#i know you probably just meant romance visual novels but i took the ask literally

[specterthief]

pickings are honestly pretty slim for actual dating sims available in english, so not all of these are going to be "personal recommendations" compared to just "these are some of the famous ones you can play without knowing japanese"

what IS a personal recommendation is tokimeki memorial, if you're trying to get into dating sims you can't go wrong with starting with THE dating sim (and it really speaks to how weird western otaku culture is around this genre that the page for the fan translation for it calls it "more than just a dating sim" when it is the most "just a dating sim" a game could possibly be, but anyway.) if you turn out to like the gameplay style and/or you just prefer male love interests in the first place, the first three tokimeki memorial girl's side games (the otome versions of tokimemo, so female protag + male dating options instead of vice versa) also have fan translations.

hatoful boyfriend is also just an unironically good dating sim, and while i think familiarity with otome games would make it land better as a parody, you can absolutely play it as your first otome game and still have a good time with it if you can suspend your disbelief with the concept of all the love interests being sapient birds. (the sequel, holiday star, is just a visual novel, not a dating sim.)

doukyuusei is another very early classic dating sim that had a recent remake that's available in english on steam (with an optional patch to restore 18+ content.) white album also recently had an english translation of its remake published on steam! (it's mainly of the "schedule management" type of dating sim rather than more complex sim gameplay like something like tokimemo, so it might be a good entry point as something closer to a regular visual novel.) amagami is another "schedule management" type that does have an english patch, although it's still (from what i've heard) a bit buggy and unpolished. love plus... exists.

on the OELVN side, actual dating sims are also not super common and i can't speak for the actual quality of any of these, but sunrider academy, RE: alistair, and backstage pass are a few i know of and have seen recommended in the past.

also, in line with persona 3-5 being rpgs with dating sim elements, another game series that's (other game type) with dating sim elements added in that's worth checking out (and is underrated tbh) is sakura wars! only the first game has a fan translation but the 2019 reboot did get released on playstation in english.

what is your favourite dating sim/do you have any dating sim recommendations

I'm actually not much of a dating sim fan... it speaks a lot to my need for jangling keys that the closest thing I have to an answer is persona 3 (because the social links are explicitly a porting of dating sim mechanics into an rpg)

I'll invite people more into the genre to offer recommendations in the notes though!