Review: Date Everything Feels Like You’re Forced to Date Everything

One of my dating sim and visual novel pet peeves is being locked out of certain routes unless you go through others. It’s understandable at many times, since it usually involves one potentially spoiler character or a true route, so it’s typically not a big problem in the otome games I play. Except in Date Everything it can be, since there are over 100 love interests in the game and certain requirements force you into interactions with a few of the most grating individuals I’ve ever met with no “dialogue skip” options to speed through them. Combine that with it not running well on the Switch, and you may experience issues.

The first day we start working at an Amazon-esque company called Valdivian, we’re immediately put in a holding pattern due to being replaced by AI. In limbo, a mysterious individual from the company decides to send us the Dateviator glasses that brings inanimate objects and concepts to life as beings we can date. Why? It turned out we were the lowest paid person there. What follows is an opportunity to go around the house “awakening” the over 100 possible love interests there and becoming friends, enemies, or lovers with them.

Date Everything is a dating sim visual novel in which you roam around a house to find certain objects to awaken and date them. While this is often straightforward and involves walking up to an item or household element, putting on the Dateviators glasses, and sending out a beam, it can occasional involve a bit more interactivity. For example, you might need to turn something on or engaging in a certain activity for someone to show up. When you talk to these characters, you select dialogue options. Some responses may be locked away behind stats that go up after you gain a definitive love, hate, or friends relationship status with certain characters. All the while, a side-story about an evil corporation that invented the glasses, has a CEO trying to steal all glory and money, and a workforce being decimated by AI. The writing can be clever and funny for some characters or situations, but it also can feel very surface-level since most relationships max out after a handful of conversations and there are so many characters. 

Unfortunately, Date Everything doesn’t take a traditional visual novel approach to making dialogue options, and it can be an issue in the dating sim as a result. Rather than seeing a menu with two to four responses, each one is tied to an action button on the controller. The problem is, the button to confirm or advance text is often an option. So if you are clicking too quickly through conversations, you can accidentally make a selection you didn’t want. This happened to me quite a few times, and unfortunately I noticed A ended up being connected to a joke or mean response, which would send conversations in directions I didn’t want. 

The thing is, Date Everything may be an “open-house” sandbox in which you could pursue friendship, love, or hatred with individuals, but it also limits the player at every opportunity. Want to go everywhere in the house? You can’t. One location is locked away. Want access to every dialogue option in a conversation? Nope. Some are locked behind unreasonable stat requirements in the double digits. Want to talk to more than five people in a day? You’re not allowed. You’re limited to five conversations, which can be eaten up if someone you are pursuing needs you to check with other characters for a request tied to them and their route. Which also means you can’t only focus on one or two people you like, because the game forces you into other interactions. 

That’s another thing that bothers me about Date Everything, and that is that I felt forced to talk to everyone. Now, the voice acting here is incredible and I love the character designs. But man, do I hate a bunch of these characters’ personalities. Many of them are really gimmicky, to the point I found it off-putting. I didn’t want to talk to them. Especially since, as I mentioned earlier, some of these characters feel a bit surface-level and don’t get all that deep. There are exceptions, of course. Since there is no option to skip or speed through dialogue in those instances, you’re stuck talking to people you might not like. Also, since your stat boosts are tied to definitive relationship statuses with the individuals, you are actually forced to interact with them to the point they hate, like, or love you so that you can select certain choices in the conversations with folks whose company you do enjoy or reach an endgame state. 

There is one exception to this, and I hate it. I am so frustrated that there is one character whose route is locked into one outcome, and this happens pretty much immediately. Date Everything, but… wait! Not that one! What makes it worse is I adore that performer, in addition to finding the in-game individual to be one of the more fun and fleshed-out folks, so I ended up quite bummed that there was no opportunity for other options. 

Also, I’m not sure if these are just Switch issues, as that’s where I played Date Everything, but the lighting is just awful. Once you get to the afternoon and evening period, it’s hard to clearly see everything! By my third day in the house, I figured out I could turn on light switches and lamps in rooms, but by nightfall I realized it often barely made any difference. Which means sometimes I’d mistakenly click on characters if I wasn’t paying attention.

Other issues are ones that seem like they could be present on other systems, though my experience was limited to the Switch. The outlines of response prompts coming up early in conversations sometimes worried me that I pressed A to advance too quickly through dialogue and missed things. Characters’ portraits fluctuated between poses during conversations sometimes, especially with Parker, Harper, and Captain Jacques. There were occasional object pop-ins and pop-outs depending on how close I was to objects, with the dishwasher and fridge being prime examples. The game also referred to me using they/them in some conversations, such as with Curt and Rod, even though I set my pronouns as she/her. 

I appreciate the gimmick and the talent Sassy Chap pulled together for Date Everything. The character designs are inventive and look fantastic. It’s entertaining, especially when it discusses not-Amazon and AI. My issue is I really didn’t want to talk to all of these characters. At most, I wanted to see the full storylines for like 1/10th of them. But because it doesn’t feature typical visual novel quality of life features and basically forces you into conversations with cast , you’ll be stuck getting to know folks even if you don’t want to. Especially when it gets into the evening in-game and things get to be difficult to see. 

Date Everything will be available on the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on June 17, 2025.