In all fairness, I don't know if you could really call that a 'standard' - as far as I'm aware, none of the other Tokimeki Memorial games have this feature, including Girl's Side 3 (which is the more recent game); that and even the older TokiMemos had features that aren't present in the newer games, such as weather affecting dates and whatnot, so I wouldn't take the features of any one game in the series to be particularly 'standard' at all. At any rate, I wouldn't really expect a small indie game to include every feature of the biggest dating sim in the genre, even if it has been in development for five years or so. (That and to be honest, I wasn't really a fan of most of the skills in TokiMemo 4 anyway - when most of the gameplay is basically just 'take girl on date - choose from simple answers', there didn't seem to be a whole lot of point to them. But maybe that's just me. )Counter Arts wrote:I know that Tokimeki Memorial 4 has 90+ skills like conversationalist, aerobic, motorcycle license. The skills does stuff like reduces the rate that you get stressed, increases general stats, or gives trades offs. So far no one but me has pointed out something like this.
(Actually, the whole 'failing repeatedly' bit from the demo irritated me too - while it's understandable for storyline reasons, it doesn't seem to serve much purpose gameplay-wise, and what exactly affects it isn't explained (I hear it's both base stats and physical / mental exhaustion, though the fact that even with exhaustion meters completely full you can fail or double fail at everything makes them completely useless at the beginning of the game, at least). I also agree completely with the whole 'being forced to raised stat x while the others plummet' aspect being pretty annoying, as while introducing actions one by one is a nice touch, several in-game weeks / months is far too long to spend doing this).
*bitches and whines* I'm still looking forward to Shira Oka's release, though - have there even been any full-on, lengthy stat-driven dating sims other than the TokiMemo games in the past few years? (Not a rhetorical question, I honestly have no idea Though I suppose there's always Love Revo... and Love Plus, if it counts.) Even though very little of the game appeals to me, I'd still like to see how it turns out...