Purrfect Date - Visual Novel/Dating Simulator

Interesting blend of romance and horror visual novel. A skip button would be nice after the 6th playthrough. I hope once I beat the game, I get to vivisect Pawpur, he deserves it!

I mean the trailer is great, humor on point, etc. I expected full audio as "full audio" is listed under the product. Actually there is nothing of it. Just text after text and it was not funny and did not grab my attention. It was just weird. No singing, no talking. Too bad.

Very disappointing.

Based on the premise alone, I was expecting this to be wackier/more ironic, and I probably would have believed that even more if I’d seen the trailer. Honestly, though, I kind of love the way this game commits to the bit. It’s silly and lighthearted, but it’s by no means a sh*tpost. In just a single playthrough, you get to play with multiple characters and pair them up with the cats of your choice. Even though the player characters are a bit cut and paste, it’s fun to play matchmaker thanks to their expressive avatars, and the cats all have great personalities. The character expressions are silly, and sometimes the writing has flashes of self-awareness, but the characters, their relationships, and the premise itself are taken seriously, albeit presented in a light-hearted tone to soften it. The more serious elements might have felt a bit out of place, but the game is not embarrassed by them nor does it dwell on them too long, so you buy it. There are only a couple short moments that might feel off depending on your tastes, especially that scene [spoiler]where a random cat gets murdered during a surgery.[/spoiler] One might expect a visual novel that’s neither here nor there on the silly scale to feel awkward, but it strikes the right balance, breezy and cute. This was going to be a solid recommendation until I went back to see more endings and secrets. Unlike other visual novels, you can’t jump around the story for different endings. That’s fine; you do have to manage your choices carefully if you’re aiming for the “good” ending, but aside from a couple of confusing choices in research/recon, it’s pretty easy to attain. If you want to go back and unlock all of the endings and secrets, however, you’re going to have to do a handful of restarts and tap through a ton of repeat text. You also have only one save file and no skip option. I appreciate the desire to make the storytelling aspect something you have to commit to rather than a puzzle box to scrape every piece of content out of, but if you want to have multiple endings and unlockable secrets, you ought to make compromises for convenience’s sake. So I recommend this game if you want to do a playthrough or two to see what the characters and the humor is like, and doubly so if you’re a furry who likes non-anthro characters (It’s not horny, normies, chill). If you want the good ending and don’t like mashing through text, don’t be afraid to look at a walkthrough. As for completionists, you might want to steer clear.

Будет русик, попробую. Идея забавная.

Note that I am what one might call a "cat-lover" There is an interesting story in Purrfect date, it's just incredibly hard to find because 90% of the dialogue is a useless waste of time. I was so bored with the game that I kept nodding off. To give a metaphorical example of how sneaky the actual interesting parts are, any task is kind of like this: Guy wants me to go to grocery store for him. Describe shopping in grocery store. You run into Aunt Susan and she told you how her kid has been throwing up so she has to take him to the doctor. As you're leaving, you note how wonderful the display of Lucky Charms looks. End segment. My reaction: Okay, wtf did that have to do with anything? Then the next one is going to the store again. Describe doing the shopping again, but the character notices the guy who gave you the list wrote it on some old notes, and you can just make out some cryptic stuff in between "milk" and "fungus cream." Gonna have to look into that later. End segment. My reaction: Okay, that was mostly boring stuff, glad I didn't skip all of it or I would have missed that cryptic bit. So some segments are completely useless, and some have hidden important parts underneath all the useless, and some of those hidden parts cleverly connect to other parts that either lead nowhere or to more cryptic things. As someone who prefers just getting right to the story with no filler bs, this isn't for me. There are 6 chapters but I only read through all of chapter 1 and maybe 1/4 of chapter 2 before I decided there's nothing worth reading anymore and just skipped through the rest. Each chapter is probably over an hour of reading. Considering I played for 2.9 hours, and about 1.5 hours offline, it probably took me close to 2 hours to read the first chapter, so if you read everything you're looking at a pretty lengthy novel. I mean, it took me like 1.5 hours just to skip through 2/3 of the game. The main game is choosing recon, research or romance. Recon is mostly world building, but its not really something most would care about in this type of story. (could just be that I don't, of course) Research just talks about sick cats, and sometimes story. Romance is the worst. It's just looking at stars or rocks with cats. These are by far the longest reading segments, and the most boring. It sometimes takes several minutes to skip through one segment, so I can't imagine how long it would take to read. After choosing to do 3 activities, you've got to rest. This is just another time waster. Early on, it wastes your life by the character having some weird cat-related dream, but then it mostly just goes, you slept and feel reenergized! Oh really? Is that how sleeping works? I always wondered...Stop wasting my time! In short, it adds nothing relevant to the game. So as I skipped through most of the game, I can't really say for sure if the story's any good, but from the glimpses I've caught of text, its a real let down. And its repetitive. And the dating sim part is poor and feels meaningless. The music is fantastic

Crazy that this game doesn't have much love, I had a great time playing it with my partner. I enjoyed the weirdness and hunting for the various endings, the dialogue and character design are good, and it doesn't overstay its welcome in my opinion. Worth a buy if you like dating sim style games, or cats, or both. It is definitely worth 10 bucks.

I do enjoy it, with some caveats. I spend my time thinking "THIS IS NOT HOW RESEARCH WORKS" especially when the professor is all "our job isn't to ask questions". Your character should be able to call in the ethics board or the police as an option! And on a purely gameplay aspect, having to replay the whole thing if you want to correct something you did in chapter 4/5 is a complete waste of time. It should be possible to start from any chapter in the playthrough you completed to see other endings! Updated after 2nd playthrough: there's many different ways to go and apparently you can't win the game unless you have exhausted absolutely all options. Which would require a few more playthroughs at this time, which with no skip option is absolutely out of the question. This changed my recommendation from yes to no...

I liked this game a lot... mostly. I would say that the title is a bit misleading, as it's not as light-hearted and dating-sim-y as the title suggests. It definitely is on the dark sinister and investigation/visual novel side of things. A title that reflected that better would better prepare players, versus pulling the rug out from under folks looking for a straight-up light comedy. (content warning: notable harm to animals) I really liked the use of multiple player characters over time in each full run. I also loved the "meow" songs -- fun music in the game! This game would massively benefit from a "skip dialog" feature. You are very likely going to need/want to play multiple runs, and by the 4th run hitting next over and over and over again for hours gets tedious. The ending didn't quite stick the landing for me, but overall it was still a fun game. I wish I were catified!

chill