Fureraba (フレラバ) Review

For a long time—well, no, more like recently—I’ve been mulling over one question:

What exactly is it that makes me unable to get a girlfriend, and makes every arranged date blow up in my face?

After turning it over and over, there’s only one answer: I’m bad at picking up girls.

And with a determination to get to the bottom of things, it’s worth digging further—why am I bad at it, and what the hell do I need to do to get good?

“First off, you gotta be thick-skinned.”

Adou is probably the closest thing to a pickup artist I know. He doesn’t actually score that many, but he’s chatted up countless girls—the type who’s good at the game but still has some restraint and principles. Honestly, a role model. Sure, there are bigger players out there, but I don’t know them well enough. Anyway, that was his answer to my dilemma.

“Huh? Thick-skinned? What do you mean?”

“I mean you gotta shove your face right up against hers!”

“Like, force a kiss?”

“You absolute muppet.” Adou slams the table. “Are you picking a fight with me? If you love snarking that much, go back and snark at your blind dates on your feed!”

“Okay, okay, my bad…” Running my mouth is a habit at this point. Can’t help it.

“When you see a girl you like, don’t think about whether you’re a good match, whether she’s a good match for you, whether she likes you, whether she’s interested—just one word: GO.”

That “GO” made me think of some things, but I was worried about getting flamed, so I just stared at Adou with this look of wanting to say something but holding back.

“Where the hell is your head at!” As expected of my bro—one look at my eyes and he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I mean you gotta start showing her you’re interested! Make it clear you’re into her!”

“Isn’t that a bit too direct?”

“Direct is the whole point. Walk right up and do things that show you’re interested, but don’t actually say you like her. As for her reaction—whether she’s annoyed or avoids you—as long as she doesn’t explicitly reject you, you keep going.”

“Ehhh? Wouldn’t that just make you super creepy?”

“Nah, she’s just suddenly not sure how to deal with you. Most girls get a bit flustered in that situation—they don’t dare reject you outright, but they don’t dare accept either. Of course!” Adou pauses. “If you’re ugly, forget it. Ugly guys get a clear rejection right from the start.”

“Huh? So it’s still about looks?” I’m a little disappointed.

“There are ways even if you’re ugly, it’s just way harder…” Adou hesitates. “I suggest you start with the basics. Get thick-skinned, chat up a girl or two, then we’ll talk about the hard mode.”

“Bullshit. That’s just straight-up harassment.”

In the end, I still couldn’t bring myself to believe the method the great Adou gave me. After all, he’s got good looks—for the same girl, him coming up to show interest might feel romantic, but me doing it feels more like stalking…

Later, I thought a lot more about this whole picking-up-girls thing. Sometimes I’d try carefully saying hi to a girl, only to get ignored or glared at. Even quietly losing weight for a girl’s sake just earned me a friend card in the end…

After all that, I can only believe in that famous chuuni line:

“現実なんてクソゲーだ！” (Reality is just a shitty game.)

So you can say I found my fun, or you can say I’m running away—but the fact is I started playing galgames and couldn’t stop. The funny thing is, galgames are story-driven, packed with detailed prose just like a novel, so over time you inevitably pick up a thing or two about dealing with people. It’s a virtual story, sure, but it’s written by real people—seeing the shadow of reality through the virtual makes it hit even harder.

Personally, I like stories driven by “conflict”—whether it’s against the unknown, against a common enemy, or against yourself, a story with a few twists always entertains me. But sometimes, outside of all that conflict, I also want to play something that’s just pure romance.

Galgames were born from “getting with girls”—er, “romance”—and since writers don’t have the energy to flesh out every detail, they used to rely on dating-sim mechanics. It looks like gameplay, but frankly it’s just a budget-saving measure. Later, as stories became more important, individual routes got longer and longer, choice systems faded, and some games dropped choices entirely, becoming pure novels. In fact, the new generation of galgames is more often called “visual novels”—the protagonist has a name and personality and actually participates in the story.

But it’s been years now, and those so-called romance novel tropes are old hat—everyone’s memorized them, to put it bluntly. So sometimes, when it comes to the core element of “romance,” giving the player more control makes it feel more real and more fun. That’s why, different from your typical visual novel, dating-sim-style games like Tokimeki Memorial, where the goal is just dating and romance, made a comeback. And Friend to Lover sits somewhere between “dating sim” and “visual novel”—it has the choice-based structure of a dating sim but carries the story of a visual novel.

I’ve talked about this type of game before—it’s called ピュア×コネクト. Actually, Friend to Lover is itself an earlier work by the same team, sharing the same worldview (and the same background images). But in play, ピュア×コネクト is far inferior to Friend to Lover.

The name Friend to Lover is abbreviated from the English, and the game itself has you, the loser protagonist, trying to get a girlfriend. At the start you can still customize the protagonist’s name, and the story is the usual “I wanna fall in love” setup—you start single, pick a target, and pursue her. Childhood friend, old classmate, new classmate, senpai—pick whoever you want.

Now here’s the thing: the game has an absurd number of choices. Every school day you get a chance to talk to one target, and each conversation you have to pick a topic yourself. Topics themselves have landmines—pick wrong and it hurts your affection. Even if you pick the right topic, you still have to make a branch choice during the dialogue, and picking wrong also hurts affection. You can tell how you’re doing from the heroine’s emotional reaction—if she says you’re boring and turns to leave, you’ve blown it; if she says something like “you’re pretty good at this,” you nailed it…

Between school days there are small daily events, but they’re unrelated to the main plot. The most important thing you need to do is rush to talk to the heroine after class and pick the right answers among all the multiple-choice questions, day after day. But the game’s deadline is only three months. At the end of each month, an event triggers based on your affection level; if you clear it, your target heroine gets more dialogue options, and you keep talking and choosing. Finally, in the third month, if your affection is high enough, the final event triggers and you get a confession chance. The confession also depends on affection—succeed and you enter her personal route toward the ending.

Looks complicated, right? Yeah, the game really does have a crazy number of choices—so many it’s insane—and since they’re tied to affection, you can’t just pick randomly. Choices cover almost everything you can do on your own: what to say, what texts to send, what gestures to respond with, whether to accept something—almost all of it requires your input. I have to say, compared to ピュア×コネクト this is on a whole other level. But I don’t hate it, because I genuinely feel like I’m “talking” to the heroine through the choices. And the most important part is that the dialogue options for each heroine hit right at the sore spots.

What do I mean by “hit the sore spots”? I mean the options are realistic—they’re the kind of problems you actually run into when chatting with people, even with girls. And judging from the mistakes I made, the girls’ reactions to those options match how real girls would react.

In other words, if you’re like me and pick topics that don’t fit, say the wrong thing in a conversation—whether in real life or in the game—the girl won’t think much of you.

So I think I’ve had a bit of an epiphany about why I can’t get a girlfriend.

Still, the game does look out for romance idiots like me—it’s a game about falling in love, after all, so it won’t pull some bullshit like making me end up with a guy. The game has plenty of obvious freebies among the choices, and personal events also throw you some easy points to make sure you can finish the route. Honestly, you don’t need to worry about picking wrong—if you just pick the same girl every conversation, you’ll definitely see an ending. In fact, if you’re a pickup master, you could raise affection with every heroine a little, walk the tightrope between all of them, and then pick the right one to confess to.

Of course, that’s pro-level play. We lowly virgins have to be totally devoted from start to finish to make sure the confession succeeds.

The personal routes are sweet—very sweet. Sawado Misaki-senpai and Rina stand out the most. There’s not much substance, really—just daily lovey-dovey stuff and sex, plus petty jealousy and date arguments. I’ve never had a girlfriend, let alone dated, made out, or slept with one, so I don’t really get it. I can only hold onto a “city folk sure are wild, but whatever” mindset and slowly study the life experience of normies, so I don’t end up too young and too simple.

Honestly, Friend to Lover doesn’t have a particularly exciting story, but it kept me immersed for a long time. The sheer number of choices isn’t a hindrance—it’s the most fun part. They say practice makes perfect, and in those semi-realistic romance dialogue options, I learned a ton of moves. Like, you can’t just directly call a girl pretty—you have to compliment her indirectly. Girls don’t like being told they love sweets. Girls hate guys who are too quirky. Girls like clean guys. And so on and so forth.

It’s like finishing a huge stack of romance simulation test papers—it’s just simulation, but it does help a little with the real thing. Even though it’s virtual romance, I feel like I’ve gained a lot of experience. Maybe after this I’ll be more relaxed chatting with girls?

For the first time, I actually felt like a galgame had sort of saved my life. So later I happily brought it up to Adou.

“Huh?” Adou looks surprised. “You’re still playing your porn games?”

“Shut up. What do you think about what I just said? You can actually learn stuff from this game.”

“The stuff about what girls like and hate is on point…” Adou thinks for a second, then looks up and laughs. “But it’s useless for you.”

“Why?” I’m confused.

“Look, what’s the game called… Friend to Lover. But you at least gotta become friends with a girl before you can talk, right?”

“Huh?” My mind goes blank.

I was so focused on making choices and using dialogue to raise affection that I forgot the most important thing…

First… you need to become friends with a girl.

Or more directly:

First, you need to actually talk to a girl.

Everything needs a beginning. But if no girl talks to you, then no matter how well you know what to say afterward, there’s no opening—and that’s truly useless.

“So! Like I said before, be thick-skinned, shove your face in, and once you’re familiar and she’s willing to talk to you, then go use that wit and humor you learned from your porn game to pick her up.” Adou pats my back before leaving. “Keep at it. I still have high hopes for you. Learn how to pick up girls and you’ll have the freedom to choose—at least you won’t be forced into arranged dates. Am I right?”

Adou leaves, and I’m left alone spacing out, reflecting on my life goals and values:

My life goal is to have a cute daughter.

But before that, I need a wife to have a daughter with.

To get a wife, I need a girlfriend first.

A girlfriend starts as a friend, slowly building affection.

Start as friends…

Wait, goddammit, how the hell do I start as friends?

Friend to Lover—but How to be friends, you didn’t teach me that, sensei!

And then that line from the game’s OP popped into my head: “If just waiting nothing will happen.”

Maybe… Adou… is right?