Date Everything Review (Switch)

Who knew I was surrounded my hotties ~♥︎

Date Everything was definitely a game that I was anticipating since it was announced. I do love playing visual novels and dating sims, specifically otome visual novels, after all. Plus, who could resist a game where you literally get to date the various things that you’ll find around your own home? At the same time, though, I was a bit worried. Worried that this would just be another joke dating sim that doesn’t take the genre seriously. The ambitious nature of Date Everything did help push that worry away, but there was always that possibility. Obviously, I ended up playing Date Everything since this review exists! So, how was Date Everything?

I was debating on whether I should put this here or not, but I thought it would be best to say this right out the gate: I did not finish Date Everything. My 40-ish hour save file was corrupted after a crash and couldn’t be recovered, flushing all that time I spent with the game down the drain.

If you want to click off now, that’s fine, but I do believe I can still properly review Date Everything.

In Date Everything you play as yourself, or more accurately an unnamed character (that you name at the very beginning) that is pretty easy to self-insert into. Well, the main character does have a little bit of an established character that may break immersion if you don’t do it yourself, but yeah pretty easy to self insert. Anyway, the game starts on your first day at your new job. Well, not exactly “at” since you’re working from home, but still there’s a work chat. After going to college and getting a degree in customer service, you managed to get a job at a megacorporation known as Valdivian (with the help of your bestie that also works there). You are quite a loner in this universe, so what’s going to happen soon doesn’t really bother your character, but still you seem to want to be sociable. Giving yourself the goal of making friends, finding love, and even happy with making enemies.

You jump right into the game as your first day at Valdivian starts. Your first day is pretty decent, however there’s already some bad news. Did you already get the ire of a co-worker? Nope. You got replaced by AI, making this your first and last day. There is a silver lining though! It seems you’ll still get paid as technically you aren’t fired yet and in more of a limbo state. You also quickly get an anonymous message from someone going by the username “TinfoilHat” that sends you a package. The very package that kickstarts the whole game as it has a pair of aviators in them. But not just any aviators. These are the Dateviators! You, being totally curious, put them on right away where you immediately meet your first Dateable: Skylar. Skylar is the personification of the Dateviator and she gives you the rundown on everything and she’s where you can go to learn some more lore that explains how this whole situation is possible in-universe. Basically, the Dateviators have special properties that allow you to Directly Acknowledge a Thing’s Existence (or DATE). All you have to do is put them on, look at the object you want to interact with for a while, and viola you’ll see the personification of that object right in front of you where you’ll be able to interact with them, get to know them, and then develop a relationship with them.

So, yeah, for the whole game you’ll be dating everything. Literally. There are 100 dateable objects here, 102 if you pick up the DLC, and each of them has their own storyline to go with them. You’ll then end up with either a Hate, Friendship, or Love relationship ending with them depending on your choices. You can even go one step further as you’ll learn about another feature the Dateviator has. Though, I’ll keep that a secret as it’s pretty confusing if you find out before the game tells you about it and it is more or less a late game mechanic. Just…don’t leave your house. That’ll take you to an ending with the credits as you’ll immediately end up losing the Dateviators.

While the meat of the game is dating the 100 objects in your house, the few human characters you met do chime in from time to time. They do kind of have a mini side plot, but there’s not that much focus put on it and they stop chiming in after your day counter surpasses a certain amount. I don’t mind them being way in the back of your character’s mind, but I did miss getting messages from Sam. And it would have been interesting to get some more interaction with the AI chatbot.

Gameplay here is pretty simple. After you go through the tutorial, you’ll be set free. Well, free in your house as you can’t exactly leave. Every day you’ll wake up in your bedroom and you get to decide which object you want to interact with. Once you do, all you have to do is pop on the Dateviators, hold the button until the heart reticle fills up, and you’ll awaken the object. Where you’ll finally see the personification of that object, be able to talk to them, and start their storyline. How long a Dateable’s storyline is and how you progress entirely depends on that object. Most of them it’s as simple as just talking to them, but some of them will have you going to them at certain days or times (each charge passes the time as you’ll start early in the morning and end late at night), interact with another Dateable first, have a duo storyline with another Dateable, require you to be able to pass a SPECS Point check, or require you to interact with the different versions of them around the house if it’s an object you have multiples of (like chairs or doors). It can be a bit annoying, especially when it delays you progressing their storyline, but it does give you some variety so you’re not just plainly interacting with them. Some Dateables have short storylines while some have longer ones, but all of them are unique from one another. While there are a couple that share some similarities, they approach it differently. At the end of their storyline, you’ll learn whether you got a Hate, Friendship, or Love ending. However, you can end them really early (which mainly happens for Hate endings). Once you get an ending with a Dateable, you’ll also gain points in their associated SPECS Point category. Your SPECS growth is slow going and you’ll be very aware that you have few few points, but you’ll eventually get to the 50-100 mark on each category. Which may or may not sneak up on you.

The open house exploration is just a vehicle to the meat of the game: the visual novel aspect. It’s your usual visual novel fare with choices popping up every so often during conversations to represent what you say. Though, some choices are locked behind SPECS Points requirements. Your choices also determine what ending you get with that Dateable…although some are more strict than others. Like do one thing wrong and you’re locked into a Hate or Friendship ending no matter if the Dateable seems really into you strict.

You can only interact with a dateable object (or Dateables as this game calls them) once per day and you can only interact with five Dateables every day. It can be a bit overwhelming starting out, but it’s definitely best to try to complete a storyline before awakening the next. Aside from a couple objects that are locked behind other object’s storylines, you can do them in any order you want to. Dateables do appear or get referenced in other Dateable’s storylines, but I did find that the game does a good job filling you in if you haven’t met them yet.

You also have your phone, which has some helpful uses even though you may find yourself checking it less the further you get into the game. Your phone gives you access to messages that the human characters send you (and lets you read back on them if needed), it gives you access to a few Dateables, check out where you’re at with your SPECS Points, has the usual pause menu options, and has two important apps. One being the Roomers app which is used to help you find any Dateables that you’re having a hard time finding. It’ll record any clues or rumors you hear about and you’ll be able to reference it later if you have a hard time finding them or not sure who a silhouetted character is on this next app. The other really helpful app is the Date-a-dex! The Date-a-dex is exactly what you think if you’ve played Pokemon as it helps you keep track of everyone that you met and gives you a little preview silhouette of their character sprite. Each entry includes a fun little description about the Dateable, gives you a really quick rundown on previous interactions, allows you to see what collectibles you have and what you’re missing (along with a hint on how to get it), and your relationship status once you gain one.

Once you use up all of your charges and done with checking out any messages or exploring, you’ll then return to your bed. Where you’ll go to sleep, progress to the next day, and have all of your charges back.

So yeah, that’s the gameplay loop. Personally, I didn’t mind it. There were certainly times I wished I could do a Dateable’s whole storyline without prerequisites/restraints or that I wished there weren’t any restrictions on how many Dateables you can interact with; but looking back I think it was a good way to handle it.

Once you get an ending that sends you to the game’s credits, you’ll be able to create a New Game+ file. From what I understand, your SPECS Points and collectibles carry over on a NG+ file, leaving only the relationships with each character resetting (don’t worry, you can easily skip the tutorial).

There actually is a lot more in Date Everything that you can do or collect if you wish. A lot of this is to encourage a second, third, and maybe even a fourth playthrough. First off, there are a bunch of collectibles that you’ll be able to get depending on your choices. Each Dateable has at least three collectibles tied to them, but how you get will depend on the character. Some you’ll get just by going through their storyline, some require you to choose a specific choice or series of choices (which may or may not require you to have the SPEC points), and some require you to get a specific ending with them (or with other characters). Some characters you can realistically get all the collectibles tied to them in your first playthrough, but there are a lot that you’ll be missing some that will require you to do another playthrough for. A couple characters even have collectibles that you can only get one per playthrough due to the nature that you gain them. You can also check out what the other dialogue choices lead you to, go down a different branching path (for the few characters that have different paths for you to go down that reveal different information), you can meet characters in a different order, you can actually pick the SPEC point choices you encountered early in your playthrough, and achieve the other endings for the characters. You can also aim to get the same endings for all characters (which you’ll have to do anyway if you’re aiming for all collectibles).

This is all optional and it’s still worth it even if you’re only planning one playthough, but you’ll end up missing quite a bit of characterization and scenes at the same time.

Personally, I do recommend just not worrying on your first playthrough and picking choices how you want to pick them. Let your heart (or gut) lead you and see what endings you manage to get for all the characters. Then, if you want to do another playthrough, that’s when you go in on specific endings. Plus, this does allow you to have more knowledge on how each character wants you to approach them as there are going to be a handful that you’ll unexpectedly get a Friend or Hate ending when you were gunning for a Love ending.

Overall, I did really like the gameplay and story (or I guess more accurately stories) here. I honestly did have a lot of fun with Date Everything. The story that frames the game works nicely and I liked how it’s kept in the background, I obviously really liked the premise of dating the various objects in your household, and I liked how each object had their own personality, backstory (even though sometimes you don’t get much of it), relationships, and how each of their stories were different. There is so much variety here and even when two characters may share a similarity in their personality or story, they are handled in a different way. I really liked the writing style here as well and I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers had a lot of fun coming up with object-based puns and wordplay. The humor really was down my alley as I laughed a lot throughout my playthrough and smiled most of the time (there were a couple Dateables that made me…uncomfortable or I just thought were boring). I also liked exploring the house and the gameplay loop here.

Date Everything is for sure overwhelming as you first start. Like, who do I date first out of the 100 possible objects (technically it’s less, but you don’t know a handful of them are locked until you do something else first)? But as you awaken Dateables, do their storylines, and get in the groove, it’s a really nice and fun experience. It was so fun interacting with the personification of all the objects and I loved how they had pre-established relationships with the other objects. I really loved how Dateables would make cameos in other storylines as well.

However, as I was shifting through my thoughts on Date Everything both as I was playing and afterwards, I was conflicted. There were aspects that I equally liked and didn’t like. It didn’t help that they often contradicted each other (especially in the beginning when I was still approaching this like a normal dating sim). That is when I came to the conclusion that the premise and execution really puts the game in a double edge sword situation. I think the main one is the fact that this game is advertised as a dating sim, but it doesn’t have the main features that games in the genre have. Having 100 characters that you can date goes along with the premise of dating objects and I did really like being able to interact and develop relationships with them, however it doesn’t give you time to really get to know or bond with the majority of them. It is all quite shallow and dating sims have way more depth to the relationships you develop with the love interests. Granted, dating sims also have way less love interests and characters. In Date Everything, it really is a gamble on what you’ll get for a Dateable in this sense. Some are just the gimmick that they bring to the table and while that’s fun, at the same time I found them interesting and wanted to get to know them more. Some are more focused on the storyline they wanted to tell with that character and when the ending comes, it seems sudden that they’ll suddenly be in love with you. Some do try to have that balance, but fail in some way whether the way it switches between the gimmick and story they wanted to tell too abruptly or they were trying to do too much with the character that it clashes. There are some that I do feel hit that balance though, and I did find that they were often my favorites. The characters are shallow, but I can’t help but still love them.

It’s a shame that you don’t have much time with these Dateables and your interactions with them basically stop once you get that Hate/Friendship/Love ending as the same line or two repeats. This makes you wish the characters you enjoyed or loved had more time so you can get to know them, but at the same time it does make it so you don’t stay with the characters you don’t like or find their story boring for long (which is definitely a positive). It doesn’t help that some Dateables do have a new interaction or two and, even worse, there are a couple that imply (or outright say) you can do the repeatable event that you do during their storyline but you can’t. It can be annoying how some Dateable storylines have you interact with them at certain times/days/spots, have you do something first before you can progress, or have you pass a SPECS Point check, but at the same time it does break up how you approach the majority of them. The majority of the choices you get are good, but there are a handful that aren’t (there’s even a character where you’re forced to be mean to if you can’t pass the SPECS Point check). As someone that loves cooking, I hated how I was locked into being someone that does Food Fetch a lot (this universe’s Uber Eats/Doordash), which did ruin the oven’s storyline for me. Getting back on topic, but endings sometimes come too quickly and there is some awkwardness in some of them. While a lot of them it’s pretty easy to know what you need to do to get the Love ending (i.e. be nice) a handful of them can get you to have a surprise Hate/Friendship end due to how they are handled. Dating sims have your relationship with the love interests be based on the accumulation of your choices, but here there’s a handful where you have to be absolutely perfect. If you get one thing wrong, you’re out. I’d say it’s even worse here since for some of them they can give you vibes that they really like you (like blushing character sprite and flirty dialogue and all), but then you’re hit with a “You suck, get out of my face”. It doesn’t help that you don’t get enough time to really tell how you’re meant to approach them. You want to help them, but you’re actually meant to enable them and encourage their behavior. It’s even worse when there’s another Dateable that basically has the same beat. One will love you for helping them with their problem while another will hate you for daring to help them and not just going along. One will want you to sass them back while one will hate it. It doesn’t help for certain personality types like tsunderes where you need that time to get to know them and realize that hey they’re not really jerks. I did also end up liking how you’re restricted to talking to a Dateable once per day and five unique Dateables per day; however it was annoying not being able to do a storyline in one go and it does not make it easy to reload a save to get the ending you want with a Dateable. You have to remember when you interacted with them and be fine undoing your progress with who knows how many Dateables. Plus there are some Dateables that you can easily mess up in their first interaction and you won’t know it until you get that surprise Friendship/Hate ending.

However, no matter how much I wished Date Everything did things differently or left some characters out so others could have room to be developed more, I also don’t see any other way it could have been done differently. Date Everything is definitely a very ambitious title and while it didn’t quite live up to the high expectations, it did do a great job executing it. I wouldn’t want Date Everything to be any different as I do really appreciate the game.

I think it really helped me when I stopped expecting this to be like dating sims/otomes that I played before and just enjoyed it for what it is. That doesn’t mean the game’s downsides aren’t still downsides, but that they don’t bother you as much.

Aside from the double edged sword aspects that Date Everything suffered from, there are other negatives that I had against the game. Which are mostly due to the state that it was released in. Though, I will mention that Date Everything does lack features that visual novels usually have. There’s no feature where you can skip read text or at least a way to distinguish if you read that text or not. There’s no text backlog so you can go back and read a previous line. There’s also no auto mode, which I feel is the biggest missed feature here as an auto advance is perfect for a game that is fully voiced. I didn’t use the Content Aware feature personally, but I have heard that it is also pretty inconsistent. There were also some inconsistencies with what was said and the text (whether the text not matching what was said or the elongation being in the wrong places based on how the voice actors elongated the word). There is also one very noticeable inconsistency in Mateo’s storyline where the beginning of his storyline has you go in the laundry room to progress the storyline, but for the rest of it he acts like you went to the bathroom. There are some smaller inconsistencies with how some Dateables are like in their storyline and how they are when they have a cameo in others. There were also, of course, Dateables that I personally didn’t like or enjoy, but that’s totally subjective and with 100 characters there’s bound to be a handful that will be duds for you. I also personally thing the jungle that plays when you get an ending is too long as I honestly didn’t know the characters also had a line on the relationship ending screen until I happened to click right as it played the voice line.

Now onto the state of the game, it was surprisingly worse than I was expecting. I was expecting the visuals to be downgraded a bit for the Switch and maybe some hitches, but the game was pretty buggy. To be honest, I waited so long to play Date Everything because I heard how buggy it was and I was hoping most of it would be fixed. Some storylines are bugged and it seems like it may vary between save files as some will have the same problem while others won’t. Personally, I encountered four storylines that I know were bugged, with one I couldn’t progress and three I technically could have gotten an ending but I didn’t want to as I already put in the work to get the Love Ending. Two I could have gotten a Friendship ending with, but the other one I was locked into a Hate ending with (and the latter was the more heinous of the two since I put his storyline on hold so I can pass his SPECS Point checks…only to find out it’s bugged making every choice a fail and thus led to a Hate ending). There are a couple other character storylines I suspected were bugged too, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Sometimes dialogue repeats when it really shouldn’t have (or doesn’t need to if this isn’t a bug). I have also heard some other storylines being bugged that I personally didn’t experience. I did also find that some relationship statuses pop up too early for some characters; though it’s hard to tell if it is intentional or a bug considering it’s one of the Dateables’ whole gimmick. I’d like to say it wasn’t considering that for the ones that it isn’t their gimmick, the storylines still continue. Every object that was silver also randomly turned red towards the end of my playthrough. I honestly thought it was a spooky random interaction with Amir (especially since I was doing the storyline for a certain character in the attic) until Amir didn’t mention anything spooky and I noticed a lot of other things were also red.

I also had random freezes during dialogue. I have no idea why, but the game froze on me about five times. All in the middle of the Dateable(s) talking. Which did require me to restart the game. I also had a lot of crashes. Which was certainly strange considering this is mainly a visual novel. I don’t remember half of the crashes I had, but I will say that a good couple of them were with the Sassy Chap Dateable, which I will outright say was super annoying. Not only is it super long, but I personally didn’t like the direction it went. No offense to the developers, but I just didn’t care for it, found it annoying, and it was far too meta for me (plus I thought it was going to go in a different direction). Luckily, you can end and return where you left off with Sassy Chap (the character) so you can still get an ending by doing it in segments. It’s still annoying, but not as annoying as having to go through the whole shebang and hope it doesn’t crash again and again.

Sorry for not knowing about wine or that you need to eat sushi in the first 10 seconds or liking chocolate ice cream instead of strawberry

While the bugs did affect my enjoyment, I was having so much fun with the game I didn’t really mind it. I was annoyed, yes, but not so much that it affected my overall feelings on the game. Maybe it would have if the game was manual saves only, but the game does autosave after each conversation with a Dateable so it wasn’t that bad. That is, until the last crash that I got. I didn’t count how many crashes I had, though I’d like to say maybe ten, but when I was going back into the game after the last crash I was greeted with what made my heart drop. My save file got corrupted. I was absolutely devastated and honestly I still am. I had about 40 hours in the game, awakened 95 objects (got an ending with most of them), and didn’t do the late game mechanic yet as I was waiting until I got endings for all the Dateables first (or well most considering some of them were bugged for me). However, that save file got flushed down the drain. It…really took the wind out of my sails and while I technically could just restart the game I just don’t have the heart to right now. I was really invested in the save file that’s now gone and I don’t want to start a new game only for it to happen again.

I really fear the state Date Everything was in back in the beginning of the year before it was delayed if it was still released in an unstable, buggy state.

Aside from…all the bugs, freezes, and crashes I experienced, the performance on the Switch was pretty good. The only time I noticed frame drops was when the game was saving, but otherwise it was pretty smooth. I didn’t notice any frame drops while walking around the house, I didn’t notice lag with the text (outside when the game saved while still in a conversation), and the various animations that you can trigger didn’t lag either. So at least on this front, I was happy with the performance.

To tie everything up, I will say that the visuals and sound were all perfect here. The house is well designed and it was a delight spending the whole game in it and figuring out how to access objects you don’t have immediate access to. The only questionable thing about the house is where the attic is, but I can forgive it as it does make it way easier to access it (admittedly I did get annoyed at the long animation for getting in/out the crawlspace). I also absolutely loved the artwork here. Every character and every collectible/item all looked so beautiful. In particular, I think they nailed the human designs for all the objects. There will, of course, be some that you won’t like, but they all do represent their object really well, as well as the characterization that they get in the game (and even by people in the real world). It was such a delight seeing the character designs here and I was always looking forward to seeing how a new object was going to look.

Date Everything is fully voiced and the voice actors all did a wonderful job. There were a few that I personally didn’t like (which is to be expected), but they all brought their character to life really well. You get so much more of their personality, line deliveries definitely will differ from how you probably read them, and there were so many funny line deliveries. Also, honestly, there were a lot where they nailed what I thought an object would look like if they were human, with some pleasant surprises that surpassed my expectations. And the soundtrack? Oh boy they nailed it on the soundtrack. They managed to hit the vibe I was thinking the objects would have and even surprised me with some that fit the character so well. There are even points where it changes to fit what’s happening.

There were also a lot of small details that I really appreciated. There are some visual changes that can happen to the house. Dateables have a little line after the jingle plays on the “New Dateable!” and “Hate/Friendship/Love” ending screen. There are some overworld interactions when you interact with objects without wearing the Dateviators. If you are wearing the Dateviators and have a Friendship or Love ending with a Dateable, they’ll also have a voiceline in the overworld if you interact with their object. And in some cases, they’ll have a special animation (which is honestly really cool). There are also some cute little details in the character designs that you may not notice at first glance (or on certain sprites). Though it seems the Friendship/Love object interaction for Tydus is bugged. Not to mention all the smart design choices for the personified form of all the objects and the little touches for the different poses they all have that also go with whatever object they are.

So yeah, all in all Date Everything nailed it in the character design, voice acting, and soundtrack department.

Verdict

All in all, I’m happy that I got to play Date Everything and that it didn’t turn out to be a joke dating sim. Granted, I wouldn’t really say it’s a dating sim as it is more gimmicky and more akin to speed dating, but to me it felt mostly earnest. There are a lot of jokes in the game, but the majority don’t feel like it’s towards the genre but having fun with its premise. It’s ambitious and there are certainly issues that came from the quantity over quality approach, but it was honestly a lot of fun. I liked the majority of the characters here, I loved interacting with everyone, getting to know them, and seeing the dynamics that my household items ended up having. I also did like exploring the house, the artwork and music was beautiful and on point, and I really liked the whole premise of dating the various objects around your home and how it was (mostly) executed. As long as you’re going in expecting a comedic visual novel that’s not really a dating sim, okay with it not being as deep, and can just enjoy the ride, I’d say Date Everything is easily worth picking up.

However, I also do recommend holding off. I can only speak for how this is on the Switch (though I have heard other platforms are having the same problems), but Date Everything is buggy and crashes a lot. You even risk losing your save file like I did. So keep an eye out and wait until everything is ironed out so you can have a better experience than I did. I know that if I ever return to the game, I’m not going to until I hear that all the bugs, crashes, and the risk of your save file corrupting is fixed.