A Maze of Relationships

Dating simulations, on initial inspection, are a bit of a weird area in gaming. Go on – try and explain them to a friend: “Okay, so you spend time building up your physical fitness, intelligence and charisma at a number of in-game locations, so that you can court an attractive non-player-character into dating you.” You’ll likely be told that they are a magnificent waste of time. Despite this, the genre is incredibly popular with casual gamers; just take a look at any website offering free flash games and you’re sure to stumble across a number of examples, and there are countless dating games available for mobile phones.

Personally, while I wouldn’t play a game based solely on dating, I think there’s a lot of potential for relationship building in other genres, particularly role-playing games. My first encounter with these elements in a RPG came about a decade ago, in SNES cult favourite Harvest Moon. The game – which taxed players with the task of maintaining a successful farm in a small town – was addictive for its unique micromanagement game play, forcing players to be careful with their time in the game world.

Meet Ann, potential wifeA landmark moment in romantic subplots

However, what stood out to me more was the interaction with NPC characters, particularly the female cast. Rather than offer one static piece of information, repeat interactions with these characters rewarded the player with new dialogue. Eventually, these conversations evolved into a short romantic subplot, and potentially marriage. While who you decide to court is ultimately a superficial choice, it’s a powerful personal one nonetheless. The ways that players formed relationships with town residents was further explored in countless sequels, and would become a core part of the series.

Of course, Harvest Moon isn’t the only RPG series to emphasise a romantic subplot, or relationships in general. The best example I can think of is my current gaming addiction, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. Released late last year in the USA to critical acclaim, the title quickly built a dedicated fan-base due to its novel approach to dungeon crawling. The story sounds fairly simple off the bat: You’re a transfer starting at a new school in the sleepy suburb of Inaba, the town where nothing interesting ever happens. However, when a series of bizarre murders occur, it’s up to you and your new friends to stop the killer picking off your classmates. This involves (in typical Japanese RPG style) travelling to an alternate version of reality, and fighting your way through dungeons in order to rescue victims before it’s too late.

Chie SatonakaChie here is one of the (many) girls you can hang out with in Persona 4

At the same time, you must balance your social life, building relationships with not only your party members (“Go Team Investigation Team!”), but other residents of Inaba as well. The sheer quantity of social events available is staggering, but what is perhaps more impressive is that nearly every event is engaging, thanks to a superb English localisation effort. You’ll build up genuine affection for these characters, and you’ll have to pick and choose between favourites because of the limited time you have to socialise. And yes – you can even date a potential lover, to unlock further conversations and events.

While all of this is fun, Persona’s real masterstroke is the combat utilisation of “social links”. The game uses a Pokémon-like collection system wherein players create summons (the titular personas) with unique skill-sets through a process called “fusion”. Each character you meet in the game is tied to a particular “arcana” (similar to an element), and as you strengthen your relationship with them, you rank up the social link connected to that arcana. So, when you decide to fuse together two personas, the resulting persona is granted significant experience points, skill and strength bonuses based on how strong the associated arcana social link is. The combat advantage this can give you is immense (as efficient players can create personas at a much higher level than they need), and it greatly reduces the volume of grinding you need to do in dungeons to defeat a boss.

Strength Arcana Social LinkAttending soccer or basketball practice boosts your “Strength” personas

There’s so much more to the game than what I’ve described here, but I’ll leave it at that for the moment. If you have a couple of hours to kill and enjoy Japanese RPGs, I’d highly recommend heading over to Giant Bomb.com and watching their Persona 4 “Endurance Run” (now at part 66), where the staff writers are attempting to play the game from start to finish. Although the first couple of hours are slow, the rewarding game play that follows is more than worth it – and it’s all because of relationships.


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5 responses to “A Maze of Relationships”

  1. Kat avatar
    Kat

    I have thought long and hard about this, and I still cannot come up with a comment that is not obscure or obscene in some fashion, out of context.

    That said:

    “Well, you DO seem to be good with your hands — um, nevermind.”

    :winky:

  2. Lauren avatar
    Lauren

    Got to love the dating sim genre. So much fun and when you get rejected, theres no embrassement! But indeed Persona 4 is one of my fav RPGs and the dating genre is a nice little sideline when the job of playing detective gets too tough!

    Well done Scott!

  3. Scott avatar

    Oh wow, thanks for the kind comments everyone. It’s really nice to go back to old blogs and see that someone has stumbled upon one and enjoyed it. 🙂 ’tis why I love writing for this site.

  4. Free Flash Game avatar
    Free Flash Game

    thanks for the reference game. hopefully can make my blog better.

  5. Lindsey Auge avatar

    My wife and I definitely think that this short article was highly beautiful. You’re definitely going to appreciate this quote. – “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

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