The spiritual sequel to Five Dates is bigger, and better.
Five Dates saw you take the role of a guy and choose from five video dates with women during the Covid lockdown. It was small in scope with a lot of charm and emotion. Ten Dates leaves the Covid lockdown setting behind for the fast and fun world of speed dating.
In Ten Dates you choose to play as Ryan or Misha. Both characters are friends with Misha being the one that cons Ryan into jumping onto the speed dating circuit. Both characters will each have four dates, with a fifth potential date should you wish for your character to have a same sex date. After doing the rounds, you choose two dates for a second date (if you were successful enough), and then one of those two for a final date.
Choices are selected with no real gameplay. When you see the relationships in the menu you can see how many different options there were with each date. It’s an easily replayable game to see the many alternatives. When replaying you can go through the scenes very quickly by skipping the scenes you have seen to get to the new stuff. The game is quick enough for you to pass the controller to someone else to try their luck. My partner played through as Misha so I had another perspective to the choices I wouldn’t have personally made.
It was clear from the trailer there was potential for same sex dating. The way they input that potential was creative for the male as his fifth speed date had to leave so the male host fills the spot. It’s not a date, just casual conversation at first and then it becomes clear that the opening is there if you want to pursue that host. There is only one same sex date, which would be considered a downside for those after that. Having this choice alongside being able to date as a woman is a huge increase in the scope from Five Dates.
I would say there is room for more of these dating simulators from Wales Interactive. They can spread their reach further to a more diverse selection of dates, or could invest in an entire game just for the LGBT community. There is something here that may find a huge audience outside of gaming and on Netflix in the future.
Overall, Ten Dates is almost better in every way to its predecessor Five Dates. The dates themselves are downgrades in terms of personality. Each personality feels very stereotypical as soon as you see them you can tell who they are. In Five Dates with a smaller dating pool there were many deeper qualities to the women and they were not typical of most stereotypes. I enjoyed Ten Dates, and for now I will be interested in Wales Interactive on a game by game basis if I find the narrative interesting.
Robert Ring
Available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Check out my Five Dates review here.
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