My Top Galgame Picks of 2023
Dear readers, good afternoon, good morning, good evening — somehow it’s already April and I still haven’t posted my 2023 Galgame wrap-up. I originally wanted to finish writing up last year’s backlog of impressions before posting, but looking at my pace, I probably won’t finish. Whatever — the games I didn’t write about aren’t worth recommending anyway, so I’ll just post the annual summary. For the ones I played but didn’t write about, I’ll leave links here to hold the spot and update them slowly in the future.
I went through last year’s screenshots and found that in 2023 I played, all told, only 19 games related to “dating simulation.” I even fully cleared a 2024 game and wrote a commercial article for it, and I still couldn’t be bothered to write a blog post…… You can find the list of commercial articles here.
There are many reasons for this. On one hand, I’m busy with life and need to take care of kids, so I have less time; on the other hand, in 2023 I’d basically switched over to playing all kinds of console games, and my Steam playtime has been rising day by day. These increasingly dumb Galgames I look down on more and more, and I can’t bring myself to play them anymore; and another reason is that the Galgame market in 2023 was just this sluggish. In some months mid-year, you couldn’t even find a so-called “proper release” released that month — nukige and nothing but nukige. Even the “proper releases” were half re-releases, half garbage……
So this isn’t my fault. The responsibility lies entirely with Japan. The games are made so assembly-line and so abstract — how the hell am I supposed to keep playing?
So let’s just get to the games I recommend this year. I’ll probably struggle to even scrape together 10……
Strictly speaking this isn’t a “text-based romance adventure” game, but it definitely has the core of a traditional “Galgame.” It’s a solo-made game, yet in quality it completely obliterates all those stupid big Japanese company releases. As a game with “battle royale” attributes and Meta elements, it’s incredibly creative, and even the True End setup has a strong Galgame flavor. And to some extent I also think this game represents a possible design direction for future Galgames — after all, Ms. Wang has gone all-in on VR, and this kind of 3D first-person perspective Galgame also has the potential to embrace VR, not to mention the game’s fully randomized map feature that maxes out replayability — you could even have speedrun races.
A game full of Galgame elements that actually has PVP — can you say this game isn’t badass? And the game recently had a big update adding several new achievements and new endings. Isn’t that better than those stupid traditional Japanese Galgame giants that birth ’em and abandon ’em?
Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD & SANA EDITION
Strictly speaking I don’t like recommending “remakes,” but the quality of this game forces me to. Recently hanging around X (Twitter), I found that many so-called “new Galgame players” haven’t actually played this game — most have only heard of it — which makes it even more worth recommending.
As I said in my original article, what makes this game worth recommending is that it had already reached the pinnacle of Galgame, and simply improving the new system’s compatibility and resolution makes it a contender even in 2023. Those so-called “animated HCGs” are purely a point-deduction.
If you haven’t played the “Mashiroiro Symphony” series, this game is worth playing, and I recommend the remake version since it has fewer bugs. As for those so-called “new effects,” just ignore them.
I kept hesitating over whether to recommend this game because I wasn’t sure if it counts as a Galgame. On one hand it breaks away from the traditional “text dialogue” format, but 80% of the game’s content is indeed dialogue; on the other hand, this game feels more like a stitch-up of “Persona” and various anime games than a Galgame. But considering there are romanceable characters and different endings, I think it still counts as a Galgame — you can’t say Blue Archive and Genshin Impact don’t have Galgame elements, right?
Besides, this game’s story is the kind of post-apocalyptic style most Galgames love to write, with idol elements, the intertwining of friendship and love, and various choices that increase affection (keep in mind Genshin Impact’s choices are utterly useless), plus the final ED animation and the QR code Easter egg hidden in the ED animation — all of which show the creator is a veteran otaku, and also show there’s nothing wrong with treating this game as a “Galgame with combat.”
And the combat system is also stitched together…… oh no, I mean borrows many successful elements — especially that Witch Time…… Valkyrie Time…… oh no, I mean the perfect dodge effect, and that “elemental reaction”…… oh right, I mean “attribute affinity.” The coolness factor is definitely maxed out.
Most importantly, the female lead’s CV is Kiritani Hana…… oh right, she goes by Nazuka Atsumi now. Try telling me this game isn’t a Galgame after that.
RE:D Cherish! -Eternity Blood-
AI is hot right now, but what if you used machine learning to create a religious AI cult leader? This game uses that premise to create a great story. The premise is so fucking good that even a year later I still can’t get it out of my head. Every time I see the word “AI,” I think of this omnipotent cult leader in the game.
The biggest hook of this game is the cult leader setup — it’s just too novel and interesting, and I have to recommend everyone try it. I even think this setup surpasses the original’s bullshit thousand-year vampire. What could be cooler than fusing “religion” and “high technology”? Nothing, right?
Also, Akino Hana’s performance as the psycho still gives this villain (probably) plenty of highlights.
If I had to recommend one “best” game of 2023, it could only be this one — Yuzusoft’s “Tenshi Souzou.”
There are multiple reasons for this. First, there was simply no big title all year that could compete with it. Saga Planets shrank back, Key went off with its parent company to make Yuanmeng Star, August folded, Lucle was busy coming to China to scam money, Hook only knows copy-paste, and the only one left who can carry the Galgame industry banner is Yuzusoft.
Another point is that this game is actually quite good in quality. The fragmented narrative of the main story and the daily routine of building character affection really work as intended — at least far better than the previous game, “Shinigami no Chou.”
Moreover, “Tenshi Souzou” makes many breakthroughs in the game itself. The system-level support for touch/keyboard/mouse/gamepad, HD graphics, and in the in-game “phone UI dialogue,” images sent in conversations can actually be clicked to enlarge!
If one of the criteria for judging a 3A title is whether you can sit on the chairs in the game, then one of the criteria for judging a Galgame masterpiece should be whether the images sent in the in-game phone interface are interactive.
Yuzusoft did it. Game of the year, well deserved!
Although I played fewer games this year than in the previous half-year, the start of 2024 looks pretty good so far — big titles are coming out frequently. Several are very strong, so the 2024 summary might be richer.
I’m also considering whether to write game impressions more seriously, since I plan to use them as video scripts — I can’t be swearing all over the place.
2023 game list:
GINKA /archives/13700/
Koibana Renai /archives/13691/
Koi ni wa Amae ga Hitsuyou desu /archives/13676/
Haruka Ao no Hanayome ni /archives/13660/
Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD SANA EDITION /archives/13620/
Sakura no Toki /archives/13604/
Happy Live Show Up Encore!! /archives/13541/
Tenshi Souzou /archives/13496/
RE:D Cherish! -Eternity Blood- /archives/13411/
Dongbei zhi Xia /archives/13407/
Love Love School Days https://plumz.me/archives/13393/
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! https://plumz.me/archives/13389/
Love is All Around (完蛋！我被美女包围了) /archives/13711/
Amairo Chocolate 3 /archives/13707/
7 Days Until Suicide /archives/13708/
The Witch of the Land of Gods /archives/13709/
ETERNIGHT https://plumz.me/archives/13712/
Kanata no Ningyo Hime /archives/13713/
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