#xuanli

Walking through the hallways of Lanling date, but there's people always around, or something

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you play as jin zixuan. after a long series of various events and misunderstandings, you come to understand that your acquaintance jiang yanli, who you once wrote off as average, is in fact a perfect soul who you desperately want to marry. the only problem now is that she 1. is still convinced that you hate her, 2. probably hates your loser ass too, and 3. is surrounded by men and women who are far more qualified to date her than you are. #1 and #2 can hopefully be resolved eventually with enough time, effort, and apologies.....but #3 seems to render that impossible, since if you're not careful any one of these "more qualified" bachelor/ettes might snap her up first!!!!!

you immediately identifies wei wuxian as your biggest threat, because from your (jin zixuan's) pov, wei wuxian is jiang yanli's male childhood friend who she super dotes on. after seeing how close they are, you are initially almost ready to give up - except then you find out that lan wangji is gay and in love with wei wuxian, and thus realize that you can eliminate wei wuxian as a threat if wangxian get together. 

you then realize that this also applies to everyone else you see as a romantic threat. so, because you are a problem solver, you come up with a solution: before any of jiang yanli's friends can make a move on her, you will find a way to pair them all off with each other. that way, they will all be too busy dating each other and your path to yanli's heart will be (relatively) clear. 

so instead of being a dating sim, the objective of the visual novel is to help all the various side couples involving yanli's friends get together, so none of them can threaten xuanli. 

ideally, the game will let you freely choose which couples to push together, so there will be a wide variety of routes and endings.

("jiang yanli's friends" in this game is just the set that includes all the mdzs characters more commonly shipped with each other. jiang cheng is there, but he's yanli's brother so he's not a threat. so zixuan's strategy for him is just to keep him available on the side, so he can be paired up with whoever's left over after all the other matches have been made but is still a high enough threat.)

jin zixuan's threat assessments (accuracy not guaranteed):

extremely high:

wei wuxian

high:

nie mingjue (bc of his muscles)

lan xichen (bc he's popular)

wen qing (bc even straight girls would go lesbian for her)

medium:

wen ning (he seems too timid for dating)

nie huaisang (he seems more interested in hookups than dating)

jin guangyao (my own half-brother wouldnt betray me....right?)

low:

mianmian (she's my friend so she wouldn't betray me. also she seems interested in someone else (mr. mianmian))

lan wangji (gay, uninterested in women)

su minshan (too much of a hater)

jiang cheng (brother) 

conditions for victory:

wei wuxian must be paired with someone.

everyone from the high-risk group is paired off.

a maximum of 1 person from the medium-risk group is left unpaired; everyone else from the medium-risk group is paired off.

yanli approval score (explained below) is above a certain threshold.

you do not need to pair up anyone from the low-risk group in order to win; the low-risk group is there purely to help you. pairing off people in the high- and medium-risk group is necessary not because they are actually a threat to xuanli, but rather because jin zixuan will only feel secure enough to confess once almost all of his perceived romantic rivals have been removed.

some game notes:

throuples are allowed.

while wangxian is the most straightforward way to eliminate wei wuxian as a threat, the game also allows for other wei wuxian pairings. in other words, you as the player can betray lan wangji by pairing wei wuxian up with someone else instead - in which case the game is still winnable (ie. jin zixuan can still get together with jiang yanli, which is the victory condition), but you also unlock a special CG of lan wangji crying.

the achievement of the victory condition is decided not just by whether or not you successfully pair everyone else up, but also by a hidden metric called the yanli approval score. this is calculated by your interactions with wei wuxian, jiang cheng, and jiang yanli herself as the game continues: if you are kind to them, then the score goes up, and if you are rude to them, then the score goes down. if your yanli approval score is low enough upon the game's end, then yanli will still refuse to date zixuan even if you've successfully paired everyone else off.

notably, attempting to pair jiang cheng up with someone and then failing nets you a severe yanli approval score demerit, while successfully pairing up jiang cheng with someone nets you a high yanli approval score increase. interestingly, pairing chengxian together nets you the highest increase in yanli approval score.

if you get nielan together and then do not pair up jin guangyao with anyone, then the game gives you the option of putting in the hard work to help him network. it is highly recommended that you take this option, as if you do not, jin guangyao will expose to jiang yanli everything you as jin zixuan have done in the least flattering terms possible, which will make yanli unwilling to date zixuan and will net you a game over.

if you get xiyao together and then do not pair up nie mingjue with anyone, then the game gives you the option of putting in the hard work to find him a hobby. it is highly recommended that you take this option, as if you do not, nie huaisang will push jin zixuan into the traffic and you will get a game over.

if you intend on pairing up jiang cheng with anyone other than wei wuxian himself, then wei wuxian will run interference against you; a successful strategy therefore must include anti-wei-wuxian measures. this remains true even if you previously helped wangxian get together, because wei wuxian is an ungrateful bastard.

if you intend on pairing up jiang cheng with lan xichen, then both wei wuxian and lan wangji will run interference. because of this, the xicheng route is probably the hardest route involving jiang cheng in the entire game; to compensate for this, the xicheng route also has the second-most CGs (after wangxian).

if you get jin guangyao together with someone, then he will offer his assistance to you for the rest of the game. this translates into additional stats, intel, and information on who likes who the most, which will make the rest of your run easier.

if you get nie mingjue together with someone, then nie huaisang will offer his assistance to you for the rest of the game as well. nie huaisang offers the same assistance as jin guangyao above, but he also includes his own commentary and opinions.