2d moe robot girl just tryin' to survive in a 3d world, beep boop! ^.^~

Founder and Director of DemureSoft


iiotenki
@iiotenki

As folks could probably surmise by my earlier posting, Fire Woman: Matoigumi, the little-remembered open-ended dating sim/turn-based fighting game-hybrid that could from HuneX for the PC-FX and PS1, has been on my mind again lately. Really, I've been thinking about it a lot since I first chanced upon it about a year ago and was caught completely off-guard by just how much I enjoyed it despite feeling like I'd mined most of The Good Dating Sims of its vintage. (And if this is your first introduction to the game, feel free to check the corresponding tag below to see my previous coverage where I go into more detail what it's about and how it actually plays.) But I find myself thinking about it a ton in recent days in particular, so I decided to finally jump back in the fray like I always figured I would sooner or later, this time on real hardware to at least somewhat diminish the temptation to save scum as much as I did when I last played it in emulation on my Vita.

Anyway, it's still every bit the sweet, cozy, and inventive game I remember it being. The sprite art is as gorgeous as ever. The cast is as charming and earnest as ever. The incidental events you can come upon just by wandering around and playing normally are as plentiful and endearing as ever. The freedom to do what you want, go where you want, and see who you want to see physically around the school campus is as refreshing as ever. In short, it's still as cool a game as ever.

You can probably make the argument that, when it comes to structure and mechanics, this is a game that straddles the line between the really old school way of doing what I call nanpa games (the early Japanese relationship games less about romance so much as hooking up; think Doukyuusei and its ilk, especially in terms of physically navigating the world), which came before Tokimeki Memorial, and Tokimeki Memorial itself. It's a fascinating juxtaposition to ponder, as the former variety of game faded pretty rapidly once Tokimemo properly took off, but I would argue such a summation doesn't give this game enough credit, because in a lot of ways, Matoigumi outdoes both of them. Not every way, mind; it definitely lacks the snappiness of a good Tokimemo run in particular, which can make it a slow burn, especially on a first run. There are reasons those other games dominate the narrative of early dating sims, and rightfully so. But it manages to impressively marry some rather disparate parts of both schools of dating sim design while also giving the characters more grounded dialogue and extensive, somewhat emergent-feeling narrative arcs to explore, all of which goes a long way to making it a winner in my book. In a genre that's played host to few true one-hit wonders that didn't go on to become franchises in their own right, Matoigumi is an intriguingly rare exception.

You may not learn a lot about other dating sims in playing it; it's a bit too unique to be particularly instructive in that regard, which I mean in only the nicest of ways. But, as I wrote earlier, if you want a great demonstration that the mechanical sky truly was the limits in terms of what dating sims could encompass in their heyday, Matoigumi is one game well worth studying regardless. :eggbug-relieved:


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