#this is my first dating sim also

[clarablightt]

me and my girlfriend played some of “I Love You, Colonel Sanders!” tonight!!

omg this is so insane i love it!!! also so far she has told me that the chef uniforms are not up to code in the slightest (with the exception of the Colonel’s)

[tavysboy]

No other love can warm my heart, now that I’ve known the comfort of your arms.

Unedited version under cut 💛

[flovoid]

they went on a date but none of them gonna admit its was a date (its a failed date guys)

[aurorangen]

The day of Suzume's first blind date had finally arrived and the person she met was Naoki Ito! During their walk to the restaurant, Suzume tried to engage in his conversations and asked questions about him. Naoki was happy to be given this much attention and felt attached to Suzume already. "He's a bit clingy..." Suzume said in her head then she heard a girl giggle behind them "Otosan?" His kids were there.

She had no idea what was happening to Naoki's marriage, but his kids seemed cheerful about both their parents and she got the impression he was happily married. In the nicest way possible she said it was best to end the date and stay friends (really she wanted to get out of there). And that was how the blind date was over before it even started 🫣

[kazuaru]

Nathan & Sofia's divorced parents (Maria & Scott).

[renbiegames]

I've been a part of an incredible dev team for a few months and we just released a demo for Otome Jam called Cupid's Chatroom! It's a dating chatsim with 5 love interests, you can find the game here!

Here's some doodles I did of the two love interests for the demo, Roman and Daeho! I love them both sm ♡♡

[holocene-sims]

grandma aoife's bakery 🍰✨🥧

[simgerale]

welp... gwen decided that she has officially met her true love! 🧡

[luna-the-cretar]

So, uh. Now Torbek is married to this random old woman (partially because she had money and also she’s gonna die anyway so who cares). And also Kremy and Gideon’s relationship is essentially the same level as it is in the campaign, so… (as in, they can’t keep their hands off of each other, are very much into each other, but also not quite boyfriends yet)

[sweetestberryofthebunch]

Guess who‘s about to restart Act 2 because Mizora and Wyll were bitching and then Shadowheart had some feelings and AND THEN FUCKING GALE cockblocked my Karlach Romance scene so long that it glitched into non existence and she basically friendzoned me in the process :/ I literally finished everything when i realised and decided to look at the Wiki lmao. At least it’s kind of a common thing that happens so it wasn’t my fault. Bye bye five hours of pretty good gameplay, I‘ll see you again when i rush through this a second time…

[rogdona]

[dhmis-autism]

another fuckin EPIC picrew dropped you know what that means.

anyways. all their routes in a dating sim are Bad Ends ask me how.

[randomnameless]

tbh, I stopped caring about houses that much when I found out that it's an otome/dating sim game with srpg gameplay sprinkled on top. In other FE games, you either gather supports by pair ups or by having units standing against one another. And mechanics like cooking in Fates were done to get some more stat boosts. And even if the avatarization of the game started with New Mystery, Robin and Corrin feel more like customizable characters than an avatar for the player.

In houses, Byleth is like every typical dating sim protag, that does not speak and the few times they do is by having the player choose options that may raise heart points with a character or lower them, you have to find lost items and when you give them back you gain heart points, you have to give them gifts to gain heart points and cooking now doesn't give you any beneficts in battle and only works for, you've guessed it, getting heart points. And let's not kid ourselves, tea time is like the "dates" in otome games, in which you can spam gifts till you raise the affection to the max. The only thing that distincts those points from the otome ones, is that those are necessary for proficency and for unit classes.

Heck, we even have a ring to give to the chosen blorbo in order to get a special custom made cutscene, when in pasts games getting an S support gave you a broken unit to deploy and a little blurb of text during the credits. And of course, calendar/day systems are also common in these tipes of games too.

People complained about awakening and fates for turning the franchise into a dating sim, but 3Houses is literally one in and of itself, and yet is praised as peack FE experience and as peack srpg.

(I could also argue that is because of this otome nature why the characters are "tell don't show" with their given trauma, unlike in pasts games when it was "show don't tell" (Nino, Reison, Camilla, Leif, Soren...))

Well,

When you put it like that, it becomes obvious that the other games (FEH, Engage) mentionning Fodlan are stuck on the uwu monastery part of the part 1 and not the, y'know, events happening that will lead to part 2 because as you said, the SRPG aspect is just "sprinkled on top" lol

However, the "pair up your units and build their relationships!" has been a non gameplay mechanics for decades now (FE4's was a gameplay mechanic, it had no support convos - FE6 added the support convos and gave a small gameplay boost but it didn't commit and we had no endings, FE7/8 had endings, FE9 had convos but FE10 removed them and yet had endings depending on the pairs, etc etc) even without avatars.

Then we entered the avatar era and if it added the "my waifu and my bae" shenanigans, FE13/14 were still more centered on the story aspect that on the "dating sim" aspect, as in, even if you could raise affinity with a character by doing X or Y, it wasn't really coded in a minigame - came FE16 which you analysed perfectly : tea time, gifts, eating, S-support CG, etc etc.

That being said, FE is a RPG, meaning it has characters : you play FE for the solid gameplay but you also build characters, and imo the best way to develop and write characters is to interconnect them with other characters, and/or with the plot/lore.

Sure, Arden functions as a wall/tank. But through the 5 lines he has, you learn that he is part of a group of knights, has friends who often tease him but is relied upon by those people and takes pride in that, he'd also like to find a wife someday and has self-esteem issues.

Is he as developped as, say, Xillia's Alvin? Hell no! But they're characters from two different genres, Arden has those 5 lines that puts him above any "generic" armor.

(I find it interesting how UO and in a way, FE11, gives you the opportunity to play with generics instead of playing with named characters, in UO generics will turn out to be better since you can change their growths, but they're generics. Do you want the RPG of the Tactics/Strategy aspect?)

So, I'd say that support conversations are important, I love Saias and Ralf to bits, but I'm sure I'd love them more if they had more lines. And since support through battle can be a chore (hello FE GBA and trying to get Bartre and Karla's supports when she joins 2 chapters before the end!), I initially welcome any way to grind those supports faster lol.

However, it can quickly spiral in, well, the otome mechanics we have in FE16 - if you want to build support then why not have an entire mini-game for that, and meals and chorals and whatever else?

It's all about finding balance between developping your characters without turning your game in a dating sim or what I'd call "playing the sims and pairing those dolls with those other dolls you like".

Still, let's not kid ourselves, nowadays the "dating sim" aspect of the series is, while decried by some, very popular - and FE is first and foremost, a series that has to sell.

3H is not peak SRPG not peak gaming experience or even in FE gameplay that'd be FE5 but I can't ignore the fact that its dating sim aspects might be part of the reason why it's still very popular.

[cerubean]

random teen townie makeovers

[aurorangen]

Next thing you know, Riku is playing Cupid. "Dude, wh- just why? What are you even talking about?" Oscar was confused about his way of thinking; Riku had just friend-zoned her and now he was trying to set them up. "Oh c'mon I think you'd be a perfect match!" Riku teased him, "Hah look at your face!" It's gonna take some convincing from Riku and most importantly, he's trying not to reveal her identity! It's all about the surprise, isn't it?

[quetzalpapalotl]

So this is how Disco Elysium has been going, I am no longer quitting my job every time something bad happens, but I only have 2 points in both health and morale and brother says that's too low but I think it's fine since I can just chug medicine. Which is very cheap. Unlike speed. I would unstoppable if I had the funds to be on speed 24/7.

Anyway, I love Kim and nothing matters to me as much as gaining his love, or at leats his approval. Unfortunately, I keep doing stuff just because I can, so I end up doing things like exhorting money off a guy which Kim didn't like. I'm so sorry, Kim. I also keep getting morale damage because every time inland empire tells warns me against doing something that will remind me of my ex-wife, I do it anyway. So maybe I should restrain myself.

I barely understand the game's mechanics and keep messing up, but that's all well and good because it makes me connect with Harry. I like to introject characters when playing games.

Encyclopedia is my best friend, to no one's surprise.