First Look: Later Daters

Later Daters is a new dating visual novel where you play a senior citizen who has just moved to a retirement community. Will you find love so you don’t die alone or just get your kicks while the getting is still good?

I’ve had my eye on this game for a while because I enjoy visual novels and found the senior citizen community as an interesting premise for a dating sim. One of the interesting parts of this game is how they create unique personalities for every character. You have the former rock star, the shy greenhouse attendant, the overeager neighbor, and more. A huge upside for this game is that it is LGBTQ+ friendly. Not only with who you date being open to everyone, but you can also identify as gender neutral.

Also, the choices are pretty clear of where you can take your character personality-wise and building relationships with others. Sometimes I don’t like the obviousness with the choices, especially when they are blatantly just rude or mean. Especially when there isn’t a good setup or reason to suddenly be mean.

One thing that I didn’t know when I bought the game is that it is currently not the full game. I intended on doing a full review, anticipating a complete game, and then it stopped halfway through playing because it is only part one. And they say the second part will be a DLC. I am definitely not a fan of this, because I don’t see why they sold half a game and still expect me to pay for the other half as a DLC. To me, DLC should be bonus content that you can get if you want more but won’t prevent you from playing the full game. My issue is not the fact it is being released in parts necessarily, it is the fact that they expect me to pay for the second half when I already bought the seemingly full game. It’s a definite disappointment. Also, the game is looking like it will be fairly short overall so it’s even more strange to me that they are dividing it into parts.

Overall, I do enjoy Later Daters. It’s a more simple visual novel compared to others out there and I am still interested in playing it out to see where my character’s story goes. But I am very bummed that the broke the game in half and expect me to pay for it twice essentially without clearly advertising that that was the case.

Is there a particular setting you’d want a visual novel to be in? Let me know with a comment below.