Love Love School Days (Love Love School Days Update Patch) Review

Love Love School Days is a game I played a while back. Gotta say, this one’s got serious legs — and it’s perfect for streaming, absolutely packed with content.

• The map is randomized every run, so replayability is through the roof.
• No saves either, so you can’t just memorize the layout and save-scum your way through.
• It’s a “horror chase” type game, so the tension is high and it gets the streamer’s adrenaline pumping.
• There are plenty of “counterintuitive” tricks built in, which makes it even better on stream.

So yeah, a game this good, and nobody in China seems to stream it. Probably because there’s no Chinese version. I’d originally 100%’d it, then a while back I noticed the game had gotten an update — and my full achievement set had vanished.

My OCD forced me back in, and it turned out to be way more fun than before.

Let’s start with what the update added. First off, controller support — you can finally play it comfortably on Steam Deck. Though the controller support isn’t exactly polished; if your PC has a controller connected, it defaults to controller input and you can’t change it unless you unplug the thing. The game also added a way to customize Makina’s appearance: at the very start, enter 114106 on the safe, grab the game disc, and insert it into the console.

Then there are the multiple new endings and new story content…

First, a new room was added — a giant red heart. You find three plants in the game, place them in the three corners of the heart, take the heart, and hand it to Sayori in the library to unlock that ending.

Another ending: during the original bro boss fight where you’re handed rocket launchers, blow up the boss with one rocket first, then save the other rocket to blow up your bro. The protagonist goes fully dark and decides he wants to become God of the world.

If you craft the bomb and then find a hidden room during the “PE class” segment, blow it open with the bomb, and you’ll find the sports-day announcer hiding inside — you can get an ending where you date her.

There’s a repair disc for Emily. Fix her up and she’ll sprint; catch her to trigger her route and reach another new ending.

You can find a full streaming setup in the game — mixing console, camera, all that — then find a hammer, grab a brain from the biology lab, and hand the brain to that wandering mannequin. He gives you the key to the esports room. Bring the streaming gear there for another ending.

And an even more absurd one: during the gym battle with the flame knight, if he solo-kills you several times, a new room appears next to the gym. Sayori says she wants to help you, and asks you to find the flame knight’s model. Sayori explains that this is a romance game, and the protagonist, as a romance game protagonist, can’t fight a knight like that. But you can mod him through the model. After installing this so-called “mod,” the protagonist meets him (her?) again and finds he’s been completely reshaped into something out of THE iDOLM@STER — calling the protagonist “Producer” nonstop, dropping all the stock lines, and even wanting to accept the protagonist’s love up on the rooftop…

God, this ending is so stupid, and there’s so much to poke fun at, but it’s absolutely worth trying. Pure bad-taste humor.

Then the final-final True End. First you need to unlock every other ending. At the start of the game there’s a magazine called Doki Doki Memories — read it, then continue on from the 16-bit love ending. At the last step, Makina appears and comes clean about everything. She says she never wanted to kill the protagonist — if she did, why give him a chance to escape? She just wanted to spend as much time with him as possible inside this game world, and her time controlling the game space is running out. Soon she’ll vanish along with the game, and the protagonist will be free. In the end, the protagonist accepts Makina’s love, but she disappears forever anyway, wishing him happiness.

After this big update, Love Love School Days finally feels complete, and the final True End really delivers that “everything comes full circle” sense of fate. It stings, but it’s genuinely tear-jerking.

Honestly, this update is basically DLC-tier. Tons of effort — but the dev kept it quiet. Looking at the whole game, the dev is clearly someone who’s “got the goods.” To borrow a line from Shenyang Street: a person can be broke, but they can’t be out of material. Which just makes this already-cheap game even more worth the money.

Compare that to the half-assed way DDLC Plus! was handled — honestly embarrassing.