Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
the true answer is harvest moon (snes), which perfectly captures the standard courtship system of giving a girl a potato everyday for a month until she loves you
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I want to learn about dating sims
- Thread starter Bongo
- Start date
I'm definitely going to have to replay DDLC with all these comments in mind. I haven't played a lot of VNs/Dating Sims and it felt as I was playing it like a deconstruction, and some reviews I read saw it as such, too, so it'd be interesting to look at it with a new perspective and see if it still holds up.
The issue with basically all of the critically acclaimed Japan-inspired dating sims and visual novels created by non-Japanese speakers being described as a deconstruction is it's extremely unlikely that they've really played many or even any of the foundational games in the genre to begin with. So it kind of raises questions like: What exactly are they deconstructing, other than some broad stereotypes about Japan and anime and what these games might be like? If so, is that actually a deconstruction of the genre, or is it probably something else that's maybe tangential to or vaguely inspired by very broad ideas about what the genre might be like?
It doesn't necessarily mean all these games are bad. Some are good on their own terms. But in general be skeptical of any of these games being labelled a deconstruction, especially when those claims are made by creators or reviewers who aren't actually that familiar with the source materials being deconstructed.
It doesn't necessarily mean all these games are bad. Some are good on their own terms. But in general be skeptical of any of these games being labelled a deconstruction, especially when those claims are made by creators or reviewers who aren't actually that familiar with the source materials being deconstructed.
Balrog
(He/Him)
It looks like an English patch for Tokimeki Memorial just dropped:
but uh, I can't get it to work with any rom I've come across. If anyone else figures it out, slide into my DMs plz.
but uh, I can't get it to work with any rom I've come across. If anyone else figures it out, slide into my DMs plz.
There was a sale on Sakura Wars, the PS4-exclusive revival/soft reboot of the series, so I played it. My context for the series probably isn't unusual from an English-language perspective, as it's something I've observed from a distance but never actually played. You hear about the "most popular Saturn/Dreamcast game" from near-mythical import stories; you can marvel at the opening animations for the various media that encompass it; you can enjoy the Kohei Tanaka music and the Kosuke Fujishima artwork; you can watch the amazing live concerts put on by the cast and crew of the series that have ran for years on end. Because of its massive popularity in its heyday and deliberate staging as a multimedia heavyweight, it's an exceedingly accessible series to ambiently and passively consume without any longterm investment required, despite its typical inaccessibility as far as its primary works go. Sometimes that kind of distance from it can even leave it more appealing as an idea or a concept that close scrutiny could eventually betray--for a series that trades in exclusively hetero harem-oriented dating sims set in alternate history Taisho-era imperial Japan, it has always provided more than enough thematic stumbling blocks of its own.
The return of the series to a modern landscape is difficult to assess as it feels simultaneously at home and adrift where it has ended up. Sakura Wars's decline was not only entangled and synonymous with Sega's fortunes but mirrored the growth, peak and sunset of the dating sim genre at large which it helped shape and popularize before retreating into curated non-existence and fond recollection. Despite the genre falling off in its most formative incarnations, the influence in storytelling emphasis, calendarized play structure and gamified character affection mechanics live on in countless other video games and series that have not only survived to contemporary times but have far exceeded the popularity of their niche inspirations--even Sakura Wars itself, the usual marquee example of how big the genre could potentially be if all circumstances aligned. The new game is both refreshingly authentic to what begat the series as a calculated nostalgia ploy, but also unobservant of the many new permutations and possibilities on its concepts that have sprung up in its absence. It lives in the shadow of its pedigree, comfortable in the shade but afraid to step out into further exposure.
What has changed is that the series no longer provides tactical RPG battles as intermissions between the character interactions and cutscenes, but reframes that part of the formula as action-RPG crowd combat. The effect is largely the same: no one has ever highlighted Sakura Wars as an exemplar in the realm of tactics-oriented play, as the series has used the framework more as a vehicle for drama rather than a point of emphasis in itself--whatever gains were made in them mechanically only occurred through sheer iteration across five games and a decade or so of development. The PS4 game has no such gradual benefits to reap, and its approach to hands-on action combat is rough, artless, repetitive and without diversity and tension--nothing in it justifies itself and can hardly do so for the surrounding narrative context the sequences only exist in. Because of the series's precedent in flailing and bluffing its way through its more mechanically intensive segments, the dull mech combat isn't enough to sink the venture, but neither does it elevate any one part of it.
Because I have osmosed enough to "know" what the series is about, its tone and characterization didn't shake me much one way or another throughout. You take on the guise of a named-but-generalized self-insert lad who's given authority over a younger-than-he squadron of girls operating a theater revue and an anti-demon mech unit, and are expected to mingle and interact with the cast the best you can. The POV character as far as the very low standard of harem protagonists goes isn't the dregs and he isn't exceptional--the game's numerous dialogue options that fuel the affection mechanics allow one to play him as a decent whitebread kind of guy, and the occasionally offered "comedy" options typically result in a loss of trust from the other party if you don't respect their personalities and boundaries. The kind of awooga sex pest interactions are in short supply in the game, with a recurring "oh no someone's using the bath" skit probably being the most stock recurrence, and even that can always be walked away from to no detriment (and actually systemic gain) from doing so. It's an uneasy existence even with all that said, as the game regularly contrives scenarios for the protagonist and player to potentially leer at and betray the trust of the women and girls around them in an attempt to "tempt" the observer, leading only to weak chiding as a consequence. It's an oddly inconsistent game where it often will stay its hand and take measures to leave off from objectifying its cast while soon after doing just so in a generally mild but inarguably present way.
If the game is singularly unimpressive or within projected bog-standard expectations in most ways, what is there really to hang your hat on? The series pedigree and precedent holds true: it's just great to look and listen at. Sakura Wars's popularity was not rooted in a kind of isolatable bullet point game feature or a hotshot play mechanic, but rather the ambience and atmosphere that its presentation fostered, as codified in those multimedia-mad days of the mid-'90s. It's as close to the touted "playable anime" designation as anything has ever gotten, which it's knowingly cultivated with the in-game "mid-episode" eyecatches, episode previews and narrative pacing--all still joyously extant here. The characters are stock archetypes, none of the plotting is especially interesting, and the worldbuilding is constructed seemingly at a whim, but did you see those character models? Fujishima is not involved and now successful comics criminal Tite Kubo handles the main character design, and if there's one thing to know about Kubo it's that he's capable of putting out decent character designs in a vacuum, and that's where his contributions are wisely restricted here; those designs are then adapted and animated into 3D with a startlingly emotive touch that greatly benefits the bulk of the game that's spent in conversation with them. The environmental design is separated by copious loading screens but in isolation manages to evoke the picturesque and idealized fantasy dimension of alt-history and cultural collision smattered with steampunk influences, with the process of simply existing in the set dressing doing much to imbue a sense of immersion to an otherwise thin setting, as something like Three Houses managed to do. Tanaka doesn't intersect with video games often, but his music is similarly capable of lending gravitas to otherwise formally unexceptional material.
Sakura Wars resuscitates an absent series to find that the torch has been firmly passed on, but also that nothing ever actually filled the hole it left behind, and so it does its best to comfortably align itself according to those older shapes and expectations. There's potent nostalgia in what it represents even if you never personally partook in what it signals after, and while it's never going to recapture the impossible circumstances that birthed and sustained the series for its time in the limelight, it does successfully evoke the living contradictions that propelled it into stardom in the first place: a game constructed of so many individually shoddy and nondescript parts that manages to congeal into something holistically remarkable despite all the fair arguments against it holding fast and true in estimation. Call it comfort food for the genre fiction-displaced.
The return of the series to a modern landscape is difficult to assess as it feels simultaneously at home and adrift where it has ended up. Sakura Wars's decline was not only entangled and synonymous with Sega's fortunes but mirrored the growth, peak and sunset of the dating sim genre at large which it helped shape and popularize before retreating into curated non-existence and fond recollection. Despite the genre falling off in its most formative incarnations, the influence in storytelling emphasis, calendarized play structure and gamified character affection mechanics live on in countless other video games and series that have not only survived to contemporary times but have far exceeded the popularity of their niche inspirations--even Sakura Wars itself, the usual marquee example of how big the genre could potentially be if all circumstances aligned. The new game is both refreshingly authentic to what begat the series as a calculated nostalgia ploy, but also unobservant of the many new permutations and possibilities on its concepts that have sprung up in its absence. It lives in the shadow of its pedigree, comfortable in the shade but afraid to step out into further exposure.
What has changed is that the series no longer provides tactical RPG battles as intermissions between the character interactions and cutscenes, but reframes that part of the formula as action-RPG crowd combat. The effect is largely the same: no one has ever highlighted Sakura Wars as an exemplar in the realm of tactics-oriented play, as the series has used the framework more as a vehicle for drama rather than a point of emphasis in itself--whatever gains were made in them mechanically only occurred through sheer iteration across five games and a decade or so of development. The PS4 game has no such gradual benefits to reap, and its approach to hands-on action combat is rough, artless, repetitive and without diversity and tension--nothing in it justifies itself and can hardly do so for the surrounding narrative context the sequences only exist in. Because of the series's precedent in flailing and bluffing its way through its more mechanically intensive segments, the dull mech combat isn't enough to sink the venture, but neither does it elevate any one part of it.
Because I have osmosed enough to "know" what the series is about, its tone and characterization didn't shake me much one way or another throughout. You take on the guise of a named-but-generalized self-insert lad who's given authority over a younger-than-he squadron of girls operating a theater revue and an anti-demon mech unit, and are expected to mingle and interact with the cast the best you can. The POV character as far as the very low standard of harem protagonists goes isn't the dregs and he isn't exceptional--the game's numerous dialogue options that fuel the affection mechanics allow one to play him as a decent whitebread kind of guy, and the occasionally offered "comedy" options typically result in a loss of trust from the other party if you don't respect their personalities and boundaries. The kind of awooga sex pest interactions are in short supply in the game, with a recurring "oh no someone's using the bath" skit probably being the most stock recurrence, and even that can always be walked away from to no detriment (and actually systemic gain) from doing so. It's an uneasy existence even with all that said, as the game regularly contrives scenarios for the protagonist and player to potentially leer at and betray the trust of the women and girls around them in an attempt to "tempt" the observer, leading only to weak chiding as a consequence. It's an oddly inconsistent game where it often will stay its hand and take measures to leave off from objectifying its cast while soon after doing just so in a generally mild but inarguably present way.
If the game is singularly unimpressive or within projected bog-standard expectations in most ways, what is there really to hang your hat on? The series pedigree and precedent holds true: it's just great to look and listen at. Sakura Wars's popularity was not rooted in a kind of isolatable bullet point game feature or a hotshot play mechanic, but rather the ambience and atmosphere that its presentation fostered, as codified in those multimedia-mad days of the mid-'90s. It's as close to the touted "playable anime" designation as anything has ever gotten, which it's knowingly cultivated with the in-game "mid-episode" eyecatches, episode previews and narrative pacing--all still joyously extant here. The characters are stock archetypes, none of the plotting is especially interesting, and the worldbuilding is constructed seemingly at a whim, but did you see those character models? Fujishima is not involved and now successful comics criminal Tite Kubo handles the main character design, and if there's one thing to know about Kubo it's that he's capable of putting out decent character designs in a vacuum, and that's where his contributions are wisely restricted here; those designs are then adapted and animated into 3D with a startlingly emotive touch that greatly benefits the bulk of the game that's spent in conversation with them. The environmental design is separated by copious loading screens but in isolation manages to evoke the picturesque and idealized fantasy dimension of alt-history and cultural collision smattered with steampunk influences, with the process of simply existing in the set dressing doing much to imbue a sense of immersion to an otherwise thin setting, as something like Three Houses managed to do. Tanaka doesn't intersect with video games often, but his music is similarly capable of lending gravitas to otherwise formally unexceptional material.
Sakura Wars resuscitates an absent series to find that the torch has been firmly passed on, but also that nothing ever actually filled the hole it left behind, and so it does its best to comfortably align itself according to those older shapes and expectations. There's potent nostalgia in what it represents even if you never personally partook in what it signals after, and while it's never going to recapture the impossible circumstances that birthed and sustained the series for its time in the limelight, it does successfully evoke the living contradictions that propelled it into stardom in the first place: a game constructed of so many individually shoddy and nondescript parts that manages to congeal into something holistically remarkable despite all the fair arguments against it holding fast and true in estimation. Call it comfort food for the genre fiction-displaced.
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After purchasing a FX Pak Pro and putting the fantranslated Tokimeki Memorial on it, I figured I'd play it for a few minutes to see if it worked. In addition to sticking in my mind via a fascinating, entertaining video produced by Tim Rogers, I'd always been somewhat curious about it, as it kept coming up while people discussed other things I loved, such as Castlevania, for example. The video made the game actually look fun, which is wild, since so much of it is just juggling stats.
I ended up playing it for nearly four hours yesterday. I'm not very good at it; the game cleverly makes you choose which date location to go to if you've scheduled more than one at a time, which is a good thing to do to keep up with making everyone like you. Forgetting where you're supposed to be and thus standing up a girl obviously pisses her off, so you have to get it right. Choosing the correct dialogue option not only feels good, but it makes it seem like you're actually learning what this person is actually like. Don't be wishy-washy while talking to Nozomi. Even if she disagrees with you, tell her what you really think and unless you're a big jerk about it, she'll appreciate it. It's pretty neat. I haven't even gotten to the part where the various women will trash talk me and ruin my relationships, which I'm sort of dreading because I've been focusing on pleasing Nozomi a little too much, mainly because I feel like I understand her likes and dislikes (she seems to be, essentially, a sports playing tomboy who secretly likes to be treated as overly feminine. It's more complicated than that in some cases, but I think I'm pretty close to the truth here). Going in (somewhat) blind is fun, too, because figuring out how to balance your stats becomes less of a mechanical, robotic choice and more like a vibe - I did poorly on the art portion of my test, so I should probably raise that stat a bit. Ooh, after doing so, Shiori said to keep studying! I must be doing something right. Etc.
I have no idea if I'll succeed in getting a good ending where any girl ends up under the tree at graduation, but I'm going to try. I can't believe how much fun I had yesterday playing it. The translation seems pretty good, too, as far as I can tell. I highly recommend it!
I ended up playing it for nearly four hours yesterday. I'm not very good at it; the game cleverly makes you choose which date location to go to if you've scheduled more than one at a time, which is a good thing to do to keep up with making everyone like you. Forgetting where you're supposed to be and thus standing up a girl obviously pisses her off, so you have to get it right. Choosing the correct dialogue option not only feels good, but it makes it seem like you're actually learning what this person is actually like. Don't be wishy-washy while talking to Nozomi. Even if she disagrees with you, tell her what you really think and unless you're a big jerk about it, she'll appreciate it. It's pretty neat. I haven't even gotten to the part where the various women will trash talk me and ruin my relationships, which I'm sort of dreading because I've been focusing on pleasing Nozomi a little too much, mainly because I feel like I understand her likes and dislikes (she seems to be, essentially, a sports playing tomboy who secretly likes to be treated as overly feminine. It's more complicated than that in some cases, but I think I'm pretty close to the truth here). Going in (somewhat) blind is fun, too, because figuring out how to balance your stats becomes less of a mechanical, robotic choice and more like a vibe - I did poorly on the art portion of my test, so I should probably raise that stat a bit. Ooh, after doing so, Shiori said to keep studying! I must be doing something right. Etc.
I have no idea if I'll succeed in getting a good ending where any girl ends up under the tree at graduation, but I'm going to try. I can't believe how much fun I had yesterday playing it. The translation seems pretty good, too, as far as I can tell. I highly recommend it!
Beat it, got the Nozomi ending because she got pissed at me at the beginning of the final year of school for pretty much ignoring her for months, bombed me, and then I had to spend a bunch of time making her fall for me again as well as clean up the mess of all the other girls hating me because of upsetting her lol. Still, I had fun with the game, and didn't find it super difficult to not end up alone at the end, though I can see how getting the Shiori ending would be extremely difficult without a guide (or extensive Tim Rogers style notes along with a dozen playthroughs or whatever). When I play it again (and I will at some point), I'll make sure to not let any bombs go off, because those are DEVASTATING lol.
Give the game a shot, it's fun.
Give the game a shot, it's fun.