Love Love School Days Switch Review

I am approaching the one year anniversary of this site. In all that time, I think I have reviewed exactly one horror game: the horrendous Fear or Evil. This is because I find most horror games where you run from something trying to kill you, extremely frustrating and limiting. They’re essentially glorified stealth games. Love Love School Days does absolutely nothing to change my mind, although its premise is cool. In it, you play the titular video game, a VR dating sim. In it, you receive a letter from your secret admirer to meet you at the roof top of the school. You go up there, and meet Makina, who you kiss and get an ending . Then you go back to the main menu and try to start a new game, where this happens:

Makina is jealous that your you’re trying to erase her by getting a new ending. So she goes insane and plops you into a twisted version of Love Love School Days, the “real” Love Love School Days. Makina destroys the other love interests and its your job to escape via the directions on a conveniently placed-note. All the while, Makina chases you around. If she finds you, she deletes part of your player data. If she deletes all of it, its game over. Her AI is strange, it walks around looking for you, and sometimes will jump out of nowhere. However, if her back is turned to you, you can follow her around and she’ll never detect you.

The game play in Love Love School Days boils down to avoiding Makina while finding items randomly strewn about to accomplish goals and solve puzzle. Also, there are timed periods, where things will change. Like music period will change the music, science period has a life-size body dummy chasing you around too. The school is dark and twisty and you’ll be navigating with the mini-map as much as the actual screen.

Love Love School Days elicits a giant “Meh” from me. It borrows the premise from Doki Doki Literature Club, a dating sim going horribly wrong. Although it puts its own spin on it, I simply don’t find this all that engaging. Maybe its that I don’t like horror games, or maybe its because the game play is limiting and confusing at times. Still, a lot of work went into this, there’s even a fair bit of voice acting. I’ll give Love Love School Days a YMMV.

Overall: Love Love School Days is a horror game where you hide from a crazed dating sim heroine. Premise is cool, game is less so.

Verdict: YMMV

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