I was interested in playing this after hearing that it was better than expected and a really early example of a dating sim. The one thing that stood out to me was how the women you can date felt closer to actual characters with lives that don't exclusively revolve around a) being utterly obsessed with the protagonist or b) being porny archetypes. That's not to say those things aren't ever an issue, or that it doesn't sometimes fall into gross tropes, but at the very least I found the writing funny and more interesting than I expected it to be. Cool as a piece of gaming history (sort of?) but not really my thing.

I'd played a few routes of this a while back and wasn't really sure what to make of it, but decided to give it another stab after Hazel had positive things to say in her summer recap video, and...

I was... pleasantly surprised by this? Takurou will always be a bit of a womanizer by nature, but he's surprisingly funny and it's possible to play him relatively respectfully, if you so choose. There's an absolutely insane amount of text in this game dedicated to inspecting items or parts of the scenery, and it's what gives this game a lot of its charm - forcing horndog Takurou to closely investigate and repeatedly comment on the underside of a table in a cafe instead of taking the opportunity to look up someone's skirt.

I don't really want to oversell this, because it's still fundamentally an eroge from 1992, but I do find myself wishing that other, similar games had a similar commitment to character consistency and granting their female cast some sense of interiority. I think the interwoven "routes" are one of this game's biggest strengths for the same reason, where pursuing one character's route might have you making time for three or four other girls in an approach that is less a sleazy "wine-and-dine everyone", instead forming a more natural social dynamic where getting to know someone means occasionally interacting with the people they're close to. Taking the battering ram approach and repeatedly interacting with the same character is not the way to find anything fruitful here, and it's refreshing to find a dating sim that tries to complicate the process - although it's not my favorite method, it's a damn good attempt for such an early entry in the genre.

Although the art looks good, I can't help but feel like we're missing out by not getting the PC-98 art in some form or fashion, even if it's just a toggle (a la the Steam version of Umineko). In addition to matching my own aesthetic preferences, I think having more convenient access to the game's old artwork would make it easier to appreciate the game's early contributions to the dating sim genre instead of simply having it fade into the background among the more modern games that are standing on its shoulders.

Still holds up.

Takurou is the funniest dude, highly recommend inspecting everything early on for his descriptions/random bullshit he does.

There being actual adult women with adult problems, completely unrestrained from typical modern-day eroge, is refreshing and can't be understated.

QOL improvements are also appreciated, the original seems like an absolute nightmare to work through without a walkthrough. You can still play in classic mode, though.

Also just cool to see how this would influence stuff like To Heart and ONE, with both of them adding fantasty/scifi elements on top.

Edit: YOU CAN CUCK YOUR FRIEND/BE CUCKED DEPENDING ON YOUR CHOICES. KINO.

EDIT: DO NOT USE THE SCENARIO JUMP, YOU WILL MISS A LOT OF SMALL MOMENTS THAT ADD TO THE CHARACTERS

Full video review: https://youtu.be/KPxtWCd0g3k

Dōkyūsei - one of the most important visual novels ever released. It came out all the way back in 1992 and is generally considered to be one of the biggest dating sims of the time and part of the reason why that genre took off. Now here we are thirty years later with a remaster of that very game. Does it hold up? Kinda.

Story and Gameplay
There is practically no real “story” here. You’re just some dude spending the rest of his summer break messing around and trying to pick up some girls. No major drama, no twists, none of that - just constant dates with girls and maybe a little bit of character building for each, especially towards the end.

I found this approach to be both good and bad. It’s good in that this lends to a lot of interactivity. You don’t just sit there and spam enter a bunch, but instead are constantly moving around, interacting with the environment and different CGs, and picking which characters you want to talk to by the in-game minute. As someone that plays a ton of visual novels, it was refreshing to have this sense of control.

That said - it does come with one major downside: a lackluster main story. If you’re not a fan of whatever character’s story? Well, there’s really nothing else to do other than pursue some other character. They are hardly tied together and even the individual characters themselves don’t have that going for them. Some characters only have a few events and, as such, have really poorly developed personalities, backstories, all that. This leads to the relationship coming off as forced, cheap, and there just to fill a specific archetype.

Then you get a few other characters that have a lot of events and even some conflicts to overcome - which in turn develops their character. I found these to be the most satisfying personally. Maybe I just like a well-written character or maybe I’m playing the game wrong by looking for something like that. But again, it is a dating sim, so I would hope that such a game could at least deliver a bit on that front.

Even then though, the character stories themselves are the most surface level thing - those conflicts that come up are resolved just as quickly and often left me disappointed with what could have been. Again, some are better than others, but I have now finished the game multiple times and really only liked maybe two or three characters max out of the fourteen total.

So I guess it all comes down to what you want. For a dating sim? It’s got pretty much all the bases covered. Don’t go in looking for deeper character writing and you are set. There are a ton of choices to make, tons of places to visit, tons of character events to unlock - the game does an absolutely solid job there. Actually caring for said characters and remembering them weeks after beating the game? Maybe not so much.

Writing
The writing is VERY comedy-heavy and VERY 90s. Stupid one-liners, characters acting completely ridiculous, and an overemphasis on perverted jokes. The protagonist definitely fits that last one and pretty much every character has some sort of tripping, falling, or being above the protagonist CG and he happily partakes in the view. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of that part of the comedy, but the rest at least makes up for it a bit.

Difficulty and Route Structure
Back in the day, you would have wanted a walkthrough for this one. You need to know which characters to meet at which locations at which times to actually advance along their route and score hearts with them. In classic mode, this information is entirely up to you to figure out, but fortunately, with this remake, comes the now default “easy mode”.

This mode just straight up gives you a calendar plotting all of the key dating events and it is super helpful to have as someone that did not want to waste time mapping out this web of character interactions. That and it even tells you what choices earn or lose you hearts - again negating the need for a walkthrough which I usually end up using for most visual novels anyways. A nice addition that makes the game far more playable than it was thirty years ago.

Length
I was not able to get all of the characters in my first playthrough, but for those I did (maybe half of them), it took me around eight or so hours. Future playthroughs were even easier because I could just ignore the characters I already completed and just skip directly to the character events I missed. So it’s not that long a VN, but also not too short.

Art and Music
Although a part of me wishes they had some sort of toggle to enable the old art - I also cannot deny that the new art is completely fine and somehow manages to maintain a newish look while also being somewhat nostalgic. The music, on the other hand, I honestly cannot recall at all now that I’m writing this review. I don’t remember it being terrible though - so let’s just leave it as “okay, but forgettable”.

Overall
Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer is a bit of a mixed bag by modern standards. What it lacks in quality writing it makes up for with its solid dating sim mechanics and nostalgic art. That said, I can’t say any of the characters are that memorable and the experience is more so just fun in the moment - the dated humor actually adds to this too. So I wouldn’t say it’s an instabuy, but maybe worth a look if you want to play through a piece of VN and dating sim history. Otherwise, it’s just okay.

Doukyuusei: Bangin' Summer é um Remake de uma das VNs mais importantes para o que conhecemos hoje como Date Sim.

O gameplay tem Map Moviment e Time Management divertidos, a cidade te da diversos diálogos e eventos únicos se vc for paciente para explorar, existem diversas possibilidades e se vc não for cauteloso, perde diversos eventos e até mesmo rotas de algumas heroínas, além de vc precisar interagir com determinada heróina pra desbloquear um evento com outra, já que algumas se conhecem e revelam informações de outras que serão úteis mais pra frente, o que é bem interessante.

Existem dois modos: Easy Mode, que te mostra onde ir e o que fazer para progredir e Classic Mode, onde não existe indicação nenhuma de nada, como na sua versão original, ainda bem que vc não é obrigado a jogar dessa forma kkkkk. A comédia é muito boa, tem aquele estilo galhofa das VNs da Elf, onde inserem coisas sobrenaturais só pela piada, têm um protagonista completamente depravado que faz comentários absurdos sobre tudo e, claro, muito erotismo, nem sempre de uma forma decente, com algumas problemáticas e cenas bizarras. O texto dos romances é ok, a maioria segue o padrão do que se espera de um romcom, outros poderiam não existir, mas existem algumas rotas que se destacam.

A produção é mais ou menos, não gosto da maioria dos designs aqui, alguns são muito feios e artificiais, prefiro o clássico, porém tem vários CGs lindos e detalhados, background art ótimo tbm.

Esperava mais, ainda sim, saí satisfeito.