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festival days sim date (F/M, free, /browser/)

• overall: D. enjoyment: B.
• festival days sim date is, while not the first dating sim pacthesis ever made, certainly the oldest one she bothered to put on her website. it's an extremely basic and somewhat generic game about a girl who wants to get a boyfriend before her school festival so she can take advantage of a local legend... well, we assume she wants this. as a character, the protagonist barely exists. the dialogue is one-sided, but not really bad. and while the art is clearly poorly done, it has its own charm to it. the gameplay itself is well-done for such an old game, but it's very very easy. the game doesn't really offer much, but if you have some time and want something simple it won't hurt to give it a shot.
• plot: F. you play as a high school girl (default name mayu) who's a month away from her school festival. there's a rumor that couples who spend the festival together stay together, so your friend jokes that you should get a boyfriend soon.... that's it! in terms of story set-ups, well... an attempt was made! but it's not a very good attempt.
• characters: C. they're very simple, but to be honest the more "normal" characters has always been where pacthesis excels. none of them are particularly standout, but they're cute and well-designed.
• writing: C. it's cute, for the most part. the dialogue loses a bit by virtue of the game's design, which puts the burden of characterization entirely on the boys' shoulders. the romances are a little cheesy, and clearly not very accurate to high school relationships, but they're cute enough. mako's "a girl dumped me so i'm sad. date me perhaps" storyline was, frankly, a total waste of time, but otherwise it's adequate.
• routes: kaoru > ren > mako > akito
• gameplay: C. cooking minigames, holy shit. haven't seen one of those in ages. (they aren't particularly bad, either.) the rest of the game plays like a typical pacthesis game; you explore the map, find your boy, and talk/gift/date with him until you've finished his dialogue and have enough points to get the best ending. there's a stat raising element to it as well, but i found i never needed to touch the stats since mayu has the ability to make free gifts that every boy loves. in general, this is a format ive always loved, and while i initially remembered the older games as being unbalanced -- honestly? this one seemed fine. the dialogue has the usual problem of not advancing until you reply correctly and the worse problem of not even having unique replies to your choices, but the rest of the game plays smoothly. raising stats is much easier than the other games, and the fact that you can stack HP by sleeping multiple times beats the "5 lines of dialogue a day" issue. the game in general is... well, easy. but that easiness makes it fun.
• art: F. this is the oldest of the pacthesis games available on her website, and so it's no surprise it's by far the ugliest one. and yet, in some ways, it's not quite as bad as its two follow-ups. the art is mostly flat colors with a very soft subtle shading that by far beats the flash gradient tool she starts using after this, and while it's very clearly made by a beginner with a shaky grasp on hair, bodies, and faces, it still has its cute points. the UI design is much better than its immediate descendant as well (i cant get enough of those little blinking faces on the stats menu), and the game has a charm to it that i wouldn't have minded if she maintained. there's no denying that the art is still rather bad, but it's a cute bad.

http://pacthesisgames.com/games/sim-dates/festival-days-sim-date.html

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