my take on game design is there should be more hostile games towards its players, none of you game devs learned anything from drakengard 3 and god hand
tokimeki memorial is one of the greatest dating sim series ever because every single installment is out to hurt you as a player in at least the fringes and makes you mechanically work for some of the best romances in the game
1: shiori
2: one of the girls is scripted to always move away midway through every run and unless you go out of your way to stay in touch with her with the few means you have (phone calls and school sports meets), she's out of the picture for good; you can't take her presence for granted just because "player adversity would ruin the emotional investment"
3: the entire game is such an impressively tedious slog, i've never had it in me to beat it once
4: you can date the girl who gives you the intel on how the rest of the cast feels about you, but if you do, she cuts off that feature entirely because what use do you still have for what the others think if you're going out with her anyway?*
all of which is to say, a genuinely good way to get me to like your dating sim is to have the relationships mechanically fuck with me somehow
*while a pretty massive, if not unsurvivable loss if you intend to pursue any of the main cast anyway, this is actually further subverted by the fact that she is the ONLY heroine in the entire series who is immune to the other girls blowing up and diminishing your reputation if you neglect them for too long, the implication being that as one of your best friends, her affection for you is so strong, it's immune to those mechanics. it's genuinely pretty sweet
