Best Retro Dating Sim type games?

[Anapan]

While I was reading about how to convert Higurashi to play on my Android I read some posts about the game YU-NO being translated fully with the best bits of the PC-98 and the Saturn port mixed into it. It's retro enough that it has a B&W mode and FM-Synth music. Looks like you need to gather a pile of files to get it all going, but it seems simple enough.

edit: I didn't fully read the post. No, no interesting game, only interesting storyline in that one... Disregard...
I guess there's Knights of Xentar...

edit: fair warning - they have nipples.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I should probably warn you that some of these games have explicit sex scenes. The ones in my list are either clean, or give you the option of skipping those scenes. I can't speak for the ones I linked to.

Actually, Tsukihime might not let you skip those scenes. I haven't played it yet.

[4ppleseed]

You guys are great as always. I'll look into your suggestions over the next or so & feedback

[J T]

Visual Novel Database in an amazing resource for this sort of thing:
http://vndb.org/

If you are looking for English games made by English speakers, then you should check out Christine Love's games. They are great (and several are free):
http://loveconquersallgam.es/

For more English, you also might want to check out Winter Wolves. Their stuff is ok, but not great. I liked Bionic Heart well enough though:
http://www.winterwolves.com/

[Valkyrie-Favor]

How could I forget Christine Love! Digital: A Love Story has a really nice atmosphere and some incredible music. Download it now. Analogue: A Hate Story is a pay-for game, but it's cheap and definitely worth reading. A lot more weighty and serious than most of the VNs I listed. There's an expansion/sequel called Hate Plus in the works.

She has a third visual novel, but I haven't played it. Seems to be about bizarre student/teacher romances and facebook...?

[4ppleseed]

I was interested in the visual novel style of storytelling, so I've ended up playing a few dating sims. I like VNs with plots, though, so most of the games have a substantial story with branching routes that you can play to learn the entire story. I'm not interested in titillation at all, but sometimes I like a girl's character enough to play to the end.

Some of them are actually huge productions. It'll take you 60 hours to see everything in ever17. Usually, I pick my favorite girl's route and the main route. Unless it's particularly excellent there's no reason to see everything.

Free games have are marked.* All of these have an English version somewhere.

Straight dating sims:
Katawa Shoujo*
Love Plus
Clannad (anime is pretty popular. OVAs are excellent.)

VNs with plot:
Steins;Gate [Time travel sci-fi] (Anime is mind-blowingly awesome)
G-Senjou no Maou [Detective/Psychological]
Tsukihime [Horror]
Ever17 [Trapped in underwater complex]
Chaos;Head [I don't even...]
True Remembrance* [memory editing]
Narcissu* [just read it]
Narcissu Side 2nd*

A list of 7 more games to try: http://www.bishoujoproject.com/the-comp ... tion-list/

Anything at http://www.insani.org/ is something a bunch of VN lovers thought was worth translating in their spare time.

A similar style of storytelling is also used in Snatcher, Policenauts, Famicom Detective Club II, and other cool adventure games.

This was really interesting, I watched youtubes of all your suggestions. I have to admit I still don't quite 'get' the VNs. Its an odd mix of Manga, Anime, Choose your own adventure and Soundtracks and sometimes real footage (usually a camera looking up at trees through a car window etc). There's not a lot of actual 'game' going on. You read a lot, watch, listen and then click a few lines of text. I will play one all the way through but it seems quite a passive, chilled out experience (not a bad thing).

Thank you for the list, it was a great crash course in the medium

[4ppleseed]

There's always the grandaddy (grandma?) of console dating sims, Tokimeki Memorial for the SFC and PCE.

This was an interesting one too, it looked like it had some RPG-lite elements and quite a lot of Jan-Ken - will wait for a translation patch and give this one a go, ta.

[4ppleseed]

theres some Love Hina games for the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance that got translated.

These look fun. Again it still just reading some text and clicking a few menu options to go down a certain story arc.

I guess I was hoping that some of these dating sims actually had something else behind them - for example a Match 3 game where you go on a date and have to match 20 sets of icecream, flowers, poetry books etc to win the girl over and proceed. Anyone see anything that mixes the dating sim with more of a traditional game engine? Even something like Game Dev Story but with different girls would be fun.

[4ppleseed]

I'll trust that you'll be able to tell that games like "Boob Wars" or "Do You Like Horny Bunnies?" are bottom of the barrel titles...

Just watched Do You Like Horny Bunnies? on YouTube, I can see who this is aimed at, stylistically it's pretty crass but gameplay-wise it's no different to the other VNs/Dating Sims I've looked at today.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

That's just it. Dating sims have rarely been about the gameplay. Even an involved one like Tokimeki Memorial uses its mechanics as a vehicle for the plot, characters, or humor. Time travel in Steins;Gate is the reward in itself. You're not really playing to overcome a challenge in the first place, so inserting puzzle games would probably get annoying. There are a few, though...

If you're interested, there's a sequel to Clannad that follows Tomoyo's route. It's called "Tomoyo After" and was recently translated by Doki. I haven't played it yet, but apparently it has some RPG elements. The story seems completely bizarre, but its singular goal is to make you cry your eyeballs out. You'll want to play her route in Clannad first, or just watch her OVA and the first season of the TV series. Kyou's OVA is really good too.

Sting has an RPG/VN game called Riviera: The Promised Land. Battles are interesting because you can only have four items, including weapons and armor, but the exploration and character interaction is all handled as a visual novel. It's on PSP and GBA. Both good, PSP version is better.

I feel like soundtracks are often neglected in VNs though. Steins;Gate and Clannad have amazing music, but most of these "games" are full of generic stuff. I thought about replacing all the mp3s in G-Senjou no Maou with the Yggdra Union OST.

So, which VN do you think you'll play first?