How to Play Your First Japanese Dating Sim
This post originally ran on Cohost on 2023/7/31 and is being reuploaded here for future posterity. The content has been lightly edited for enhanced readability.
This was a question that I used to get asked on Twitter with some frequency. Seeing as it's been some time since I last really broached the subject, as well as the fact that I'm somewhere I don't have to worry about threading my thoughts 280 characters at a time, I thought now was as good of a time as any to put out a more definitive piece that will hopefully help ease those interested in exploring one of the historically least understood genres in Japanese game history. This will be partly an instructional post, but it'll also offer advice about the philosophy of the genre, as well as the best ways to approach it to ensure you have a fulfilling time and are engaging it on its intended terms.
Before we proceed, it's also worth emphasizing that when I say the term dating sim, I don't mean the mish-mash of romance games in genres like adventure games and visual novels that the term has come to encompass in mainstream English circles. I have a lot of problems with that particular usage and how it misrepresents disparate development trends and creative outlooks and I've even gone into detail before about how differentiate these sorts of games, which you can find here. But for the purposes of this post, I want to make clear that dating sims here and in all of my other posts refers to the definition as it's understood in Japan, which is games where the primary gameplay meta revolves around relationship building of some sort. While it can wildly vary in form and substance across a wide variety of games, in essence, if it's something like Tokimeki Memorial or Amagami, you've come to the right place. Stuff like, say, Clannad or Sakura Taisen, not so much (although I have a deep love of the latter and what it brings to the table in its own right!).
With that out of the way, before we talk about anything else, let's just go ahead and address the elephant in the room:
To get the most out of dating sims, you ought to be at least somewhat literate in Japanese.
It sucks to throw up what'll inevitably be an immediate roadblock for the vast majority of people reading this. It's not to say that there are no English options whatsoever, but they're limited and generally not representative of what the genre has to offer, both in gameplay diversity and arguably the quality of the translations on offer. And with cases like the Super Famicom version of Tokimeki Memorial, what's available in English just isn't the best or even most widely remembered incarnation among Japanese players. Some options are better than none at all, so if that's all you're comfortable with, by all means, I'd never entirely discourage newcomers from starting with fan translations. Just know that what's available offers an extremely narrow and often compromised view at a genre that, for the time being, puts its best feet forward in its native language, bar none.
In terms of the level of fluency you should have before diving in, it honestly varies somewhat depending on the game and especially the era in which it was released. Older staples like, indeed, the original Tokimeki Memorial have very straightforward scripts that aren't too complicated to parse once you have enough of the basics down, while other games released later in the genre's lifespan like Amagami are much more demanding of players' fluency when it comes to colloquialisms and the like. As a baseline, I would say dating sims are best explored once you're at the very least comfortable with JLPT N3 grammar, but N2 level speakers/readers will overall have an easier time and be able to comfortably play much more in comparison. In general, my advice is to just do the usual due diligence checking Google and YouTube beforehand to get a baseline understanding of the level of writing you'll likely be up against. If a game turns out to be too much, don't get discouraged! It's not going anywhere and will always be there for when you're ready to try again.
Dating sims come in all shapes and sizes; experiment and see what you like!
Even putting aside issues of genre semantics, when people think of dating sims, what comes to mind for many tends to be the more rigid, structured games that may be heavy on RPG/strategy game-derived simulation elements. To be sure, some of those games are fantastic and considered classic tentpoles for a reason! But as time went on, dating sims branched out into a much wider array of themes, settings, gameplay structures, and design philosophies as developers explored how human relationships could be depicted through mechanics, structure, and storytelling. It's entirely likely that some flavors of dating sims might speak to you more than others, so if you try a game in one style and find it isn't necessarily to your taste, don't give up just yet! Consider trying a different sort of dating sim and seeing if that lands better for you. Off the top of my head, dating sims can be:
- Raising sim-style games heavy on calendar systems and stat management
- Conversation simulators
- Travel/road trip games
- Board games
- Open-ended sandboxes
- Business management games
That's a lot of story and gameplay possibilities these games can handle! Different styles also strike varying balances between story/dialogue and direct gameplay. If you like games that let you get knee deep in systems with intricate metas that have entire wikis devoted to them and feature more sparse, indirect storytelling, there are dating sims for you! Or, if you like more talkative games with lower stakes in the gameplay so you can focus on simply enjoying the relationship building, there are dating sims for you, too! There's a richness to these games that's pretty unparalleled compared to many of their contemporaries in other genres from their heyday, so it's my honest suggestion when starting off brand new to the genre to try at least a few different kinds before determining if dating sims in general are for you. You might just be surprised at how many sensibilities they share with other types of games and how easy it is to catch the bug!
Keep those manuals handy! (But consider starting with newer games and working backwards.)
One thing that's easy to overlook about traditional dating sims is that, with a handful of sparse exceptions released over the past decade and change, they're mostly a genre that came and went between 1994 and 2009. Which is to say, they largely proliferated before games in general featured in-game tutorials as a standard fixture, meaning that you unfortunately can't go into many of these games expecting them to explain themselves all that much, if at all. The further back in time you go to the earliest games in the genre, the more pronounced this tendency becomes.
Although some surface level knowledge of social mechanics from games such as Persona and Fire Emblem can be helpful, overall, dating sims have a distinct grammar that requires you to approach them in ways you might not already be trained. Throwing caution to the wind and going in completely blind isn't an invalid approach, but until you've played at least a handful of games and learn what to generally expect, it can quite often be a recipe for quickly crashing and burning in frustration, especially with more mechanics-heavy games like the original Tokimeki Memorial that throw you into the deep end from the start. The reason they often do that is simple: dating sim players in particular were expected the read the manuals and I highly, highly encourage new players overseas do the same. Manuals often offer critical information about a game's systems and structure that won't otherwise be spelled out within the gameplay itself, as well as possibly diagrams and tables containing other pertinent details. Some games with calendar systems also document notable in-game days within their supplemental material so you can properly plan out runs in advance.
All of this is advice that I'd say rings true for dating sims of most any age. If you're looking to get into a new one for the first time and especially if you're obtaining it through alternative means, do your best to track down a manual. Many of the most popular games like the Tokimeki Memorial series and Amagami have extensive fan wikis that you can turn to for help, too, but the vast majority of dating sims have received, at best, limited walkthrough coverage online given their age. Quite often, the only help you may be able to find if you have questions can very well come from the manual itself.
Having said that, when you're starting out with dating sims, I would also strongly recommend first playing newer games released in the late 2000s/early 2010s and then trying older games once you have more experience. While newer games still don't often feature fully fleshed out tutorials, they do usually have at least some documentation in-game. Additionally, in general, they're also more gently balanced compared to earlier dating sims, giving you breathing room to come to grips with how the genre is played without being punished too heavily for making mistakes along the way. This is particularly true for games in established franchises; because dating sim sequels almost always feature new casts and rarely tie into previous games narratively to any significant degree, you have nothing to lose in terms of continuity by jumping straight into a later entry first and then working your way backwards after that if you're so inclined.
Whatever you do, don't save scum your way to success.
In an age where things like save states are now all but a prerequisite for even commercial emulation offerings, it's tempting to forsake a dating sim's intended save system in favor of save states. After all, save states can enable you to have the perfect run and look like a flawless partner in the eyes of whoever you're wooing, landing you the best endings each and every time. I say this as someone who often used to play like that myself: that sort of mentality can be ruinous to a game's intended ambience and narrative and rob successful runs of any sense of fulfillment.
Unlike a lot of contemporary RPGs with lengthy run times that graft their social mechanics on top of their main loop, when it comes to traditional dating sims, the vast majority take less than ten hours to clear a given run, typically falling within three to six hours, in my experience. With a few notable exceptions, dating sims are meant to be highly replayable and encourage player experimentation to achieve optimal runs or even to simply experience different content between runs. Not every run you have will necessarily be a success if you play them without save states and the like, but the ups and downs you run into are intended to add flavor and drama so that each attempt tells a story of its own and every relationship you build with a game's characters has its own narrative arc. That's one of the biggest charms of these games: the "events" of these arcs quite often unfold predominantly through systemic occurrences during actual gameplay, rather than through preconceived, scripted story events.
In practical terms, what this means is that in initial runs of dating sims, the intention is mostly for players to focus on getting to know the cast, systems, and gameplay progression. Certain characters will likely be easier to romance than others in order to offer some early victories. However, even if an early run doesn't pan out, it still offers valuable insight that can then be applied in subsequent runs. Essentially, the more you play a dating sim, the more you can make informed decisions about how to achieve your goals on your specific terms. It's not unlike many popular roguelikes today. If you can handle having to start over in say, Spelunky, and learning the best way to play one attempt at a time, then you can handle a dating sim. That's what makes heroines such as Tokimeki Memorial's Shiori Fujisaki so famous within Japanese game history, because successfully romancing such elusive characters requires and rewards mastery of the mechanics and studying the ins and outs of the game. After what might very well be multiple failed attempts to win her heart, a successful confession can be hugely gratifying, vindicating all of the time and effort spent to achieve such mastery of the gameplay across every phase.
But there's no faster way to rob yourself of that payoff when playing a dating sim than by using save states as a crutch, and the same can even be said for in-game save systems if they otherwise appear generous on the surface. Be moderate with when and how you save games and simply learn to accept the consequences for what you choose to do as they come. You might find yourself getting more invested in the relationship than you otherwise would in an RPG featuring a truncated take on such mechanics.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Traditional Japanese dating sims are hardly the impenetrable, inscrutable genre they've often been portrayed as in foreign press since their outset. Their unique grammar and design philosophy can require a different approach in playing them than most other genres, including ones that have cribbed liberally from them. But the best examples are compelling for the same sorts of reasons many other games are acclaimed: thoughtful systems and gameplay progression that instill player investment and ownership of each run, successful or not. As I explained previously in my Tokimeki Memorial retrospective for its 25th anniversary, good dating sim design is good game design, period, and it's far less divorced from the rest of the medium's greats than you might think. They might not ultimately be for everyone, but I strongly, strongly encourage those who can explore them to any meaningful degree to try to do so. Dating sims are a profoundly integral part of Japanese game history and knowledge of them is essential to attaining a truly complete fluency in Japanese games as a whole. Just because they're not made all that much today doesn't mean they stopped matter to developers there, including those behind some of the country's biggest hits in the past decade.
Before I go, for those looking for recommendations on good starting points that will give you a solid foundation for exploring the wider genre [editor's note: don't forget this blog's own recommendations page, as well!], here are three games worth checking out:
Tokimeki Memorial 4. As mentioned before, when dealing with long-running series—of which there are actually relatively few in dating sims—it's often best to play the later games first and the first games later. Nowhere is that arguably truer than with Konami's own Tokimeki Memorial. While the original remains a superbly designed game once you learn it, Tokimeki Memorial 4 offers a lot of clutch quality-of-life improvements that not only make it easier to experiment with different kinds of strategies for runs, but actively fosters them, particularly by way of an FPS-inspired perk system that allows you to tweak and remix a wide variety of variables under the hood. It also boasts the most narratively fleshed out character routes you'll find in the entire series, with dialogue that can hold its own among the genre's best. (Come back and play Yuu's route once you've played the original game, though.)
Amagami. If you've been following me since my Twitter days, you know how strongly I feel about this game. Taking place on a unique 4X-style hexagonal grid, each tile offers either a story scene of varying importance, or an opportunity to chat freely with one of the game's six main heroines. These discussions play out via an inventive conversation system with light puzzle elements, the contents and topics of which change and evolve depending on the state of the relationship and the overall mood of the moment. Definitely read the manual to at least fully grasp that system, as the game doesn't do enough to explain it, but otherwise, whatever system you can play it on, PS2, PSP, or Vita, you should really, really play it. Many foreign players go with this game as their gateway into the genre and rarely have I seen any of them regret it. It's a game I myself have written multiple essays about for a reason!
Dream Club. D3's Xbox 360/PS3 era dating sim series isn't what I would call a masterpiece by any means. But their adult casts and hostess club settings are both rarely seen in the genre and the writing, while nothing to write home about, still makes for plenty of lighthearted, if often cheesecake-laden fun. There's not a whole lot of depth to them, but they have just enough schedule and money management elements to be instructive at a basic level about how these systems often work in other games. The games also all feature a bemusing drinking system that gives conversations their own unique feel once you and your company are sufficiently inebriated. For newcomers who might be intimidated by the gameplay depth of something like a Tokimeki Memorial, even 4's more accommodating take on them—and believe me, that series' inner workings are intricately dense—any mainline entry in Dream Club will make for a fine introduction to the basic appeal and structure of dating sims.
If you made it all the way to the end of this post, thanks for reading! I might make some edits and additions later if I think of anything particularly pertinent, but these are things I would've liked to have known going into them myself. If you give dating sims a chance, hopefully this post will start you off on a better foot than I was initially able to!
Either way, good luck and happy wooing!
