Summary
An enjoyable game, but it shows its age.
The Good
_True Love_ was the first Japanese bishoujo game experience for many soon-to-be fans of the genre, and its excellent gameplay mechanic makes it remain a standout today even as it fails to measure up technically to current titles.
This is a "dating simulator". You will guide the main character, a college student, through his day-to-day life over the course of four months in hopes of wooing a girl and causing her to fall in love with you. Although the dating sim genre is very popular in Japan, very few such titles are translated into English, and this is probably the best one that I have found. The more recent release _Casual Romance Club_ borrows a lot of ideas from _True Love_, and although _CRC_ is graphically head and shoulders above _True Love_, I think that this title is actually more fun to play. Assuming you don't use a walkthrough, you will have to make a lot of decisions and compromises over the course of the game in order to capture the heart of the girl you like. Add to that several story-altering random events, and you have a game worth playing through many times.
_True Love_ is so interactive and non-linear, even most of today's bishoujo games pale in comparison to its sheer variety. At the same time, the gameplay mechanic is simple and intuitive, and you won't spend any time wondering what to do. For each day, you can choose one activity for your character to do during the afternoon, evening, and night. The available activities include going to school, studying, painting, sports, working on your looks, hanging out in town, loafing around, working part-time, shopping, and sometimes, going out on a date. Each activity may cause you to have an encounter with one of the game's ten principal female characters, and will increase or decrease certain statistics that your character has. The statistics include passion, appearance, fatigue, scholastic aptitude, physical strength, artistic ability, and money.
If you choose to go to work, you will increase your passion and strength in addition to putting some money in your pocket. However, you will decrease your physical appeal and increase your fatigue. Painting will increase your artistic ability, but it will decrease your strength - and so on. Each of these statistics play a role in your ability to pursue your favorite girl, so you must plan carefully. This is a highly addictive formula, and one that surprisingly enough hasn't yet been outdone or even duplicated in an English-translated bishoujo game.
Another highlight is _True Love_'s character designs. The game presents you with ten female characters who are not at all like one another. If you play a few bishoujo games, you will probably find that many are lacking in unique female leads, and this really adds to _True Love_'s appeal.
The Bad
Unfortunately, while the character designs are nice and the girls themselves are drawn nicely, the graphics don't measure up to current titles or even mainstream games released around the same time. Games such as Sierra's _Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers_ and _Quest for Glory IV_ had character portraits that were much more colorful and visually striking. Bishoujo games live and die by their character art, and here I find _True Love_ to be rather lacking.
Also, while progressing through the game is a lot of fun and each girl has her own interesting plot (compare to the very two-dimensional girls of _Casual Romance Club_), the endings are very short and a bit of a letdown. Each ending is more or less a "... and so we lived happily ever after" situation, along with a large picture of your chosen girl. Each girl is interesting enough that you won't be able to help but wish that the game's creators had put a little more thought into the conclusions of their stories.
The Bottom Line
_True Love_ is out of print, and no longer sold in stores or online. Barring a re-release, you will most likely not be able to obtain this game through legal means (good luck even finding a used copy). However, it is downloadable from many fansites on the Web.
Although several current bishoujo game titles are quite a bit better, _True Love_ still functions as a pretty good introduction to the genre if you can manage to find it. If you are interested in a dating sim, you owe it to yourself to try this title as I have yet to find an English-translated dating sim that does much to expand on the ideas put forth here.
Although the game does not officially support Windows XP, it will run flawlessly if you run the main game executable in compatibility mode for Windows 98. Simply hit Alt-Enter if you wish to exit fullscreen mode.
