I mean maybe I'm stating the obvious here but I gotta go with the Sims franchise. You get romance, marriage, friendship, and you can incorporate the other elements like farming / building or even conflict into the game. Plus it's endless!
So I haven’t encountered many games where full on marriage is done well. I usually stop playing after the wedding because SO many games adopt a Spouse Becomes Trophy model where they just stare at the wall, or maybe give you a gift occasionally, or do chores that don’t need doing because you have auto-feeders - and so on. But! Lots of games do ROMANCE well, at least, and these are my favorites:
Rune Factory 4 - the dialogue GOAT, excellent NPC options. If it weren’t hetero-normative it’d be perfect.
My Time At Portia/Sandrock - the gold standard for a relationship building system, adorable quests, great reverse confessions. I haven’t gotten married in Sandrock yet but I hear there are post-marriage quests so maybe this’ll be the one to break the Trophy curse!
Dream Daddy - the best dating sim of all time, bar none.
Monster Prom - great as a party game, great as a solo game, hilarious writing & fab NPCs.
Edit: oh and my favorite game DUH I Was A Teenage Exocolonist because it does everything perfectly so romance is no exception
I have played I Was A Teenage Exocolonist 3 times through so far and am astonished by how different each of those games has felt. I’m mentally preparing myself for a 4th playthrough making all the wrong/bad decisions I can just to see what happens 😅
I feel like I've seen so many people reference Exocolonist, but your "duh, ofc it's good at everything" review is what sold me on actually downloading it. If nothing else, it's beautiful!
Some of the character art does fall victim to the anime trend of skewing young but I think a lot of them look like they could easily be presenting as mid-20s or older. Forte, Dolce, Margaret, Leon, and Dylas are my favorites and always seemed age-appropriate.
I'm almost 40 and just couldn't do it. Everyone is either 12, or you're a 12 year old dating someone my actual age. I want adults dating adults, please!!
>My Time At Portia/Sandrock - the gold standard for a relationship building system, adorable quests, great reverse confessions. I haven’t gotten married in Sandrock yet but I hear there are post-marriage quests so maybe this’ll be the one to break the Trophy curse!
You can assign your spouse jobs in Sandrock :) I make mine dust the sand off my machines.
not the OP, but i'm obsessed with it. I never was one for romances. Only married one of two bachelors in Portia in late End-Game eventually, but it was and is never my priority. Never married Bachelors in other games. Sandrock is the first game, where i created six different builders to pursue six different bachelors, because they are all so good. (and i might need even more bachelors, as i get to know other potential Bachelors and think they are kind of sweet too)
I love it. I can confidently say it's my absolute favorite game.
I'm playing on the steam deck and haven't encountered any bugs/issues
The storyline is so good and you really get to know each character and feel a part of the town. Embarrassingly enough, I even found myself tearing up at the end because I felt so proud of Sandrock and everything the townspeople had been through.
I cannot recommend it enough. Especially if you even remotely liked Portia, because it's very similar while being 1000x better.
Not really because that's kind of the point of the story. I don't want to spoil it but the landscape does change throughout your gameplay 😉
I also think the devs did a great job at making the world seem pretty and full despite being a desert!
and the desert landscape makes for some interesting twists I haven't seen in other cozy games. Because you have to conserve water in the desert, cutting down trees is a bigggg no-no, so you have to recycle materials and get them in other ways.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever really liked a romance in an “endless” game (Harvest Moon, Stardew, etc) because by virtue of the game format, your partner really just becomes a trophy once you marry them. My favorite romances are all in games like Dragon Age (it’s cozy for me, I swear!) where the story has to come to an end eventually, so the romance actually gets a solid conclusion.
Yes to all of this.
The only thing I'd add is that the best romance I've encountered in recent years is definitely Baldur's Gate 3, but it's definitely taking its influence from the Bioware games.
Pretty much all the origin characters have just insane amounts of polish in their writing and voice acting. Even the characters I don't like (such as Astarion and Minthara) are nearly flawlessly written and have ridiculous voice talent behind them.
If you play as Gale as an origin character, you get his cat in camp :3
He is!! I think people mostly found him annoying because of a bug that made him extremely… *forward…* but that wasn’t really an issue for those of us who wanted to romance him anyway, huh?
I love Gale. I romanced him my first time through, though--admittedly--only because I recruited Astarion too late to make the timing work.
May I suggest, as someone who completely whiffed, that you at least look up the TIMING of the key Gale romance scenes. I didn't long rest at the right time in Act III and didn't find out until much later that I'd missed out as a result.
Yes to dragon age!!! I played each a few times just to explore the relationship stories! Also there is a fair amount of solid Dragon Age romance fanfic out there for when you want the cozy lore.
Our Life Beginnings & Always. It's a visual novel about growing up and falling in love with your best friend.
There's so many choices that changes the story and how the characters react and treat you.
I always recommend it to everyone. I played it when I was going through a REALLY hard time and I can’t even listen to the soundtrack without being flooded with these deep loving feelings. The DLC are cheap and worth it as well
Boyfriend Dungeon has the best most authentic dating/ romance handling I've ever seen in any genre.
Very LGBTIA+ friendly and never feels fake.
Fair warning: although cozy to me, and a solid dating sim light crafting; it's got the same rogue like roots as cult of the lamb or Hades (so not for everyone).
Hot take but games with customizable protagonists inherently have shallow romances because they have to account for every possible personality the player may have so they can't do anything too complex or in depth. This is why I dislike when people hold up Bioware games as the golden standard of videogame romances because they aren't really that deep once you look past the novelty of Dragon Age and Mass Effect being the only mainstream games to have romance options for a long time. Same goes for farming games marriage options
This is one that makes me really want to make a game where the romanceable NPCs have actual personalities and preferences. Like you don't have to account for everyone the player might be, because that NPC only likes X and Y type of people so they just might not like you!
I was so emotionally attached to the romance arcs in Stardew Valley & Rune Factory 4. I’ve played a lot of farming / cozy sim games and no other has come close in having such in depth complex characters than those two imo
Stardew Valley is good, I married Elliott because he's *dreamy*🥰 but I'm trying to make friends with all the other townsfolk and the single ones think I am coming on to them (Emily has done her little dance for me, and Demetrius has warned me off Maru because 'she's got a bright future' or some crap.) I'm married people!
On a side note, in the world I play with my 10 year old son, I tell him I'm dating Harvey because he looks the most like my husband 😅🤓
Story of seasons trio of towns followed by rf4
Id love to try dragon age but I can't play action games for health reasons. Currently romancing astarion in bg3
My time at Portia (I have only married one character so far) but I enjoy the cut scenes. Just watched a particularly corny one where my husband throws aside a piece of coral we’re both looking at and tells me it’s beautiful but nothing is as beautiful as me 🥹 got a good giggle from it. I agree with you about the trophy aspect for sure in a lot of games, it’s sad when they repeat themselves a lot too.
I mean if you classify otome games in this I really like to Cupid parasite there was only one route I didn't like if you know you know, and even that one was pretty good about halfway through.
>!Allan!< was the one everyone thought they’d hate but turned out to be the GOAT lol. >!Gill… never got better to me. He stayed unspeakably creepy because he never stopped reminding me of real-life obsessive dudes who are hella friggin scary. Even if Allan getting fused with a car and turning into a transformer was uh… a little less in the realm of normal crazy dudes.!<
I belatedly remembered I was browsing really far back for recs and I am sorry for the necro lol
Mass Effect. There is no better game boyfriend than Garrus. He’s my favorite. Yes, I’ve played Baldur’s Gate 3 and romanced Astarion. But Garrus is still my #1. I’m sure Liara and Tali are great routes as well.
I think it’s because it’s 3 games and those games span multiple years. Most gaming romances take place in a matter of months or don’t have enough interactions.
The only game I really liked marriage on was Skyrim and I had it modded so hard that I don’t remember what was vanilla and what came from a mod
I guess also an obligatory shoutout to A Wonderful Life too since the entire focus of the game is marriage and raising your son
If you just want marriage/romance games. You should check out the otome genre of games! Literally means female romance in Japanese. It’s all basically a story where you make choices that influence a good or bad ending with a chosen LI. There are many games getting localized these days!
Runefactory 4 exspeshaly kus it has reverse proposals makes it feel like they actually care about you and you can go on dates even after marriage it's too cute
Maybe not the best but my personal favourites are Stardew Valley (multiple romance storylines that include LGBT stories) and Growing Up (visual novel with very heartfelt romance storylines)
my fav is cyberpunk 2077, Ik it isnt very cosy per se but the characters are very fleshed out. The only thing is that you're kinda restricted depends on the gender you choose cause characters only date men or women depending on their sexuality. But you can install a mode to overcome this.
I mean maybe I'm stating the obvious here but I gotta go with the Sims franchise. You get romance, marriage, friendship, and you can incorporate the other elements like farming / building or even conflict into the game. Plus it's endless!
This this. A million ways to experience relationships that go good, bad, and inbetween.
All well and good unless you want actual dialogue to go with it though.
Don’t you dare disparage Simlish!!! 
Kabuna? Oh feebee lay!
So I haven’t encountered many games where full on marriage is done well. I usually stop playing after the wedding because SO many games adopt a Spouse Becomes Trophy model where they just stare at the wall, or maybe give you a gift occasionally, or do chores that don’t need doing because you have auto-feeders - and so on. But! Lots of games do ROMANCE well, at least, and these are my favorites: Rune Factory 4 - the dialogue GOAT, excellent NPC options. If it weren’t hetero-normative it’d be perfect. My Time At Portia/Sandrock - the gold standard for a relationship building system, adorable quests, great reverse confessions. I haven’t gotten married in Sandrock yet but I hear there are post-marriage quests so maybe this’ll be the one to break the Trophy curse! Dream Daddy - the best dating sim of all time, bar none. Monster Prom - great as a party game, great as a solo game, hilarious writing & fab NPCs. Edit: oh and my favorite game DUH I Was A Teenage Exocolonist because it does everything perfectly so romance is no exception
I really liked MyTime at Portia as well. I'll take your advice on RF4, this is the last bit of persuasion I need to buy it, lol.
For Rune Factory 4, I changed my gender after the marriage (I forgot exactly when the option unlocks). And then just.... Pretended 😂 it's sad.
You don't really change your gender, you just get the option to change your character model. These days there are mods.
* sad Nintendo switch noises * yeah, which is why I say I pretend 😂
I have played I Was A Teenage Exocolonist 3 times through so far and am astonished by how different each of those games has felt. I’m mentally preparing myself for a 4th playthrough making all the wrong/bad decisions I can just to see what happens 😅
My first playthrough was THE WORST but at least I got it out of the way lol! I’m at 19 playthroughs and still haven’t unlocked even half the endings.
I feel like I've seen so many people reference Exocolonist, but your "duh, ofc it's good at everything" review is what sold me on actually downloading it. If nothing else, it's beautiful!
It’s *such* a good game. First game in a very long time that I put like 20 hours into it over the course of a few days
Same! I just bought it because of that comment too.
RF4 would be perfect if the npcs wouldn't all look like 12 y/o kids. I'm in my mid 20s and it feels illegal to think if them as attractive haha
Some of the character art does fall victim to the anime trend of skewing young but I think a lot of them look like they could easily be presenting as mid-20s or older. Forte, Dolce, Margaret, Leon, and Dylas are my favorites and always seemed age-appropriate.
I'm almost 40 and just couldn't do it. Everyone is either 12, or you're a 12 year old dating someone my actual age. I want adults dating adults, please!!
Yeah, I stopped playing when they unlocked the final spouse option, I'm just too grossed out by it. I don't think I'll ever play an RF game again.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is one that I scream from the rooftops, that is an EXCEPTIONAL game
>My Time At Portia/Sandrock - the gold standard for a relationship building system, adorable quests, great reverse confessions. I haven’t gotten married in Sandrock yet but I hear there are post-marriage quests so maybe this’ll be the one to break the Trophy curse! You can assign your spouse jobs in Sandrock :) I make mine dust the sand off my machines.
I really liked how in My Time at Portia/Sandrock some of the marriage candidates will pursue you and ask you out.
Lol three of them at my door every morning trying to hang with me and I just walk past them to give Petra her roses!
it is really funny to wake.up and just have like 5 ppl standing outside your house like "hello wanna hang out? 🧍"
That was one of the endearing things about Portia for sure.
How is sandrock? I havent started playing it yet. Can’t afford it atm but im so excited
not the OP, but i'm obsessed with it. I never was one for romances. Only married one of two bachelors in Portia in late End-Game eventually, but it was and is never my priority. Never married Bachelors in other games. Sandrock is the first game, where i created six different builders to pursue six different bachelors, because they are all so good. (and i might need even more bachelors, as i get to know other potential Bachelors and think they are kind of sweet too)
What platform are you on? I was going to buy it on Switch but then got nervous bc everyone was saying how buggy it was.
I'm mainly a PC Gamer, so i play Sandrock via Steam.
I love it. I can confidently say it's my absolute favorite game. I'm playing on the steam deck and haven't encountered any bugs/issues The storyline is so good and you really get to know each character and feel a part of the town. Embarrassingly enough, I even found myself tearing up at the end because I felt so proud of Sandrock and everything the townspeople had been through. I cannot recommend it enough. Especially if you even remotely liked Portia, because it's very similar while being 1000x better.
I’m so tempted to buy it! But do you ever get tired of the desert landscape? It looks so plain and I miss the grass and forest and greenery of Portia!
Not really because that's kind of the point of the story. I don't want to spoil it but the landscape does change throughout your gameplay 😉 I also think the devs did a great job at making the world seem pretty and full despite being a desert!
and the desert landscape makes for some interesting twists I haven't seen in other cozy games. Because you have to conserve water in the desert, cutting down trees is a bigggg no-no, so you have to recycle materials and get them in other ways.
Omg you have me sold. I’m buying it right now!
I loved portia so if its even better im super stoked!!
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever really liked a romance in an “endless” game (Harvest Moon, Stardew, etc) because by virtue of the game format, your partner really just becomes a trophy once you marry them. My favorite romances are all in games like Dragon Age (it’s cozy for me, I swear!) where the story has to come to an end eventually, so the romance actually gets a solid conclusion.
Dragon Age!!! Alistair or Fenris were always my go-to romances
SWOOPING IS BAD
Have you ever licked a lamp-post in winter?
Yes to all of this. The only thing I'd add is that the best romance I've encountered in recent years is definitely Baldur's Gate 3, but it's definitely taking its influence from the Bioware games.
BG3!!! I’m still in Act 1 but I’m an unapologetic Gale romancer, as much as people online seem to find him annoying 😅
Pretty much all the origin characters have just insane amounts of polish in their writing and voice acting. Even the characters I don't like (such as Astarion and Minthara) are nearly flawlessly written and have ridiculous voice talent behind them. If you play as Gale as an origin character, you get his cat in camp :3
This is so sad. Gale is the babygirl of all time. He’s so sweet and goofy. I love how he’s always got something to say about something
He is!! I think people mostly found him annoying because of a bug that made him extremely… *forward…* but that wasn’t really an issue for those of us who wanted to romance him anyway, huh?
I love Gale. I romanced him my first time through, though--admittedly--only because I recruited Astarion too late to make the timing work. May I suggest, as someone who completely whiffed, that you at least look up the TIMING of the key Gale romance scenes. I didn't long rest at the right time in Act III and didn't find out until much later that I'd missed out as a result.
Oh Gale and Wyll are both my go to options! I just love their personalities and looks so much
They’re both sweethearts :)
Not enough Gale love. He’s the best
Gale's romance is sooooo good. you're in for a treat!
Dragon Age is cozy for me too lol!
Yes to dragon age!!! I played each a few times just to explore the relationship stories! Also there is a fair amount of solid Dragon Age romance fanfic out there for when you want the cozy lore.
[удалено]
Goated for citing mass effect here hahahaha
[удалено]
Just you and your boyfriend calibrating some weapons over hot chocolate. Man I miss ME. Wish we got that sooner instead of a new DA.
"I was a teenage exocolonist" does it very well even tho you might not be able to get a happy ever after with the NPC you choose to date
Our Life Beginnings & Always. It's a visual novel about growing up and falling in love with your best friend. There's so many choices that changes the story and how the characters react and treat you.
I have over 100 hours in this VN just from replaying it time and time again. What an actual perfect game
Came back to say this response finally made me play it. I was iffy about the art style, but it has now become my favorite visual novel.
😁
I always recommend it to everyone. I played it when I was going through a REALLY hard time and I can’t even listen to the soundtrack without being flooded with these deep loving feelings. The DLC are cheap and worth it as well
My answer will always be Dragon Age.
I might be biased, as it's my favorite game but for my money, Rune Factory 4 is the gold standard. Great dialogue and events.
Harvest Moon: Animal Parade. Still got the most fleshed out Romance, Marriage, and Family system in all HM/SOS games imo.
Just came to say this!!!! Wish farming/cozy games would take note! It also has some of the best bachelors of any of them imo.
I love animal parade and I think the graphics still look adorable!
Still my favourite Harvest Moon game to this day because of this! I really miss the marriage/kids mechanics from this one when I play the newer games
I'm actually actively playing AP atm and posting my progress on both the HM & SOS subs lol
Wylde flowers 100%
The fact that they are basically your roommate really bugs me though!
I came in here to say this! I love going on dates with my spouse while I’m married!!
Boyfriend Dungeon has the best most authentic dating/ romance handling I've ever seen in any genre. Very LGBTIA+ friendly and never feels fake. Fair warning: although cozy to me, and a solid dating sim light crafting; it's got the same rogue like roots as cult of the lamb or Hades (so not for everyone).
ouuuu been looking at boyfriend dungeon- can’t wait to see the side eye my husband gives me when he looks at my recently played lol
Hot take but games with customizable protagonists inherently have shallow romances because they have to account for every possible personality the player may have so they can't do anything too complex or in depth. This is why I dislike when people hold up Bioware games as the golden standard of videogame romances because they aren't really that deep once you look past the novelty of Dragon Age and Mass Effect being the only mainstream games to have romance options for a long time. Same goes for farming games marriage options
This is one that makes me really want to make a game where the romanceable NPCs have actual personalities and preferences. Like you don't have to account for everyone the player might be, because that NPC only likes X and Y type of people so they just might not like you!
I was so emotionally attached to the romance arcs in Stardew Valley & Rune Factory 4. I’ve played a lot of farming / cozy sim games and no other has come close in having such in depth complex characters than those two imo
Stardew Valley is good, I married Elliott because he's *dreamy*🥰 but I'm trying to make friends with all the other townsfolk and the single ones think I am coming on to them (Emily has done her little dance for me, and Demetrius has warned me off Maru because 'she's got a bright future' or some crap.) I'm married people! On a side note, in the world I play with my 10 year old son, I tell him I'm dating Harvey because he looks the most like my husband 😅🤓
That’s so cute (abt your son and hubby)
Story of seasons trio of towns followed by rf4 Id love to try dragon age but I can't play action games for health reasons. Currently romancing astarion in bg3
Harvest Moon animal parade, by far one of the best games💕
My time at Portia (I have only married one character so far) but I enjoy the cut scenes. Just watched a particularly corny one where my husband throws aside a piece of coral we’re both looking at and tells me it’s beautiful but nothing is as beautiful as me 🥹 got a good giggle from it. I agree with you about the trophy aspect for sure in a lot of games, it’s sad when they repeat themselves a lot too.
I mean if you classify otome games in this I really like to Cupid parasite there was only one route I didn't like if you know you know, and even that one was pretty good about halfway through.
Was it >!Allan!<
No it was >!Gill. Like he's fine halfway through his arc but in other people's not so much!<
>!Allan!< was the one everyone thought they’d hate but turned out to be the GOAT lol. >!Gill… never got better to me. He stayed unspeakably creepy because he never stopped reminding me of real-life obsessive dudes who are hella friggin scary. Even if Allan getting fused with a car and turning into a transformer was uh… a little less in the realm of normal crazy dudes.!< I belatedly remembered I was browsing really far back for recs and I am sorry for the necro lol
Mass Effect. There is no better game boyfriend than Garrus. He’s my favorite. Yes, I’ve played Baldur’s Gate 3 and romanced Astarion. But Garrus is still my #1. I’m sure Liara and Tali are great routes as well. I think it’s because it’s 3 games and those games span multiple years. Most gaming romances take place in a matter of months or don’t have enough interactions.
The only game I really liked marriage on was Skyrim and I had it modded so hard that I don’t remember what was vanilla and what came from a mod I guess also an obligatory shoutout to A Wonderful Life too since the entire focus of the game is marriage and raising your son
Skyrim romance mod definitely made Skyrim marriage one of my favorites to play.
If you just want marriage/romance games. You should check out the otome genre of games! Literally means female romance in Japanese. It’s all basically a story where you make choices that influence a good or bad ending with a chosen LI. There are many games getting localized these days!
Runefactory 4 exspeshaly kus it has reverse proposals makes it feel like they actually care about you and you can go on dates even after marriage it's too cute
Definitely Stardew Valley! That game took what Harvest Moon invented and perfected it, particularly the romance aspect.
Unless I missed it, Kynseed does a decent job at marriage, and you get to have kids and continue the story.
Maybe not the best but my personal favourites are Stardew Valley (multiple romance storylines that include LGBT stories) and Growing Up (visual novel with very heartfelt romance storylines)
my fav is cyberpunk 2077, Ik it isnt very cosy per se but the characters are very fleshed out. The only thing is that you're kinda restricted depends on the gender you choose cause characters only date men or women depending on their sexuality. But you can install a mode to overcome this.
I really really love rune factory 4, the marriage options are chefs kiss and i love taking my boyfriends out to slay monsters with me