“Love finds you when you least expect it”.

I’ve come to the feeling that romance isn’t always that great of a back-box marketing topic. Dating sims are dime-a-dozen visual novels, often cycling some tiring tropes. Optional romances often treat people and relationships as “features” to be picked up as desired and discarded, rather than a give-and-take relationship too complex for numbers in a simulation.

One unfortunate result of making a thread like this is that by posting suggestions, they all immediately become spoilers. Sometimes, it’s not that big of a spoiler, as someone might guess it anyway, or it might not harm the appeal of the game overall - especially if it’s built around some generally enjoyable adventure.

So: What adventures have you been on where you were surprised by a romantic subplot, especially ones where it had a surprising effect on the rest of the story?