Hey everyone, I've been an avid follower of Yandere Simulator for a long time now and with the recent introduction of the various rivals that, the school is becoming more and more fleshed out with 'life' so to speak. This is likely to be very long and will be speaking from both a gameplay and fan perspective, so there will not be a TLDR.

With recent changes to Lovesick: Yandere Simulator, it is apparent the game is moving in a direction where characters are becoming more unique, more individual. Each character has their own likes, dislikes and quite a fair amount have their own quests and history. In my opinion, this is only a good thing. Of course, it is important to not let the side-characters detract from the main objective or steal the spotlight, so to speak, from the rivals.

First, I’d like to discuss the importance of individuality. The NPCs as of right now, for the most part, do lack individuality. There are definitely exceptions (Musume, Midori and the Basu sisters), however I will get into them later. From a quick glance, the most prominent NPCs right now out of the ‘rainbow twelve’ are Kokona, Saki and Yui. For the first two, both have had story developments throughout the debug build and have a relationship both as best friends and common victims for newer players to test out new features, creating a lot of love for the two, as they obtained a lot of focus (hence the concern for Kokona’s removal based on Shinobu, despite confirmation in various places that Kokona will not be removed). We can look at Yui, too. She is the only intractable character to embody the ´evil’ persona, making her very distinct from all the other females and rising to peoples favourites (including me). Because of this distinction, even though I’m assuming Yui was initially chosen randomly to test the evil persona, she would seem completely different if she lost it in the future builds and I just can’t see her not retaining it for the final game. Similarly, Rival-chan is a popular request for her model to be used because of how different she looks from the other students. She has a distinct appearance. The importance of individuality causes people to like character that much more, creating a much more enjoyable experience.

It is apparent from the initial set of NPCs, particularly the ‘rainbow twelve’, were included as filler to populate the school. I’d be particularly hard pressed to find people who say they really like Yuna or Koharu or anyone in the male-side of the initial twelve. Not every character has to be endearing, however I’m curious to see people’s views of students and what the standard should be. Looking at the future clubs, the science club and the photography club, each character seem individual from their silhouettes alone. The science club particularly embodies this with the robot student and the ‘crazy scientist’ leader. This is not only something to look forward too, but also creates the feeling of difference between each student – something you don’t get from the initial bundle of students. For example, looking at the currently completed clubs (the martial arts club & the occult club), you can see a similar trend with each member being different levels of strength and the weakest member doesn’t even have a heroic personality, but is instead a coward. The occult club is in a bit of a weirder spot, the characters look different, however they really all feel the same (this is the same for the majority of the martial arts club too, however the strength difference was worth mentioning).

It’s clear from recent updates with Musume Ronshaku, Lovesick has evolved and the characters are looking better, fresher and more individual. She doesn’t feel like a blank state with different hair and hair colour. Maybe five of each is too much?

Now, with all that said, I am aware that new characters will be introduced who fulfil this criteria. The future robot character and from what I’ve heard from YanDev, there’ll be characters who come to school late that aren’t delinquents (just latecomers), the robot student and I think even a magical girl and heck, I’d be generally surprised if some other tropes aren’t tackled like the geek girl or an idol. All of this are great steps forward in the right direction, but I feel like it leaves the current cast behind.

So it begs the question: Is a rework necessary?

Obviously, not all the students require change. From the top of my head: • Budo being the martial arts captain and both defined with a solid personality and role is probably fine without change, although his hair looks too similar to Haruto’s. • Pippi and Ryuto are completely fine as is. • Midori has become iconic to the series. • Kuu Dere probably only needs changes in relation to how she reacts to murder or a camera being pointed at her. • The Basu sisters look relatively unique and have the interesting conversation-aspect, talking about what happened in the school and the history of the school. • Yui looks nice and the evil persona defined her away from any other character for now. • Kokona and Saki have become relatively defined, although Kokona is undergoing surgery because of Sunobu, I assume.

The rest however, could probably use work. I understand the recent build developed Riku, and that’s good. Although I feel all their designs lack individualization, even with the different hairstyles. The delinquents for example, the males are way too similar despite the differences in pompadour. I feel like a few of them should be removed, in all honesty. Even though there are much more differences with the female-side (different masks and hair streak colour), they also encompass a similar problem of all ‘feeling’ the same. The blonde, slicked-back hair guy in the library would honestly be a good character right now because he looks different from the others. What I’m getting at is, even though characters are different – even sometimes clearly appearance wise – there is a feel that they’re all the same and I don’t think this is due to them all falling under the same persona. Musume, Yui and Saki all feel a step above the other social butterflies around them. It’s important to note, the game obviously isn’t anywhere near done, this could be planned, this could be a silly notion because of the work required to individualize each student. I’m just looking for opinions and also a general consensus of what people think of the student body at the moment.