What is your favorite JRPG with a dating sim element in it?

A Growlancer reference? Me and the 16 other remaining fans salute you good sir.

for final fantasy base on my personal taste, the best romance is squall and rinoa in the FF8

That mechanic alone most of the time (not all) is the reason why I got into and fell in love with JRPGs. The fact that you can date a cute anime girl of your choice really got me when I first found out about JRPGs back during 2020 and 2021 and it still does to this day.

Tales of Arise is a beautiful game, the story itself is absolutely fantastic. Alphen and Shion are so well thought out too, I really like how their love grows throughout the game. Such a good game!

Ah yes, fire emblem is my favorite dating sim

Oh, Thousand Arms. That game is from my childhood.

cheered when Alphen and Shionne kissed haha

Gave you a like just for having Petra in the thumbnail lol

The problem with Trails of Cold Steel is Cold Steel 3, since Cold Steel let you romance one of multiple girls. Then Cold Steel 2 let you continue your choiced girl. But Cold Steel 3 says, "*uck your girl, i'll only let you pick one of 3 girls and if your picked girl is not there i don't care". Cold Steel 4 tries to fix that problem but the damage is done. Furthermore, Cold Steel games give you multiple girls to choose but the story and events let you know pretty clear which girl it's the "cannon girl" that you should pick which can be a bit annoying. Most of the fans dislike the romance system of Cold Steel, it's a mess and only works if you don't care enough about your choices. Trails in the Sy 1 and 2, it's a better choice, i mean, it hasn't a romance system but it has a better romance story.....one of the best in rpgs in my opinion.

"Sakura Wars is a series you can argue is more dating sim than rpg" yeah lol. I like to describe it as "playing a romcom mecha anime". It's amazing though, got a vibe all to itself. Love it all.

My fav game of all time has romance in it, Eternal Sonata. It's such a sweet relationship too between Polka and Allegretto. There are other relationships like with Jazz and Claves (all the while 2 other women pine after him lol), but those 2 chars are the main focus. Allegretto's English VA deserves an award for one moment in the game near the end (which I won't spoil). The Grandia games (1st 3 at least) have romance in them too. I never played the first one, I just heard it had romance in there, but I have played 2 and 3 (2's one of my fav games and 3 was a disappointment due to changes in the gameplay). Between 2 and 3, I do prefer the romance in 3 mostly because I am not a fan of love triangles (2's love triangle is basically what prevent it from being my fav game). While it's not a main focus there is romance in Skies of Arcadia. I see the 3 main chars as friends, I never got any romance between Vyse and the 2 girls. However, there was an obvious romance between another playable char, Enrique and one of your crew members, Moegi. Heck, it's really funny when even Moegi's brother sets them up hehe. Out of the ones mentioned, the only one I've played is RF5, but I haven't completed the main story because of one major reason, I am not a fan of the farming mechanics, they feel too complicated. Darn shame because I love everything else, especially the chars. I'll try to get back into it because I do want to finish the main story and get married and have kids. Most of the male LIs are awesome (I am a straight female btw).

It is only a dating sim if player can choose among multiple romantic partners and be the match maker. Built in love story like FFX doesn't count as dating sim in my opinion. My favorite has to to Fire Emblem series because not only you can pair up the protagonist, but also other characters and they all have different paired endings. FE4, in particular, is the best because each pairing affects the second generation. Children of said pairing will have different build depending on the father. I haven't seen any dating sim in RPG as deep as FE4 yet. Now what I want from dating sim is to have real consequence on the story. imagine your loyal companions like Wakka, Lulu, and Yuna date somebody ELSE in FF10 and they become your enemies. Or a political match making with no romantic feelings to change the direction of the main story. For example, to turn a powerful foe into an ally. Or a very unlikely pairing that gives unexpected turn of events... the combination is limitless.

NOICE! Also 10/10 thumbnail mate!

Glad you included my favorite girl Makoto in the thumbnail!

Great list, too bad I know all of these and played most of them :D Maybe do a list for straight up dating sims? Or VN/dating sim hybrids? Id give that a watch for sure.

Squall and Rinoa are crying on their eternal loop for being forgotten

Good list can't say id agree with Rune factory 5 considering how they gutted the DLC option for some of the other girls, so 4 would be the better option.

I was actually surprised to see Cold Steel 1 on this list. It might be a little more appropriate to put one of the sequels there instead, but who am I to criticize a recommendation of one of my favorite games ever?

You deserve it i am going to subscribe to you now will you hopefully make a top 10 favorite waifus and top 10 favorite characters of final Fantasy and top 10 of kingdom hearts charachters please😉👍🏻

You have great taste choosing Edelgard

Thousand Arms is one not enough people talk about. It wasn't perfect, but it has a lot of interesting qualities, and to this day I still remember quite a bit of it ... most definitely including the huge cliffhanger ending. I'd be curious how many have actually played this one. The dating elements were a novelty back then. I did not know they led to different endings though. Especially since there were some natural couplings between the characters already. Still, it was a good game in many ways, and it's a little sad it's stuck back on the PS1. I'm generally not a fan of dating elements in games, even though I will do them. The romance aspect almost always feels forced. Give me a narratively driven love story intigral to the plot, such as Lunar, Ff10 or Tales of Arise any day.

conception 2 was such a gem of a game.

Conception II is on 3ds too btw

Thousand Arms was a great game but it's SOOOOOO hard to find nowadays.

the fact that sakura wars is still not on steam, is a fucking crime

Man what'd you do to Manuela's face in the thumbnail.

Playing all these games. Ive had so many girlfriends and thus so many exes. 😢

Xenogears. Fei and Elly are lovers who has and will always be lovers throughout time. They are born, meet each other, fall in love, dies, and are reborn to meet each other again over and over. Kind of like Hawk Man and Hawk Girl. But you don't know that. You have to play the game to have that story slowly be revealed. Dating Sim with no sex isn't my thing. Even with sex, the sex kind of sucks because you have almost no control over it. I rather have The Sims with sex mods than Dating Sims.

I prefer Conception 1

You choose 3 houses really the past entries had better romance and marriage

@TagTheLegend, I think you should play the Thousand Arms first before you review it. Because at the end of the game, there is no story or sidequest which allow the player to marry with the women

My problem with like half of these games is that I'm only interested in dating men hahahah.

Technically Sakura Wars 2019 is not JRPG it's Visual Novel / Dating Sim but in full 3D, 90% of game is reading / 10% gameplay (and this is a reason why casuals mistake this game series with JRPG, because Sakura Wars 2019 is first game from this genre in full 3D, it's much closer to Shenmue than traditional Visual Novel with 2D sprites). Sakura Wars don't have traditional RPG elements like leveling up, itemization, grind etc. but instead of that (in previous games) you boost stats for upcoming battle with each heroine by interactions in Visual Novel segments. So it's pure Dating Sim with ,,gameplay''. Previous games in series were also prototype to Valkyria Chronicles series (same dev team), battle system ARMS from Sakura Wars 3-5 was improved later into BlitZ in Valkyria Chronicles,

Tidus and Yuna love story. Best in gaming. No other games compare

Ai face manuela jumpscare

tidus and yuna are the best romance ever

I'd say Rune factory 4 special is a better option than Rune factory 5. The graphics my be a bit inferior to RF5 but RF4S is actually difficult on hard mode and hell mode unlike RF5, the combat feels better and the characters are much funnier and feel more vibrant. But RF5 is also good

3 girls on preview: 2 from persona 5. Where from third one?

no mention of ar tonelico tho 😥😥

Weaboos UNITE!

Ar tonelico?

No Dragon Quest 11?

Cold Steel shouldn't have a dating sim feature. The story obviously shoves Alisa Reinford in your face, so they should've made that the canon one, instead of the 20 girls by the end of the tetralogy.

Hear are my Favorite RPG dating simulators that I’ve played 1. Dragon Age Origins 2. Dragon Age 2 3. Dragon Age Inquisition 4. Dragon Age Veilguard 5. Dragon’s Dogma 1 6. Dragon’s Dogma 2 7. Elder Scrolls Skyrim 8. Persona 5 Striker/Tactica 9. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth 10. Final Fantasy 16 11. Witcher 3 12. Greedfall 13. Baldur’s Gate 3 Here’s a list of RPGs romance simulators that I haven’t played but I wish to play someday 1. Fire Emblem Awakening 2. Fire Emblem Three Houses 3. Divinity Original Sin 2 4. Persona 3 5. Persona 5 6. The Mass Effect Trilogy Oh and I don’t think that both Tales of Arise and Final Fantasy X are dating simulators, more like two love stories between each main character duo. Alphen x Shionne from Tales of Arise and Tidus x Yuna from Final Fantasy X.