Good lord, I’ve played a lot of dating sims and Date (Almost) Anything Simulator may actually be the worst one. Not because the art isn’t that great, not because of the lazy background work. Not because it skips all the fun of actually dating the characters. Not because it decided to stick emotes into a person’s speech like I’m supposed to know how those sound. Not because it makes moral judgments about me and decides that not washing your hands is literally tantamount to murder.
It is the worst because it isn’t meant to be a dating sim at all. And it insults you repeatedly for expecting it should be. It makes no sense in-universe, it’s pretentious as all hell, and it repeatedly makes assumptions about the player. It makes assumptions, it levies insults, it mocks and degrades the person playing, and then it has the unmitigated gall to try to tell the person what to do - and hug box it out - after making all those assumptions and insults.
How is this game even popular? I’d see it as something that might briefly become popular because it’s an english otome game boasting all sorts of route choices, but as soon as people actually play the self-righteous game it should be dropped.
(Also, I suspect as a consequence of the author sitting on a horse so high they could barely breathe the oxygen up there, they never actually played a real dating sim. You know. Where you spend months to actual years getting to know the character and getting close to them before confessing.)
