[h2]Preface[/h2]
Yes, I am well aware I played this game for free. I see people occasionally use this argument to shut down any criticism on other free games of questionable quality.
However, I still regret the time I spent playing it, and it actively dissuades me from trying any other games this developer has put out, which merits a negative review in my eyes.
Hopefully my ranting can stop people from wasting an afternoon. I'll try to make my crashout as entertaining as I can.
___
[h2]Summary and Review[/h2]
There are derivative works born out of love and admiration for something.
And then there is creatively bankrupt stuff like PockeDate.
Now, having read the store page, I was well aware what kind of game would await after pressing "Play Game". That is to say, I went in under the assumption that it would pay hommage to some of the coolest games I have played in the past. Seeing as I liked the titles that I recognized were referenced in the promotional materials, the reviews were positive and that the presentation was cute, of course I was eager to try PockeDate out, to see what spin it would have on the genre.
What I did not expect however, was for it to do nothing [i]but[/i] rip off other games.
I will spoil PockeDate in this review without marking any spoilers... is what I [i]would[/i] say, were there anything to spoil in the first place.
Every major plot "twist" is lifted straight from another popular game. If you have not been living under a rock for the past 15-something years, you have probably already played an aspect of PockeDate, and you will be able to predict the entire plot of the game. Nothing will shock or surprise you, and not just because there is no horror present in this game (besides the realization/fridge horror that I wasted 89 minutes of my life).
Let me be abundantly clear. Nothing in this game will shock or surprise you, so don't be tricked into playing this game to 100% completion like I was. The only thing that awaits you, after a [b]very[/b] tedious loop of chasing different endings by skipping the same 5 boring dialogues for the nth time, is more completely unimaginative and unoriginal writing that attempts to Frankenstein 4 different games into one short game, so simply abandon all hope ye who enter.
There's also the slight irony whenever Akari repeats that visual novels are "definitely games and not just interactive storybooks!", when this alleged game encourages you to turn it into a Ctrl-key Pressing Simulator to skip the tedium of chasing different outcomes for the dialogue, like you cannot make this ♥♥♥♥ up.
Apparently, we the player are Akari's boyfriend, and we take our cardboard cutout of a girlfriend out for various dates.
You complete the first ending by just playing the game as one would play a regular dating sim and afterwards it turns out that this perfectly normal cutesy dating sim is in reality super duper cursed and spooky! And then it turns out that Akari is actively keeping you in the game 'cuz she wuvs you big time!! And of course it also turns out that this is all a simulation!!! And you have to delete Akari find out this information and she definitely won't come back 5 seconds later!!!1
Yeah that's just Dokidoki Literature Club's Monika, only this time completely divorced from the context of having other romantic competition in her game, stripped of her personality, and with more emphasis put on the things we find out during DDLC+. The game simply delivers these revelations one after another within the span of tens of minutes. There's no buildup to the reveal, they all just happen without any rhyme or reason.
I could forgive this tired reheating of YOU and ME and Project Libitina Club-nachos if it had a likable heroine, or at least had something fun happen on the different dates, but there simply isn't anything redeemable about the writing.
The chat, that scrolls past whenever Akari streams a date (for no good reason other than more Needy Streamer Overload brownie points it seems), has more personality than she does. You head out to [insert cliché dating activity], she asks you questions relating to the activity, reacts to your answer in some way, dumps completely pointless and unrelated anecdotes about herself on the player, then bails.
The Akari trivia doesn't ever become relevant, even though it feels like it should with how oddly specific it is at times. I half expected her to test me on my knowledge of her like Miyuki did in Totono and considering how much this game references other games, I'm surprised she didn't.
Rinse and repeat the same handful of unengaging dialogues until you reach an ending.
Oh yeah, and sometimes her sprite glitches because this is a horror visual novel or something.
Because this is an alleged horror game, there is one notable jumpscare that happens.
And because the developer cannot form a single original thought, of course this jumpscare is 1:1 the same jumpscare from Irisu Syndrome. Y'know, a jumpscare so cool and notorious, that it tends to be the only thing people even remember about Irisu Syndrome after all these years, besides its brutal difficulty.
Naturally, this game treats all the tedious, monotonous and uninspired events of this game as "Unforgettable Memories" that you must sacrifice in order to progress towards the true ending of this game. This accidentally works quite well, seeing as you're highly likely to literally forget whatever happened during those uneventful moments. This is in order to break the simulation and leave the [strike]Underground[/strike] err I mean, return to the real world or something, I mentally clocked out at that point.
The visual novel suddenly becomes an Undertale boss fight at the last second, with an additional helping of NieR Automata Ending E. No, you read that right.
The dialogue box becomes the battle field, you control a heart, [strike]Flowey Sans[/strike] Shadow Akari shoots bullets at you, you can attack her via dialogue option in your turn and miss her. In order to actually complete this fight, with her being a damage sponge that occasionally throws undodgeable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in your face, you need to sacrifice other players' save files for a chance to defeat her.
Said undodgeable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ happens inbetween patterns that would put Cirno's Icicle Fall -Easy- to shame, by the way.
You also get the choice to sacrifice your own save file for other peoples' benefit.
This all happens during a moment that should be uniquely the games', but yet again this game does not have one single original thing going for it, and it's apparent that the creator does not really grasp what made Ending E truly great either.
It also fumbles its final chance to tell a unique story after you defeat the boss. At the end, we say our sequel-teasing goodbyes as Akari practically steals her final lines from Totono, becoming yet another Aoi clone that will live on in our hearts forever, despite the deleted files, but with none of the emotional punch which Totono had. Wowee.
Once again, this unintentionally works in the creator's favor, because I will never forget the sheer disappointment I felt after I slogged away at the game. Akari [i]will[/i] stay with me forever, just not in the way she hoped.
In short, please save yourself the disappointment and just play any of the other games that PockeDate copied its homework from. They pioneered all the things PockeDate tried to accomplish narratively, and they all did it way better at that. Unsurprising, seeing as they are actual stories and not just a strung-together sequence of unrelated events. They also avoid all the issues I mentioned from a pure gameplay perspective.
The only silver lining that comes to mind is that the non-spooky art is cute. The music is okay and sometimes even good, but even then I can't shake the feeling the songs all seem eerily familiar.
