Amagami (2009)

Next stop in the classic Japanese dating sim world after Tokimeki Memorial is this much later, much different game which also has a fan translation patch. I like things about it, but I really feel like I have to trudge through a lot of stuff that's either meh or outright unappealing to get to the good moments.

While there are decisions to make about how you spend your time that affect how the story plays out in a branching manner, most of the game is relatively non-interactive reading. That's fine with me in a vacuum, since that applies to multiple of my favorite games, but the writing here just feels very hit or miss. One minute I may be laughing and enjoying one of the characters quite a bit, and the next I'm either very bored or totally turned off of the direction the story or character writing is going. It's a lot of random "slice of life" stuff, which I can accept, but I need to actually like the characters and writing and humor and style to accept it in the absence of a stronger and better-paced central narrative.

Some of the interactive stuff is just weird, like a conversation minigame that I don't care for and a main "map" screen of all the possible scenes you can do that is not great to read or use. There's some nice expressive facial animation stuff during conversations, but as another negative I still can't escape a feeling that the relatively down-to-earth anime style is just too plain and lacking in personality.

I feel bad about dropping the game around halfway through since it does seem to gradually build attachment to some of the characters well over time, even a couple that I didn't like at first, but I'm just not in love with the overall experience enough to keep going.