Dating Sim or Vn?

[papillon]

I think e's just saying it's an easy way of constraining the space of possibilities so they don't go insane.

[Elmiwisa]

Why is it a trick?

I think e's just saying it's an easy way of constraining the space of possibilities so they don't go insane.

papillon already gave the short answer to the question. I am just going to elaborate on the "trick" part.
The word "trick" here is used in the same sense as an illusionist's trick. An illusionist try to make a phenomenon happen that looks like it can only be done by supernatural means and yet is done by mundane means.
Here we have the same situation:
-Phenomenon: "Whoa! Raise any stats you want. Go anywhere you want. The game last a few years in game time. You can go on dates, go to school, attend events and much more, on the date of your choice. Every choices matter. The possibilities are endless."
-The supernatural means: the game maker actually account for an huge amount of (interesting) possibilities and write various different chunk of dialogue for each. This means that adding even 2-3 more decision points to the game easily means a lot more workload that is needed to handle, easily increase the development time by a hundredth-fold.
-The mundane means: the game maker actually ensure that almost all of interesting possibilities are impossible to happen. All those that can happen get squished down to a handful of significant different narrative, but otherwise choices are acknowledged by a bit of different dialogue. This means that adding even 1000 more decision points just means a week or two worth of work

[Starshine]

I like dating sims... and first person view ones they are my favourites, i also like mixed games that can be both VN & DS.

[AlmondFlower]

I lean more towards visual novel as far as game play, but those are hard to find. A dating sim is fun as well. I like either as long as the story makes sense and I love it when the game is well - written.

[SHiNKiROU]

I don't like dating sims because of their game mechanics don't appeal me. So VN.