Date Everything! Tierlist

Ranking characters in the "Baldur's Gate 3 of Visual Novels"

I’m a sucker for in-game romances. I’m even more of a sucker for outrageous attempts to plot and categorize in-game romances.

So, after the fun my wife and I had ranking proposal scenes from Unicorn Overlord, I salivated for the chance to judge every character from Date Everything!, an absurd visual novel that came out this summer. It turned out to be a much more exhausting undertaking.

Over the course of my parental leave, we juggled newborn care with our pursuit of 102 “dateables” — anthropomorphized household objects ranging from tables and chairs to office supplies and sports equipment. It’s a ludicrously ambitious premise that only occasionally feels like an exercise in quantity over quality. Some relationships failed to tantalize us, but the game’s imaginative character design and masterful voice acting carried 60+ hours of gameplay. As you can see from the warm side of our tierlist, we hit it off with most of the cast:

I was even entertained by many characters we classified as “Hot Messes.” “Meh” picks are perhaps the most damning, since they left little impression on us (though I’m more fond of The Sassy Chap and I, Ronaldini than my wife — what can I say, I like a dapper man!). Finally, the “Yikes” characters, while far from attractive personalities, were often the most hilarious (here’s looking at you, Sinclaire).

Brimming with dialogue and intersecting questlines, I jokingly dubbed the game the “Baldur’s Gate 3 of visual novels.” But Date Everything! also comes with significant warts. For such a patently comedic premise, snarky dialogue won’t often win someone’s love or friendship — it can be the fastest way to get a suitor to hate you. We felt compelled to play the sycophant or the life-coach. Such predictable roles come with genre, but I wish the writers allowed for a more nuanced player character. Finally, the frame narrative of the game — all about an Musk-esque CEO and his estranged co-founder — felt uninspired and overwrought; a chore to endure rather than an exciting mystery to unravel.

The game’s also not stable on the Switch 2 — it crashed a few dozen times, including during its lengthy epilogue sequence! That left an especially unpleasant taste in my mouth after a lovely, if overstuffed, buffet.

I can still easily recommend Date Everything! to anyone intrigued by its wild premise. If you’re interested but lack the ample time to play it, slake your thirst by listening to my wife and I explain and debate its many characters here (and as a bonus, you can hear our baby’s burbling commentary throughout!):