Ah Interesting, I have only played one or two dating sims many years ago, what are some tropes which are specific to dating sims rather than those also found in romance-based anime/manga?
I guess "bad endings" and "save then go back" would be specific and played with in DDLC, but I didn't pick up anything else.
> So you kind of need familiarity with the genre to understand some of the jokes.
>> what are some tropes which are specific to dating sims rather than those also found in romance-based anime/manga?
It's been a while since I've read DDLC but familiarity was probably too strong a word. Having expectations about how the story should develop and then having those subverted is a good chunk of the fun [1]. So skimming at least one dating sim vn is probably enough context. And anime / manga also cover most of that context / japan-isms that DDLC mocks (eg the school setting, the childhood friend / council prez / spoiled imouto archetypes).
To your question though, the VN-specific jokes are mostly about the route system and world building. I guess these still fall under the umbrella of "bad endings" and "save then go back" but imo it's a huge umbrella that's worth exploring.
So like you mentioned, DDLC toys a lot with the concept of multiple routes / save files. In most VNs each route starts the same story before branching. You don't normally expect this "common route" to change between tries but in DDLC it does in multiple ways. But more uniquely, DDLC also questions why these romantic endings exist in the first place and arrives at the conclusion that the romantic interests are psychotically obsessed... by the design of some god [2]. This also pokes at how some VNs just rewrite the world between routes to avoid distractions from the chosen love interest, as in big events that are inevitable in one route just don't happen in others.
I also thought the choice system (the poems) in itself was a fun joke. Like most VNs have screens that let you vote on which route to read, one choice per route. After N screens you get placed on the route you picked most. DDLC exaggerates this by giving you 100s of screens each with multiple choices per love interest. Kind of like "Are you really really sure? Is this your final answer?"
Speaking of DDLC, I should really reread Totono [3]. It's another VN-parody but less gimmicky and a bit more serious / emotional.
> To your question though, the VN-specific jokes are mostly about the route system and world building. I guess these still fall under the umbrella of "bad endings" and "save then go back" but imo it's a huge umbrella that's worth exploring.
I'd also include the (sometimes literally) faceless protagonists in this. For the uninitiated, it's a fairly common trope in romance VNs that the face of the protagonist is obscured, supposedly to let the player self-insert. In DDLC, if I recall correctly, you mostly see the protagonist's hands and in one image his back.
This trope leads to some fairly weird looking haircuts or (more commonly) to graphics where protagonists simply have no eyes. Perhaps fittingly, this also sometimes applies to characters that are so unimportant that they get labels such as "Student A" instead of proper names, if they even get sprites at all.
DDLC takes it to the logical conclusion that it is the player that matters, not the paper-thin player stand-in
I also remember expecting the story to comment on how, like most dating sims*, there's no male characters (or really any characters in DDLC's case) except for the MC and being disappointed it didn't. Well I think there were allusions to an abusive dad but again I don't think anyone had dialogue lines outside the MC + LIs.
* There are dating sims targeting other demographics like female MC + male LIs but DDLC was parodying the ones for males.
I guess "bad endings" and "save then go back" would be specific and played with in DDLC, but I didn't pick up anything else.