Game of the Month: Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2

[chrry]

Follow the protagonist during the three years of high school. Raise your stats, go shopping, coordinate your clothes, and go on dates in hopes of wooing one of the many eligible bachelors by graduation.

Official site ♥ Opening ♥ TMGS fan wiki ♥ TMGS2 fansite ♥ TM fansite

The game chosen for December is Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2!

This Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side sequel was originally released for PS2 in 2006, and it got a DS port with additional content in 2008.

There is no official English release but apparently a fan translation patch for the DS version was released in 2011, and you can use that with an emulator to play.

I've never played an otome game for Nintendo DS and I find the idea kind of strange, but I saw some screenshots of this game and it does look charming♥ I get the feeling that the stat raising (and all those things) would be a struggle, but it still looks fun~


If you've played please tell us more about it ♥

Comments

[22degreehalo]

Regarding the stat raising, I actually quite liked it in this game, but it definitely has both its pros and cons:

Pros:
* I really enjoy being able to build up our lil MC and help her achieve her dreams!! (Or... not.) You actually have a lot of freedom in terms of what you want her to focus on so you could make her an artist or a sports star or an ambitious part-time worker or something else!
* You really get the sense of the changing of the seasons and progression over the years! Most visual novels couldn't cover a three-year time period, and need to include some kind of other external plot. This one is just pure, realistic slice of life that makes you feel like you're playing a real person!
* I found it easier to stay engaged with the shorter scenes, mixed with gameplay elements, and the thought you have to put into managing your stats. Admittedly I have ADHD so this isn't an issue everyone has but it was way easier to keep playing this for longer than other games!

Cons:
* Getting every ending is... not recommended, lol. This game in particular I think actually has a LOT of different endings with only slightly different requirements? And while you can obviously save scum in an emulator, it won't save those different endings in the game's storage, which is a bit unsatisfying. Honestly I'm fine with this because I'm not a completionist and only want to play the routes I'm interested in anyway!
* If you DO want to just read for long periods of time, the gameplay breaking it up would be annoying. As I said, I can't really relate much to this one heh.
* The gameplay can get repetitive after a while, especially if you're doing one of the secret characters or something, because those have fewer scenes so there's less to break up the stat raising.

In all though, I really enjoyed this game and I've been meaning to track it down again and win a character or two I never managed to get! I haven't played 3 because I couldn't get it to work and the characters weren't as appealing, but I'm tempted to try that out as well... (TBH my main issue is that in each of the love triangles they have set up, there's always one character that is wayy more appealing to me than the other?? I'm not really looking forward to seeing heaps of a guy I'm not interested in when I just wanna hang out with my target, but welp, maybe they'll grow on me!!)

Edit: BTW the guys I DID play were Shiba (vvv cute quiet type!!) and Wakaouji (I liked him despite not usually liking teacher/student romance? But I kinda 'played' the relationship as questionable and enjoyed the drama? lol), and I reaaally wanna play to get Hikami because he's super cute! :)

[chrry]

I'm super late but thank you for the detailed comment! <3

Your last point in the pros really got my attention. I got into this hobby thanks to some otome apps that used the ticket system, I could read only a few scenes a day (for free) and I think that played a big role in my getting interested in this world, because it allowed me to enjoy the stories without having to sit and read for hours (which is often a struggle for me).

Stat raising is a hit or miss thing for me, so I guess I don't know if I'll enjoy that part of the game until I actually try it. But I want it to be my thing so bad afgdfgshd the game looks so fun if it's your thing ;;

I'm a huge completionist though OTL even if I don't get every ending, I still would like to play all the routes... guess I'll look up some walkthroughs and tips before starting the game so I can decide how I want to approach the situation lol


I hope you enjoy the 3rd game if you end up playing~ (and please write a post about it or something, I'm so curious about this franchise now lol 👀)

[alias_sqbr]

I forgot to say that this is great! But it's great :)

[chrry]

<3