Sucker for Love: Date to Die For --- Can love bloom in the outer realm?

By David Flynn

Posted on April 23, 2024

The Thousand have taken over your childhood home of Sacramen-Cho. By summoning the eldritch entity known as Rhok’zan, the Black Goat of the Woods, this cult has kidnapped, murdered, or indoctrinated almost everyone in town – including your parents. As the only person left not under their control, it’s up to you to find your parents, stop the cult, and plant a smooch on that cutie goat mom from space and/or die trying. And let’s be honest, you’re mostly here for that last part.

Sucker for Love: Date to Die For is the highly anticipated (by me at least) sequel to the horror comedy dating sim Sucker for Love. While that game had you woo three goddesses from the space beyond mortal comprehension as the… romantically forward protagonist, D, Date to Die For takes a vastly different approach. While you’re still completing rituals to move through a flowchart for each episode towards the true ending, there’s only one horror to romance this time: Rhok’zan. The protagonist, Stardust, is also a far cry from D as she’s asexual, which is awesome to see in any media, but especially a dating sim. Stardust is a great protagonist, and her burgeoning romance with a goddess of lust was incredibly sweet and kept me invested until the credits rolled. In fact, the entire game’s cast of characters are fantastic, from the villains to what few allies you have. Without spoiling anything, the game ends on a beautiful and poignant moment that I wasn’t expecting from a self styled eldritch dating sim.

Now, how do you go about romancing Rhok’zan? Well, first you have to survive. Most of the game takes place in your Japanese-style childhood home, which has been taken over by the Thousand. You move around in a first person view, moving the cursor to the edge of the screen to pan around your current location in an incredibly impressive 360 degrees. The 2D image wraps around perfectly, it’s something you might not even notice at first. You can interact with anything by clicking on it, and move through doors by clicking on them, then sliding the door open with your mouse.

While this might seem like a nothing mechanic at first, you may eventually open a door and see something you don’t like on the other side, like cultists ready to kill you. While fully opening the door would result in death, opening part way and then closing it will keep you safe. It’s an absolutely genius mechanic that keeps the tension and horror present throughout the game, even if at one point navigating back to Rhok’zan from the kitchen felt more like trial and error than being cautious. I never thought a game could still be scary while an upbeat Japanese pop song is playing in the background, but here we are.

If you’re like me, a known scaredy cat, you can still enjoy that tension and the comedy without the spooks thanks to a jumpscare warning in the options menu. This will play a tone and freeze the game just before anything potentially frightening occurs, prompting you to press a button when you’re ready to proceed to where whatever horrible thing will happen. It’s a greatly appreciated feature, because you’re going to be jumpscared to death very frequently.

Once you’ve collected components from around the house, it’s ritual time. Just like the original, you perform rituals in order and read a phrase from your book to complete them. My biggest complaint from the first game was that reading these phrases, clicking and dragging across the text, was super finicky. You had to drag very precisely and slowly, which often resulted in failing. That’s completely fixed here, and not once did I fail an incantation due to moving my mouse too fast or at the slightly wrong angle.

Sucker for Love: Date To Die For Gameplay - PC [GamingTrend]

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That first game could also get tedious at points due to checkpoints being a bit too far from one another, and, aside from needing to replay Episode 2 in its entirety due to not keeping certain items specific to that episode after getting the bad ending, you can pick up any of the four episodes at convenient points following almost every action you take. Unfortunately, Date to Die For is much more linear, so you won’t need to go back very often, but if this is for the sake of delivering a tighter story, I can live with that. Even after finishing the game with the True Ending (and another secret ending), I still see some question marks on my flowcharts and I’m sure there are a few more secrets to uncover besides.

Finally, the visuals, music, and voice acting all remain top notch. The game hits that 90s anime aesthetic perfectly, like you’re playing the game off of an old VHS tape with fan-made subs that people would apparently pass around back in the day. My only complaint here is that I wish we saw more of Stardust, since her design is great, but the game is played from first person so you won’t see much of her. I did encounter a few visual glitches, like a black or red bar appearing above some spices, but that didn’t affect gameplay. There was one glitch that stopped me right at the end of the game, where flipping back in the book prevented me from flipping forward to the phrase I needed to read for an ending, but with the checkpoints it took a few seconds to get back there and get the ending.

David Flynn

Editor | [email protected]

David is the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. He can find positives in anything, like this is a person who loved Star Fox Zero to death. You’ll see him playing all kinds of games: AAAs, Indies, game jam games, games of all genres, and writing about them! Here. On this website. When not writing or playing games, you can find David making music, games, or enjoying a good book.
David’s favorite games include NieR: Automata, Mother 3, and Gravity Rush.