General impressions of Tokimeki Memorial 4 compared to other Tokimeki Memorial games I’ve played…
1. The art style in this game is fairly plain, so none of the CGs I got were anything to swoon over.
2. The date answers are much easier to figure out than in the GS games. If a girl tells you she loves singing and then asks how her singing was, of course the correct answer isn’t going to be “You suck.” Why is it even an option?
3. Your stamina sinks faster and your stats rise slower than in other games in the series. This is most likely because the developers expect you to use skills to boost or counter these effects. It was frustrating in the beginning but I was a studmuffin by the end anyway so it’s all good.
4. Losing money and stamina on dates is so unfair. It makes sense, though. Someone’s gotta pay for the tickets and it sure as heck ain’t gonna be the girl. Wait, does this mean the guys in TMGS have been treating me all along? That’s…kinda cool.
5. What kind of cell phone can only make 4 calls a month? And if the cell phone is down, what about the land line? A payphone? E-mail? Haven’t they heard of Skype? I see what they tried to do there, but it was so farfetched as to be ridiculous. On the plus side, it’s nice that making a call doesn’t take up the whole day any more.
6. I like my friends, Manabu and Tadashi. Not only do they not mack on your girls (Onoda Chiyomi, are you listening?) but they also give you random stat boosts when you call them up to chat. Awesome. The only thing that hurts is that they gloat when they do better than you, but when you beat them they’re genuinely happy for you. Cry a little, dammit!
7. Bombs weren’t a problem in this game, despite me meeting 7 girls by the end. It helps a lot that you can call them up at any time to ask them out instead of having to wait till the weekend. The game where bombs were a real nightmare was the first Tokimeki Memorial on SNES. My hat is off to anyone who managed to get Fujisaki Shiori without setting off a million of them.
8. Skills are fun to experiment with but EXP is hard to come by. I tried not to stress out and just play normally as much as possible and it worked out pretty well. And thank goodness you can only change them once a term or I’d have 500 in every stat by the end. There’s such a thing as too broken, you know.
Etc, etc. It was fun, but those 3 years felt really long. I’m going to raise my stats evenly for a year then save and use that save file as a base. But even then I don’t know if I have the patience to date 6 or 7 near-identical girls (Hoshikawa, Tsugumi, Yanagi, music girl, science girl, Tadashi’s sister, maybe Satsuki). Guess I’ll keep going till I get bored and then call it a day.
Hi! I know this isn’t completely related but I’m playing tokimeki memorial girls side 1st love plus on ds, and after playing through once and getting an ending, I started a new game to try to get a different ending. The problem is, I’ve been raising my stats but I’m not meeting any characters besides the default friend, person I meet at work, himuro, and hazuki. It’s first year, my art stat is at 100 but still haven’t met mihara… I don’t know if you still remember about this game, but maybe you can tell me what’s going on? Thanks!
For Mihara I always found it much faster to join the Art Club when I wanted to meet him, same with Sakuya and the Gardening Club. But with an art stat of 100 you really should have met him by now. That’s really odd.
Anyway, it’s been a while since I played the first TMGS, but there’s a good FAQ out there on GameFAQs (http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/ds/file/tokimeki_memorial_gs1l.txt) about the characters. Hope it helps!
Hi, thanks! I couldn’t really find any information on additional playthroughs… the weird thing is, the walkthrough says I should meet everyone when I raise their stat to 55… I’ve done that and the meetings just aren’t happening like they did on the first playthrough… umm have you ever started new games after previous playthroughs or do you always load from a previous saved file?
I have. I only hit on the strategy of using old save files from TMGS2 onwards. I don’t remember any difficulty meeting any of the guys, though.
For the sake of reference I checked for known bugs on a Japanese FAQ, but there’s no record of a bug that stops you from meeting guys. They did note about Mihara that you have to have 55 art by 1st year May, or 66 by 2nd year April to meet him (or join art club). If you’ve gotten to 2nd year April and he still hasn’t shown up then I have no idea what’s going on.
Ahhh… I will just have to wait and see… I guess it’s ok since I only started over to get Himuro, but still, it’s weird, I’m not meeting the girls when I’m supposed to either. Anyway, thanks for looking into it!!
P.S. I started TMGS2 and… the main guy is terrible compare to Hazuki!! at least in the beginning. Is there any guy in TMGS2 better than his counterpart in TMGS1?
Yup, it’s not just about the stat, it’s also about a certain date. To meet Shiho, for example, you need to have 60 int by 1st year May or 66 by second year April, etc. The English FAQ is lacking in that respect.
The main guy in TMGS2 is widely known to be an asshole, so just ignore him. I preferred Shiba to Kazuma (sporty guy), Itami to Sakuya (smart guy) and Chris to Mihara (art guy), but the main guy and the teacher were vastly inferior IMHO.
Anyway, who needs the other guys when you have Himuro? 😀
Hmmm perhaps I missed the specific time during year 1… well it might not be bad to have less bombs and rivals… during my first playthrough, I was dating the cycles to avoid bombs! isn’t that called cheating?! yeah himuro!! and I will try for the secret ones too.
Good luck with them. Girl’s Side 3rd Story is the first time I ever bothered with secret characters. I find them boring to get because you can’t really date them.
Oh thank you!!!! Looks like it was because I missed the May Year 1 deadline and not something wrong with the game! (because English guide only said year 1)
Hi! I figured out why I wasn’t meeting people sometime ago! I think it had less to do with the date and more that I was never using some of the commands because I was raising those stats through club activity. Maybe this was obvious but it never struck me until I met Mihara and Mizuki in the same week when I finally used the art command XD
After playing TMGS2 for a while, I actually don’t dislike Saeki maybe because I like those types when I read manga, but what bugged me was that he wasn’t that handsome even though I feel he should be… Did you also find that the graphics made the guys not as good looking as TMGS1? like the face was more pixelated and less fine in 2… and I think in 2, more of the cg are large faceshots and not quite as varied and interesting as in 1 even though it had more overall… 2 was nice that less bombs went off but I didn’t particularly enjoy the guys (i.e. hikami and shiba) being overly nice by the time I got to tokimeki and asking for date every other week… how is tmgs3 in this respect and in regard to graphics?
Anyway, I’m sorry about the rambling and I know you’re not playing them anymore, this has been going off in my head as I play and I have no one to talk to about this game. were the secret characters more interesting in 3? (to be honest, I really like Chiharu, Tendo, and Akagi… must be the whole chance meetings thing that I find romantic… but all that shopping?! and you can’t go after other guys at the same time either) I read that Himuro is in TMGS3, it’s sad even thinking that I can’t go after him if I play the game
I like to pretend Himuro is married to the main character from game 1 and living happily ever after, so I don’t mind not being able to date him so much. The guys in TMSG2 just have mostly ugly designs. It’s not about the graphics. TMGS3 has great graphics and designs for the most part, but if you don’t like super-friendly guys then it probably isn’t for you. I find secret characters boring in all the games.
And yes, this reply is 3.5 years late, but I answered just in case someone’s wondering the same things.