This game offers the player two different voyeuristic experiences. First, is the one the game designers created, where you creep around unlocking suggestive images. Second, is the one that you human behind the keyboard is doing, as you peer into the psyche of the type of person who created or consumed this game 30 years ago.

This is not a very good stat-raising game or dating sim. But it is sort of compelling, despite being very juvenile, aggressively horny, and having a messed up translation. The characters and their actions are often manipulative, creepy, or nonsensical in a way that is not making any kind of statement. The game, like many of its contemporaries, operates on its own game logic about women. This game avoids any attempt at self-reflection it clearly is just targeted at a certain kind of person at a specific place and time, and I think that can be interesting to experience. I would not recommend this game to anyone looking for the traditional things you get out of a game, be it storytelling, challenge, a sense of satisfaction, etc. But instead as an anthropological find, it's interesting.

i dont want to give true love any semblance of prominence, importance, or significance. it's not a good game, but in the 90s up to the early 2000s, it was one of the few visual novels/dating sims you could get your hands on as a relatively naive yet enterprising adolescent trying to make sense of relationships, romance, and sex. i remember reading megatokyo as a 11 year old and being told by a thirty-something fred gallagher that games like kana: little sister and true love story were marvels of new media and were as engrossing and poignant as a traditional novel. i'm not sure if i feel that way outside of a handful of titles, but true love is not worth such consideration

developed by software house parsley, true love is a dating/life sim where you live as a near-destitute college student attempting to balance self-improvement, a job, and the affections of one of ten young ladies. on all fronts, this is another stat-building dating sim in the vein of something like tokimeki memorial or dokyusei, but with little to render it as memorable. if it weren't for the fact that true love was one of the first and few bishoujo games localized for the west at the time, it wouldn't nearly have the same distinction and fondness it experiences nowadays by fans of the genre. the production values for true love are also barely skirting the "budget" category and sinking into "complete destitution." TD-X, who i would assume as being parsley's art director at the time, was responsible for all art and graphic assets for this title. with how ambitious this game was in comparison to parsley's previous releases, corners had to be cut to maintain the production schedule. the art in this game is dated, sure, but its also not up to par with similar titles released earlier or around the same time. in terms of character design, many characters suffer from proportions that make you feel like you're romancing the primordial ooze that would birth the modern-day moeblob, and the "big eyes, small mouth" design philosophy behind many of these characters gets exaggerated to the point of near-parody.

the one thing that's truly outstanding, to me at least, would have to be the music tracks for this game. tracks are bubbly yet dense, and thoughtfully composed. i can only imagine what this must have sound like using something like a roland or yamaha sound module, rather than the generic Microsoft midi synth many probably played with. enterprising music producers should look at these tracks for inclusions in their sample library, or as composition studies. these are honestly some solid tracks.

there are some features of true love that are genuinely charming, but a lot of it comes from outside the game itself. the fact that it was translated and published in the west itself is notable, considering that game localization was still a relatively amateur practice among small publishers, and true love could be considered a behemoth containing over 2000 words of written dialogue (i believe?). the team at otaku publishing did a decent job adapting what was present and writing a script that was candid, fun, and palatable for its intended audience. the game's dialogue never takes itself too seriously, and it's to the game's benefit.

the game is also not an unadulterated smut fest, as one would assume, meaning that you have to spend time with these characters prior to any form of raunchy payoff. while there's way too much lazy writing present, and there's instances of sexual assault being used as a plot device, the game's storylines aren't completely offensive. there's complexity in how one should manage the affections of multiple suitors, and there's consequences for trying to play multiple prospects at once. some storylines (like ryoko's or chiemi's) are tender and sentimental, which should be the goal for a game like this.

true love can simply be seen as a poor reflection of its many contemporaries, but the game deserves some distinction for opening doors for a wider variety of japanese games in the market. if you really want to play something like this, go play tokimeki memorial or princess maker/long live the queen/palais de raine. if you absolutely need to play an eroge, play hoshi ori or something developed by elf or ASCII (to heart, clannad, etc). there's so many better options, and and the primary reason true love '95 should be treated with any particular fondness is because it opened the door for these games in the first place.