Como pode um jogo de dating sim com uma proposta tão simples, entupido de clichês e com arquétipos de personagens que você vê a exaustão em animes e mangás conseguir ser tão carismático e divertido?

Apesar do jogo de fato seja bem clichê num geral, ainda sim ele faz um trabalho espetacular na parte do romance e no desenvolvimento do mesmo, incluindo o desenvolvimento das personagens em si, essas que apesar de não serem super profundas ou super bem escritas, ainda sim são personagens com o qual você se importa, cria empatia e até se identifica com o drama que elas passam em suas vidas, e isso funciona não só pelo fatos delas serem ótimas personagens por si só, mas também pela parte mecânica do jogo, que te induz e faz você querer passar seu tempo com elas e aumentar seu nível intimidade com elas, porque além da recompensa de passar o tempo com essas personagens, você ainda é recompensado com um jogo que de fato é bem divertido e tem toda uma estratégia em relação a parte social e romance do jogo. Eu as vezes até esquecia que tava jogando um joguinho de namoro, de tão imerso que tava naquele mundinho, de tão divertido que era jogar isso e ir vendo o romance progredindo de forma tão natural e aconchegante. É um jogo com muita alma e extremante gostoso de se jogar, e acabou sendo uma das experiências mais comfy e maravilhosas que já tive com a mídia.

Enfim, dessa vez fiz a rota da Kaoru e ela com certeza tem o certificado de waifu. Não é a minha personagem favorita do jogo, mas entendo o porque dela ser tão popular, no mais achei a rota muito boa.

To me, dating sims since Tokimeki are about a way to see high school life through the relationships formed in that period (romantic ones, yes, but isn't love important, even more so in those teen years?). It's interesting to see how Amagami reflects about that period in contrast to Tokimeki philosophy.

Though it would be easy to point out that Tokimeki is a strategy based game while Amagami gets rid of any numbers to focus on character events, it says very little to compare this premise. Comparing the results of the approach, however, reveals opposite views on the same topic.

Tokimeki view is interested in taking the whole 3 years of high school period and making most of the routine days as a build up transition toward the "greatest hits", special events where to make sure to leave a mark through exaggeration. This exaggeration with some fantasy touches can even be seen in the girls' designs, where you could even differentiate them by their hair color, which clashes with Amagami’s more down to earth black haired ones (brown at most). Amagami prefers to select a small period of the high school life, the last 6 weeks before exams and graduation take away any socialization possibility, and to put every single day under a magnifying glass. Every day is divided between the four class breaks in which the decision is not what aspect to improve or what club to join, but in what event to witness, or in similar terms, who to spend time with.

These events have two particularities. First, contrasting with the big hits of Tokimeki that usually happen outside of school or in special school events, the vast majority of Amagami scenes are presented within a normal routine context within the school. Not a great number of big events will happen in just six weeks, and even the most exceptional cases are treated with relative calmness. While in Tokimeki the school is then just a transitory tool to get somewhere else, via clubs or meeting other people casually, the school in Amagami is thought out as a net (or a grid in the literal game terms) to form and develop relationships. Amagami thinks that the school is where the magic really happened, not around it. That the memories slowly forged day by day. This is evidenced by the planning stage background, the room that was the headquarters of Tokimeki is just the place to recall the day in Amagami, a school background will be present when making the event decisions.

Secondly, by focusing on spending time during breaks and visually (and mechanically) representing those moments through a grid, a series of consequences can be seen. The grid ends up becoming a sort of mental map of memories, or better said, memories of opportunities. It’s easy to navigate the map by the end of the game and see who you decided to spend more time with. It's not only what you actually did, but the lost opportunities implicit in other dating sims here are made explicit. If some people had a lot of events completed, some others had just a few. If a new event being unlocked is important because it means new opportunities, closed events, be it by time limit or by exclusive choices, are just as, if not more, impactful. The mental map is not only defined by what was lived but by what was left behind because not even the most optimized run will see a 5% of the possibilities realized, and I'm giving a generous estimation. It paints a canvas where the memory is not a selection of highlights but a collage of seen and unseen events, the school as a more conceptual formational place through meetings rather than a concrete moments generator.

Likewise, those lost opportunities impact on the direct or indirect treatment of the main character and the girls. The girls who you spend the most time with will begin to rely on you whenever they are in conflict, while the ones you barely talked to can only be interacted through scenes where you hear some loose conversation about them or remember and wonder what they might be up to now, too late to form a bond. Again, there is a contrast between the confidence of who you kept close and the melancholy of seeing people you didn't even get to know well gaining distance.

At the end of Tokimeki one felt that everything happened too quickly, thanks to weeks passing in seconds and minor events lasting just a few lines of dialogue, questioning oneself if that unrepeatable formative time was really well spent. The transience of a life focused on getting a girlfriend will make you reflect if most of the time isn’t getting lost. Amagami reaches a similar conclusion, but by explicitly marking the lost roads and realizing that it was impossible to have it all. In this way, the desire to go back and repeat a fantasy until it gets fulfilled is substituted by a reality where, even if turning back, the same overbearing feeling would still persist. And that’s when the decisions taken casually gain a new weight. Seeing it like this, it's no mystery why 2009’s Amagami is set in the 90s.

An incredible example of creating a connection between player and character, I have never felt so genuinely for someone in a game as I have (repeatedly!) in Amagami.

Kadokawa goes a different route than the classic stat-based approach of dating sims like Tokimeki Memorial, removing the genre's addictive number crunching and detailed planning in favor for systems more emotional. Here, life is represented by a great web-like grid that grows and grows the more memories you make, but also acts as a perpetul reminder that you can't experience everything in life; you will have missed opportunities and regrets; you'll look forward to things only for them not to happen; as you make connections and old ones deepen, you'll lose others. It is nothing less than a mechanical metaphor for life in all its complexity. Looking back on it as you near the end, you see your past in its patterns, marvel with nostalgia at how much has happened without you even noticing it.

I could talk about the grid until I sound like some crazed conspiratorial weirdo (and I have....to myself, which doesn't help the image) but the real heart here is the characters. And what characters! Wonderful, multi-dimensional people who buck stereotypes. They are heightened, yes, but act with complexity and a sense of realism. They hide parts of themselves big and small; they have surprising interests and talk about the mundane or pointless; they laugh. And brought to life with writing that is quietly stunning in how effective it is, it takes only a very little amount of time before eyes darting to the side become the most romantically charged thing you've ever seen in a video game. There are so many moments here that should, by all accounts, be minor, pointless things, but instead are overwhelming.

A perfect fusion of gameplay and story. An all-time great example of how games don't have to be action-packed, mechanically complex, or even all that interactive. Amagami is a beautiful work of empathy and, I think, one of the greatest games ever made.

also this version has a bonus mahjong story mode so like, triple the points. 15 stars.