Seeing as how you can get free shipping on games this weekend at J-List, I need some suggestions on how to round out the four games I order. For certain I will order Cherry. I’m considering pre-ordering Princess Waltz (due to Narg’s review of it, even given his preference for the darkside and twins). That leaves two or three spaces open. I currently own Hitomi, CSMT 1 and 2, Crescendo, Kana, Snow Sakura, and YMK. I have Family Project on pre-order. Of the games I own, the only one I don’t really care for is Hitomi. Here is an overview of what I like and dislike:
[list]
[]Dislike: futa, kemonomimi, yaoi.[/]
[]Acceptable: loli, yuri, huge breasts, sex romps.[/]
[]Like: incest, natural appearing breasts, light side, ren’ai[/]
[]Variable: rape (e.g. compare Crescendo and Hitomi), darkside (hated Hitomi, Tsukihime when I borrowed it from a friend was alright)[/][/list]
That’s everything I can think of regarding my preferences. If you have questions regarding what I like, feel free to ask. I need your suggestions ASAP so I can get these ordered this weekend. If you are going to make a suggestion, please explain why you think I would like it (without spoilers).
Well, Bazooka cafe and The Sagara Family come to mind.
I did like both and they pretty much fit the bill for you.
Bazooka Cafe is lighthearted and has a big breast theme.
The Sagara Family has a little bit of everything you like and find acceptable in it.
[list][]Princess Waltz - Pulltop makes really high quality games, and the battle system looks fun.[/]
[]Figures of Happiness - Lightside ren’ai game with a nice story.[/]
[]Heart de Roommate - A lightside love-comedy game; I’ve heard some good stuff about it.[/][/list]
Quoted for agreement. 
Heart de Roommate does include your cousin/sister as an option for incest points (although I think she was the one character I didn’t bother to get, at least I can’t remember her ending…). In the text, she is his cousin but calls herself his sister. I don’t know if this is ass-covering for the English version or not.
Bazooka Cafe is actually a pretty nice game, despite the big boobs (which I really hate). The voice actresses do a really good job of creating a happy experience for the player. Plus, it doesn’t take place in a high school (I’m getting a little tired of that). No incest, tho, which is sort of a minus.
Kango Schicyauzo 1 has the fake-incest thing (you’re adopted) with both your adopted mom and sister. It’s as light-side as it gets.
Ever 17 is the bomb, but there’s no sex scenes at all.
Nocturnal Illusion is cheap (comes in the Milky House collection with another game for like $20) and awesome. Private Nurse might meet your criteria (it’s light side and – I’m not sure – ren’ai). Brave Soul is an RPG. Tokimeki Checkin! is a very light game and not really a sex romp,but not really ren’ai either.
I agree with Sagara Family. It has lots of everything to fit kinda whatever. and it has great amounts of humor and enjoyable Story. There is a Bit of a Dark Part with a certain Char that I wasn’t happy but the story played through it well. (Though the mother’s path didn’t handle the Dark side part well. Half funny half made me more sad) But I really think you would enjoy this one.
Figures of Happiness was also Very nice ^.^
Ever 17. It has a total of five paths, no sex, but the story is great.
The Sagara Family. More of a sex romp which I normally don’t like, but this one had a decent plot and the humor was great.
Figures of Happiness. It’s a good read overall, but personally I didn’t care for the art style.
I appreciate the feedback everyone. Still have a bit more time for others to chime in with suggestions. Here is the ranking of the suggestions so far:
[list][]Bazooka Cafe x2[/]
[]Sagara Family x3[/]
[]Princess Waltz x2[/]
[]Figures of Happiness x4[/]
[]Heart de Roommate x2[/]
[]I’m Gonna Nurse You 1 x1[/]
[]Ever 17 x2[/]
[]Nocturnal Illusion x1[/][/list]
Ever 17 - By far the best of the available games that you don’t own.
Figures of Happiness - Quite a nice lightside ren’ai game. It’s also (for the most part) a non-school based setting.
Princess Waltz - The production values for it look much higher than any of the other games mentioned here, and as Ojamajo_LimePie mentioned, given Pulltop’s reputation and the popularity of Princess Waltz in Japan, it’s a must purchase game for me.
if you like ren’ai get Casual Romance Club. It’s also a “light-side” game.
Interesting that you say that Jinnai. I never would have pegged Casual Romance Club with the tag ren’ai given the description I’ve seen for it. With the way it’s described, it seemed like it was more focused on “scoring” with the ladies in the club than love (i.e. more towards the definition of a yarugee).
You might also want to check out Private Nurse. It can be a dramatic and romantic game at times. I would also recommend Sagara Family, although it can be a sex romp at times.
There should be a topic with some kind of ranking for light games because every time someone asks for suggestions, we always suggest the same games
It’s always :
- YMK, Ever17, Crescendo, Snow Sakura, Kana
- Sagara family, FoH, X change alternative
- csmt 1 & 2, dylhb 1 & 2, hourglass of summer, …
(not necessarily my own preference, but it’s seems it’s the general ranking)
Well, in the end I ordered APC, PW, FoH, and CRC (mostly out of sheer curiousity because of what Jinnai said - hopefully I won’t regret it like when I bought Hitomi because of the semi-incest factor). That said, I might have gotten Ever 17 if it was available on J-List, and I’m sure the Sagara girls can wait until my next set of four games. Thank you all for the suggestions. Now I need to go start a topic in Game Ordering & V-mate Problems because for some reason it looks like the 15% discount for four games and free shipping for this weekend only wasn’t applied…
Casual Romance Club is a dating sim game, unlike the others, which are the more normal ADV/VN-type games. There’s really no story to it. You just talk to girls every day, and then you can ask them out on a date. I hated the game. The lack of story and events made it boring to me. It just felt like I picked some girl and randomly talked to her about nothing. There wasn’t any flow to the game and it wasn’t funny or interesting.
Figures of Happiness was a decent game, but I never finished all the paths. I didn’t like the characters enough for me to bother.
Too bad you couldn’t find Ever 17. It’s getting nearly impossible to find, even though it’s probably the best game in the genre to be released here.
CRC does however focus on the aspect of dating, heavily. The fact you’re trying to score is the same for all these games in the end, just some make it more obvious. CRC does have that aspect, but it is also about building social relations in general.
Story-wise, it doesn’t have the same level of narrative. it is about talking to girls, making descions about what to say and going on dates (the latter which is what ren’ai really is about fundimentally), however it does have a storyline and plot that developes around it, which can vary slightly depending upon how you apporach it. The drama is done in a different manner, but it is still there. The interpersonal relaitionships and character development are actually far more advanced than most of the other games. There are a lot fewever cookie-cutter elements to this (they are present, so by no means do i mean to say they aren’t there). Compared to almost everything on that list, except Ever 17 and perhaps in some aspects FoH, the game has far more complex character development, realistic (as close as can be) dramatic situations and responses, and social dynamics and development.
Is it on par with something like Kana or YMK? Probably not, simply because those games have much stronger emotional aspects they deal with by far then a light-hearted game like CRC does (and imo without that darker aspect you can’t be on the top tier). However, if you like or can get over the gameplay method (and poor interface design) the game is probably among the best light-hearted themed game on the English market to date. For a light-hearted game it probably comes the closest to achieving the parrellel to being on par with such games, due to the way the situations and characters were made with more realism intended, rather than many of the sex romps out there.
Thanks for telling me a bit more about the game Jinnai. Similar to what you said regarding realism, I saw this post in an old thread:
It sounds like you’re talking about a completely different game than what I played. I didn’t find the game to have much of a plot. It was paper-thin at best. Each girl only had minor stories during the dates, and it never really felt like anything progressed story-wise or had much meaning.
The relationships seemed bizarre to me, and it felt like it was just up to the whim of the game. For example, I remember going out with one going many times, and pretty much saw her exclusively, and she seemed happy, but on the last day she rejected me for no apparent reason. The character development never seemed to get much further than superficial conversations to me, and none of the characters ever developed enough for me to care about them at all.
The social dynamics seem really forced to me and entirely arbitrary. You just have conversations about random topics with each girl. I never felt like they were friends or like a real person at all. In real life, conversations flow more naturally and people respond to the situation at hand. Bringing up a random topic each day just feels so unnatural.
And I disagree that a light-hearted game can’t have emotional aspects. Snow Sakura is completely devoid of dark themes, yet it’s a game where I became emotionally attached to the characters because they felt real. The situations and conversations were much more natural and entertaining than CRC. Light-hearted games can also have an emotional impact if the character development is done right.
The overriding plot is paper thin and the dates don’t have too much to them. Most games have more depth in things, however the game is not narrative, it’s dialogue. Everything in the game is dialogue, text-message or written. The latter is in descriptions of stuff, bios and journals.
As to the social aspect, you obviously don’t read the journals then. Sometimes what they say can seem random, but each girl has a theme, Jeenie FE, is very close to her brother (although it could be more the reverse) and so at times she’ll talk about that. Also the girls actually are not static. Their stories progress as you play along, again slightly varied depending who you talk to and what you say. The same girl, FE, is trying to learn to ride a bike (yea a bit late in life I’ll admit), so that’s why she talks about that and when she first starts talking about it, if you don’t read journals, it can seem completely random.
You probably felt things weren’t right because the game is dialogue and no in-game descriptions are ever given. The fundamental structure of the game is different probably from every game you played as not being a narrative and that is why you felt it was shallow, even though it wasn’t, although the girls are semi-cookie cutter molds and the overall plot is rather thin.
And I played and didn’t have the same feelings you had for Snow Sakura. I did not feel attached or felt it was more realisitc.