Kadokawa Games and Sweet One revealed new information for their PS4 dating sim LoveR. As a reminder, the game mixes dating sim elements and photography, just like Ichirou Sugiyama’s past games: Photo Kano and Reco Love. The biggest new feature in LoveR is the voice recognition system, usable during some of the game’s discussions and during photo shoots. LoveR also has character designs by Taro Minoboshi, the character designer of LovePlus, Root Letter and God Wars.
The new information includes two new characters, new gameplay videos showing the girls’ respective stories’ prologues, a sample of the game’s ending songs and multiple screenshots.
First off we’ve got Ryusei Toujima, voiced by Tomokazu Sugita. Ryusei is a second-year high school student and part of Class A like the protagonist. He always has an intimidating look, so people tend to get scared of him and he’s always alone. He’s into photography so he decided to join the photography club, but the other members are scared of him and never go to the clubroom. He’s actually a good guy and kinda feels responsible for the situation and the club falling over, so he decides to get new members. Seeing the protagonist with a camera, he forcibly makes him join the club.
Ryusei is the first male character revealed in LoveR besides the protagonist. He’s the kind of character you traditionally find in dating sims, a male character who becomes the male protagonist’s friend and helps them around.
Next, we’ve got Himari Saiki, voiced by Sakura Tange. She teaches Chemistry and Biology, and she’s also the teacher in charge of the protagonist and Ryusei’s class, class 2-A. She brilliantly graduated from the most prestigious university in Japan and decided to become a teacher at Takamura Liele as she previously attended the school. She’s a serious and cute teacher loved by everyone at school. Though besides her passion for teaching, she’s also really into certain experiments she conducts in secret and is often looking for subjects to test them.
Sadly, Kadokawa Games and Sweet One already mentioned we won’t be able to take pictures of Ryusei and Himari.
As we previously detailed, every day once school ends, players will have multiple activities available to them, one of these is taking part-time jobs. Like in many dating-sims, money is important here, as you’ll need some if you invite a girl to hang out after school or buy presents. During his shifts, the protagonist may also encounter some of the girls.
Next, all the prologue videos for each of the girls’ stories have been released. The very beginning of the story has the protagonist getting a camera from his dad and starting to carry it around at school. And in LoveR, like in most dating sims, each of the girls has different events to trigger and to go through, with certain events only unlocking when you’ve cleared other particular events. At the beginning of the game, you’ll first have to trigger the first event for each girl to start their routes, and that’s what those prologue videos are showing. Here are some quick summaries of what’s happening in each one of them.
First off we have Lilia Takamura, voiced by Reina Kondo. Lilia is one year older than the protagonist and also the granddaughter of Takamura Liele’s director. Lilia’s story starts as the protagonist catches her training her rhythmic gymnastic late after school in the gymnasium. As he absent-mindedly starts taking pictures, she notices him and realizes he’s not part of the newspaper club, taking pictures without her authorization. After gently berating the protagonist, Lilia introduces herself and seems to be displeased that obviously, everyone at school, the protagonist included, already knows about her. As such, she decides she should learn more about the protagonist as well.
Nanatsu Higadera, voiced by Kanae Itou ( who also voiced Haruka in Photo Kano and is used to Sugiyama’s games). Nanatsu and the protagonist already know each other, as they’re childhood friends. While greeting him one morning, she berates him for being so out of shape, while he answers she just too strong, as she’s one of the best members of the swimming club. The protagonist used to do baseball and she wishes he’d pick up a sport again. As he starts complaining about how his dad handed him over his used camera, Nanatsu tells him his dad is actually worried about him and wants to see how he’s faring at school. So he should at least take a picture of her to show his dad he has a good friend, but the protagonist is pretty reluctant to shoot Nanatsu, until she rattles his head into submission.
Crista Kasumi Ikuno, voiced by Manaka Iwami. The girl with a Russo Canadian mother and who used to live in Canada. She’s really into cameras and photography, so when the protagonist takes her picture without prior notice, she’s interested in his camera rather than reacting angrily about it. While its the first time they properly speak to each other, the protagonist already knows Crista as she’s pretty famous around school because of her mixed origins. For some reasons, she only takes pictures in monochrome. She tells the protagonist to talk to her anytime, as long as it’s to chat about photography.
Romi Nakaza, voiced by Yuki Takada. Part of the dance club and also works as an idol. She can do any dance from baton twirling to hip hop and is very confident in her abilities. Though she ends up getting irritated as the protagonist keeps staring at her rehearsing a role instead of actually taking pictures. She tells him to take some and get it over with. Like Lilia, she initially misunderstood the protagonist as one of the newspaper club’s members, and she’s pretty disappointed when she learns an article about her exploits won’t be on the school’s site following this small photoshoot. She’s basically a school idol and does concerts every day at school once classes ended, and despite her seemingly haughty personality, she actually wants to cheer up people and its the reason why she’s so much into dancing.
Rinze Himenogi, voiced by Yui Ishikawa. Rinze’s the only girl not in high school, as she’s in 5th year of elementary, meaning she’s 11 years old. Takamura Lilie is an elevator school, with students from elementary to high school, and some of the characters, like the protagonist and Nanatsu, have been attending since elementary. As I already reported, Rinze’s character is nearly identical to Rinze Himeragi from Reco love who was also voiced by Yui Ishikawa. However, Sugiyama already said her story in LoveR will be different. To avoid weird implications, Reco Love‘s Rinze story ended with her promising to marry the player when she gets older, so they’ll probably do something similar in LoveR. Though, in the first place, the fact that you can take screenshots of underage characters in swimsuits including Rinze will probably gross out most people from LoveR.
During their first meeting, the protagonist asks if he can take a photo, but Rinze refuses. As he asks why she’s playing with soap bubbles, she says that rather liking them, she’s envious of the bubbles, how they can fly graciously and disappear. In short, one of the reasons Rinze doesn’t like cameras is how she’s part of the gymnastic club, and how a lot of cameramans take pictures with a dirty mind rather than for the beauty of the sport itself. As the protagonist assures her he’s not interested that way, and as she wants to show how awesome gymnastics is, she tells him she’ll ask her coach if he can assist to training sessions some of these days.
The last girl is Yumina, whose prologue was already covered in the previous article.
Each girl’s story also has a different ending song, each sung by that girl’s seiyuu. A sample video with all six songs was published as well. All six songs were composed by Noriyuki Iwadare (Langrisser, Lunar, Grandia, Phoenix Wright starting 3) and the lyrics are by Ichirou Sugiyama.
本日発売の３月号より、ＰＳ４の新作恋愛シミュレーションゲーム『LoveR』の公式コミックが連載開始！ カズヲダイスケ先生の作画で、ヒロイン・篁莉里愛との純愛ストーリーをお届けしています。ＰＳ４ソフトは３月14日発売なので、コミックを読んでゲームの発売を待とう！ #LoveR pic.twitter.com/OluBXpMU1d
— 電撃マオウ編集部 (@dengeki_maoh) January 26, 2019
Like with nearly every game, LoveR is also getting a manga adaptation. Its serialization started in the March 2019 issue of Dengeki Maoh magazine. The manga is handled by Kazuwo Daisuke.
Rather than the sexual fanservice, I’m much more excited about each girl’s story, like with most dating sims or visual novel-like games. And then there’s LoveR‘s voice recognition system, all the voiced lines (each girl have between 4000 and 5000 lines, which sounds great for someone who likes Japanese), and becoming friends with a Sugita-voiced character. Assuming I do grab the game when I get a PS4. I guess one cool thing would be to stream the game and translate it as I play. I wonder if I’d ever actually have the time for that though.
Sweet One’s offiical Twitter is still tweeting new LoveR screenshots daily, mostly featuring bonus costumes from the game’s pre-order bonuses. The funny comics counting down to the game’s release on March 14, which I’m not translating because of a lack of time and money, are continuing too. You can find everything in the gallery below.
Our previous coverage of LoveR:
- Interview summary of Ichirou Sugiyama and Taro Minoboshi on photography culture in Japan, how dating sims evolved these last decades, and how they’d like to remake True Love Story.
- Details on the photography system and how you need to take into account the girl’s mood; pre-order bonuses
- Interview summary of Sugiyama and Art Director Quin q9 talking about the game’s use of motion capture, how they want women to play LoveR too and how they made LoveR‘s virtual YouTuber
- Gameplay showing how a ingame day usually goes, announcement of the collaboration event with Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart 2
- Explanation of LoveR‘s dating and jealousy system, screenshots
- Prologue gameplay for Yumina’s story, more screenshots, results of the Noratoto 2 collab costume contest
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