Tokimeki Memorial

Pretty all right for those kind of stat-raising "watch number go up and down" games. You have 3 years to work on your skills, make one of the numerous yet interchangeable anime girls fall in love with you, and maybe try to get into a good university while you're at it after finishing high school. Events sometimes happen such as exams and the yearly culture festival and a few character-specific scenes, but that's about it as far as the narrative is concerned.

What makes this game unique compared to other similar games is the "bomb" system, where you're forced to play the field a bit and check in with the girls you're neglecting or otherwise they end up talking shit about you to their friends and they all bring their affection for you down severely. It does add a fun little strategy element to it late-game when you've met a bunch of them and have to try and juggle working on yourself, your girl of choice, and throwing the others a bone now and then. It's also a little easier than it sounds, but I imagine if you do too well wooing multiple girls it might turn into a death spiral with how much time you have to fix any bombs that go off, especially in the final months leading to your high school graduation.

I played the SFC version that was recently fan translated in English which unfortunately seems to be one of the weaker versions due to compressing so much to fit it into a tiny cartridge, but the gameplay is more or less untouched outside of some questionable choices like removing any way to freely access the calendar or plan weekly activities for your biorhythm fluctuations without just purely guessing and hoping the RNG's on your side. It's a shame that this version will probably be the most accessible one for a bit, but I'm also not complaining when it took us so long for a translation project for any version of this game to bear fruit.

I think it's worth a playthrough and maybe another one every now and then to try and get all of the endings, as long as you go into it understanding that it's more like Princess Maker and those kind of games than a real narrative-heavy affair.