Date Everything! Review (Gàlaron)
An outstanding video game, with insanely good character designs and great voice acting. "Date Everything!" is extremely varied, with many different characters, which some are more frivolous and others are more serious and deep while maintaining a light tone. The writing is very good and very fun.
The reviews — as of now — are overwhelmingly positive, and it is deserved. Even so, there are (obviously) negative reviews, with many of them being in my opinion quite unfair, if not downright nonsensical. So, I want to focus this review in discussing the most common aspects criticised by those review, explaining why they are wrong or right (since this is not a perfect game).
"Storylines are too short." // "There is not enough content." // "Character stories are not deep enough." // "It's quantity over quality."
> The game is about being able to date everything in your house, and features a grand total of 100 characters. Starting by the fact that having fewer characters would have been far more criticised (as it would feel lacking for a "date everything" concept), let's do some simple math. If each character had a "very deep" storyline of 4 hours each, completing all of them would take 400 hours. Even only one hour each would result in 100 hours, which is far, far more time than the majority of people would accept to spend in a single visual novel. Expecting each character to have a deep/long storyline is simply unrealistic, especially for a game made by slightly more than 30 people in a few years.
What is true though is that characters are not balanced in storyline length: some can be completed in a total of 15 minutes while others may require an hour.
"It is always clear which choice will lead to love, which to friendship, and which to hate."
> First of all, that is not ALWAYS the case, but it is generally true. The game does not aim in the slightest in being some kind of "deep psychological" dating sim. It's more about giving the player the power to decide which route they want. In fact, the "hate" route is not a bad ending obtained by failing. It's just a possible outcome that the player can decide to have with a character they don't like, and the game will just progress acknowledging that.
"The hate route is not a bad ending." // "There is no failing state."
> Tied to the previous point, that is simply not what the game is about. It's not about success or failure: it's about loving who you want to love, be friend with who you want to be friend with, and hating who you want to hate. That's just it, it's a design choice and honestly, I appreciate it.
"It's possible to finish a storyline with a character the first time you meet them."
> This happens only with some hate endings and... it's kind of normal and a "you control the buttons you press" situation. To be more clear, there are multiple characters with which you can pick sequentially options such as "I don't care", "I don't want to talk with you" and similar other ones, and if you do select them one after the other, then the character will just hate you and you will have finished dealing with them in 3 minutes sharp with a "Hate" ending. Which in my opinion is... normal? I'm not sure what else you expect picking those options.
"There is nothing else to do other than dating."
> This is probably the dumbest critique, as there is absolutely nothing in the trailers, nor description of the game, nor demo, nor whatever, that makes you think that you would do anything else in the game. It's just a made-up expectation.
"There is a delay in the movement of the character and of the camera"
> This is actually true. It didn't bother me at all and I don't see how it can be an issue so big to give a negative review to the game since it is not a core mechanic. But it is true that you walk around quite a while in the game, so if you consider that to be an unbearable issue as some people do, then do know that it is true.
"The writing is bad."
> It's not. If you don't like it it's probably because it's not your kind of humor, which is ok. If you have doubts about whether you might like it or not, just watch a video or try the demo.
"Once you complete the romance with a character, there are no more unique dialogues with them."
> That is true. I do understand that it is kind of sad, but I'm not sure what you would expect. It's normal that it is like that, and more than this being a negative, it would be a surprise and an incredible pro if this was not the case.
"Some dialogue options are locked behind skills points that are tedious to get and an high amount is required to realize a character."
> First of all, terminology: "to realize a character" in this game means closing completely the story of a character after you've finished their storyline. And this complaint is 100% true and in my opinion the most significant issue of the game. There are 5 social stats, that have a value from 0 to 100 each, and every character of which you complete the storyline gives you 5 points in one of those social skills. Realizing a single character requires you on average to have accumulated a total 250 points out of all the 500. And multiple characters have some dialogue options that require to have something like 60 of a stat the first time you meet them, which is insanely unrealistic. It seems to be some sort of mechanic to push the player to play again doing a NG+, but I can't see many people doing a NG+ in this game, and the whole mechanic has no single redeeming feature; it's just pointless and frustrating. I didn't consider it to be a big issue though; I simply ignored the non-selectable dialogue options and accepted that I would not be able to realize any character before completing the storyline of more than half of them. But still, if there is a critique I would do to this game and ask the developers to change, it's without a single doubt this one.
Tl;dr:
In short, we can say the the wide majority of critiques to this game come from diehard fans of "classical" dating sim visual novels in which you have to pick the right options to get the girl after hours of gameplay and trying to avoid fail states ("Bad endings"). This is simply not what this game is — it's not that it's lacking, it's simply a different kind of game. And never they have said that it would be the game those people expected, and that was even clear from the Demo.
If you have any doubt on whether you might like it or not, just try the demo, as it is extremely close to the experience that the full game gives you.