Sexy, funny Pinoy-made dating sim ‘Love Esquire’ now on Steam

“Love Esquire,” a sexy and hilarious dating sim/visual novel boasting turn-based RPG combat, is now available on Steam where it is garnering great reviews.

Set in a vibrant fantasy realm, “Love Esquire” has players assuming the role of a lowly squire who’s on a quest to find true love. Unfortunately, the five women who’ve caught your eye are way out of your league.

“If you want to get noticed, then you’ll have to git gud by improving your mediocre stats and turning up the squirely charm!” says the game’s Philippine-based developer Yangyang Mobile. “Once you’ve got that in the bag, be prepared to uncover juicy plots, dirty little secrets, and steamy fanservice!”

To complicate matters further, the forest beyond the city walls is crawling with monsters. There’s also the teeny-tiny matter of a massive barbarian horde dead set on invading your nation, leaving you only four months to win the ladies’ hearts.

It’s a concept that has won over fans, as evidenced by the success of “Love Esquire’s” Kickstarter campaign, which reached its funding goal within a day of its launch in September 2018.

Love and war

“Love Esquire” comes with a variety of features.

First is the dating system. The five women you can court are diverse in personality, interests, plot, and backstory. One of them, for instance, is a sweet, gregarious princess who isn’t above mingling with the common folk. Another is an enigmatic nurse with even stranger passions.

To win their hearts, you’ll have to spend time with them, buy them gifts, and make decisions they’ll appreciate. As your relationships with them grow, you’ll unlock more story content, special events, cut scenes, and a host of other stuff.

Another way to impress your waifus is by showing them your dedication to self-improvement. In gameplay terms, this translates to raising your three core attributes: Strength (which you enhance by training at the Barracks), Intelligence (studying at the Library), and Charisma (hanging out at the Tavern).

Using these facilities requires money. The chief way to earn cash is to go on adventures, which entails fighting monsters that grow increasingly tougher the deeper you go into the forest.

The turn-based combat is a lot of fun, and requires strategy if you’re aiming for success. Additionally, the aforementioned core attributes impact the efficacy of your combat abilities. For example, the higher your Strength, the greater the damage your party deals to enemies.

This gameplay loop that involves adventuring, improving your stats, and wooing the ladies is extremely rewarding, making “Love Esquire” a tough game to put down.

Other features that contribute to the game’s addictive quality include wonderfully paced storytelling replete with slick, comedic writing; gorgeous, colorful art; and a roster of major and minor characters that are all fully voiced by a talented cast of international actors, including Kira Buckland (2B in “NieR: Automata”); Cynthia Cranz (Chi Chi in “Dragon Ball”); and singer and YouTube star Amanda Lee a.k.a. AmaLee, who previously voiced Filipina character Isabella Santos in Yangyang Mobile’s “The Letter.”

Unless you skip scenes, each playthrough of “Love Esquire” has enough content for more than 30 hours of play.

Apart from its multiple endings, you won't be able to unlock all content within a single playthrough—both factors that give you plenty of incentive to replay “Love Esquire.”

While “Love Esquire” is still only available on PC, there are plans to release it on other systems, including mobile devices, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Nintendo Switch. — LA,  GMA News

Website. Facebook.