One day Mr. Lemongrass left home, eager to become an adventurer. However, Recettear isn't about his heroic deeds, but rather his collateral damage. More to the point, it's about the huge debt he left after vanishing that must now be paid by his daughter, Recette. She's a naive young girl that never worked a day in her life, and has inherited the task of opening an item shop and making enough money to repay the whole debt in one month.

With this very unique premise, Recettear places the player as owner of a small shop in a typical RPG town, full of adventurers and surrounded by dungeons. Your job is to run the shop, purchasing items and reselling them for a profit.

At its core it's a very simple system, but has many nuances that add to the experience. For example, if you feature only expensive items and decoration, your shop will be considered too fancy, attracting fewer customers. There are also special events, such as days when certain types of items are in high demand.

Over the course of the game you'll meet various adventurers. After gaining their friendship you can hire them to explore a dungeon for you. Once you do, the game changes into an isometric Action RPG, where you explore randomly generated levels, defeat enemies and collect treasure. Many items can only be found inside dungeons, including ingredients to craft powerful weapons – that you can either give to your adventurers or sell at a high price. The dungeons have few enemies and can quickly get repetitive, but at least the boss fights every five levels are interesting.

Since there's limited time to pay the debt you'll have to manage your schedule, setting time to run the shop, buy supplies, explore dungeons and talk to the townsfolk. Sadly, the latter is underused, rarely resulting in anything besides one-note stories and jokes.