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CWs: Teacher/Student Relationships, Sex Work, Anti-Black Caricature, Alcohol, Smoking, No explicit sexual imagery/description.

The next PC-FX game I've played is another launch title, Sotsugyou II FX ~Neo Generation~. Sotsugyou II is a raising sim that is the sequel to Sotsugyou ~Graduation~, and is considered one of the gal game classics along with Tokimeki Memorial. For an extremely interesting fact, the original Sotsugyou II for PC-98 by Japan Home Video was released the same day as the original release of Tokimeki Memorial, May 27, 1994. This breaks my brain, because having played Tokimeki Memorial, these games have way more similarities than I thought they would.

t played the original Sotsugyou or any other version of 2, so I won't be able to do any complete comparisons between those outside of some minimal amount of internet research, but it does make me wonder how much are new mechanics in this game. Also I haven't played Princess Maker, which playing this made me really wish I did before doing so since that's where all these types of games come from. With that out of the way, the game itself.

You play as a teacher in charge of teaching a class of 5 students for their final year, all girls. You start with an introduction from each of them, and they are extremely just "this is their character, and that's it". This is a pretty light game in terms of characterization. The game is segmented into 1-week chunks. You choose 1 subject of 3(English, Japanese, Math), how to teach it(Kind, Strict, Self-Study), and an option that I think was like a student you wanted to focus on teaching, but I didn't have a manual so I'm not sure. You can also arrange the seats, with those in the front having a higher plus to their learning. In addition to their subject stats they also have stats for Stamina, Grace, Charm, and Desire for Learning. Stamina helps in sports competitions, Grace which I'll get into when discussing my playthrough, Charm which I don't know if it has any effect except for endings, and Desire for Learning, which the higher the value, the higher plus value you'll get for learning during class time, especially self-study.

At the end of each school week, you get dialogue from each student where you can infer with how happy they are with the class, teacher, and in general. This section feels a lot like showcasing the PC-FX's capabilities since it has the character sprite taking up the entire screen with fully voiced dialogue. From here you reach the weekend, where you can either let the students do what they want, or make a student study, do a certain activity, or rest. If you meet them during this section, you can warn against/praise/scold to encourage studying more, affecting the Desire for Learning stat. You can also meet the principal, who gives a generic line usually. He also comes up to introduce special sections of the game. After that, you have one final action, which is either a one on one meeting with a student where you can chastise an aspect about them/praise an aspect about them/ask about their problems/give them a present, inviting a student out to eat, or looking for a student(which I'll get into when discussing my playthrough). Then the next week starts, with the exceptions of special events like sports competitions(where the team you go up against are anti-Black caricatures), tests(which you can give a difficulty of under high school to entrance exam level), and plays(which can be funny depending on who you put in charge). There's vacation sections where you have a little less control over students. You repeat this cycle until the school year ends.

It might sound like a lot at first, I thought I was going to be overwhelmed with all the stats, but I got the hang of most of it, and if I would've had a manual, I feel like I could have ironed out the few questions about mechanics I still had. Unfortunately I didn't, so my playthrough was uneven. The first third of the game, I was doing great. I got all the students to have high Desire for Learning, their subject stats were high, they were all getting good grades on the hardest tests, and they were generally happy with the class. There might be an occasional illness or unhappy student, but some time or talking to them about their problems solved that. Then sometime around the halfway point everything started to fall apart because of one stat: Grace. I never figured out how to raise that stat, so what happened as it fell was my students one by one became delinquents(as you can see from their sprites in the last image above)! When this happens they start losing stats in learning, start causing trouble, even potentially running away from home. If they run away from home, you have to use your one special action at the end of the week to pick a random card from five and hope it's the one where you find them. If not, that's a week wasted. Getting them back doesn't stop them from being a delinquent, you need to spend that final week action asking about their problems. The issue was that since so many were delinquents at the same time, I'd talk to 1 or 2, but they'd be delinquents again by the time I'd get to other students, creating a neverending downward spiral. They began to fail even the most basic tests. At this point the last third of the game was me mostly going through the motions, seeing the class get worse and worse until the end of the year.

At the end you get what happens to each student. Every student got held back a year except one, who graduated and became a golf player! There are many different outcomes for each student, including the player character marrying them, which along with the inviting them out to eat/giving presents/commenting on their Charm is a very uncomfortable aspect of this game, though it's not this aspect that created controversy for the game at the time of its original release. It was the first game to get an 18+ rating restriction by the Ethics Organization of Computer Software(who's creation and rules around ratings is an entire topic onto itself) that wasn't due to any explicit sexual content, but the existence of underage drinking/smoking/sex work. This would later be changed to an R rating, which means it was restricted to 15+. The PC-FX version is all ages from what I can tell, which means I don't think the sex work endings are in here, but the smoking/drinking definitely is as you can see from the image as well as in my playthrough one student is caught drinking. It even includes a warning about a list of acts that are illegal at the start of the game. There's definitely way more to go into on this aspect than the skimming of a wikipedia page I did just after finishing the game, but it's interesting how certain types of content were handled at the time.

Overall I felt like I learned a lot playing this game in terms of how it gave me a more complete picture of raising sims/dating sims/gal games/etc. in this era since it connected so many dots for me, especially how close it is to Tokimeki Memorial in general flow. It just shows me how many developers were kind of all building towards similar gameplay styles, which I feel can get lost when attention is usually paid to the most popular example. Also I really need to play Princess Maker one of these days(and also the original Sotsugyou and the rest of the series I guess), I feel like that would help me connect so many more dots.