 of the 402 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to October 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 84 percent of the 405 reviews written there were positive, against 96 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
13.2 hours to finish it, 44 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 3.4 times the campaign.
Buy now or wait
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $3.99 (80% off). Predictions like this were right 91% of the time when tested on 70 past weeks.
Last discount ended 31 days ago.
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
Grades: S best, D weakest
S is the best grade and D the weakest, judged as a buyer. ▲ raises the score, ▼ lowers it, ? is an input we do not have, • is a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
What players say
Recettear is a bit of a liminal fever dream...a game that, to me, is iconic in its simplicity. What you see on the Store page is what you get: there's the VN driving the narrative, the Dungeons to gather the items, and the Shop to sell those items and simultaneously gear up the adventurers. Nothing in particular about Recettear is special, but you won't find another Shop Simulator / RPG title that hits quite like...
2 more reviews
💰 An instant Japanese indie classic from the 2000s. A casual business sim about running a shop in a fantasy world, featuring a dungeon crawler and plenty of optional events with amusing dialogue. Stock up on various goods, arrange them on the shelves, and haggle with customers! Lvl up your trading skills to unlock various new content. The main goal is to pay off your hapless father's debts, but that quickly takes a...
Recettear is fairly fun and reminds me of PS2-era RPG and farming games. While I understand why some people spend tens of hours, it gets repetitive quickly for me, so I only finished the main story. While I recommend it (partly because it's so cheap on sale), keep in mind that it lacks modern settings. Consider installing the 'FancyScreenPatchForRecettear' mod if you want widescreen and other features, although I...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
About the game
Recettear is the story of an item shop, the girl who lives in it, and the fairy who turned her life upside down. Recette Lemongrass finds herself in charge of an item shop built into her house, in order to pay back a loan her father took and then skipped out on - and Tear, her newfound fairy "companion", won't take no for an answer!
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 256 MB of memory, 696 MB of storage. Windows only.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale scores 83/100 on the BANG Score (worth it) as of Nov 8, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/70400/recettear-an-item-shop-s-taleReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Oct 31, price as of Nov 7. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.