Relationship Values

Do you mean that she likes me, or that she likes me?

"So you can actually say, Oh yeah, sorry I two timed you with that other person. But look! Presents!"

— Daniel Erickson in regards to how the relationship can be affected in Star Wars: The Old Republic

In many Video Games, there exists Relationship Values that reflect how much your party members (or other NPCs) like you. Often hidden, they can be altered by your in-game behavior and choices. Types of behavior that can change your relationship values include:

The choices you make during gameplay. For example, one character wants you to go outside and inspect the rumbling noise, while another wants you to wait and see what happens. What do you do?
A subset of the above, the answers you give to certain questions (often of the "who do you want to go with you?", "do you think the White Magician Girl is cute?", variety).
Your actions during battle. For example, healing a character in battle may raise your relationship value with them, while attacking them may lower it.
How you allocate party members during split-up sequences.

Most available choices will please some characters, while disappointing others. Therefore, part of the challenge lies in either allocating your praise equally among all characters, or (more likely) figuring out whose good side is worth getting on and whose isn't. Relationship Values can be frustrating, because what affects your relationship values, and even the existence of Relationship Values themselves, is often not alluded to during the game. Furthermore, the player character's actions may affect their relationship with others in unexpected if not nonsensical ways, such as when a character's relationship with the player character is changed despite them not being present when the actions are carried out.

The results of having a good or bad relationship value are varied. Common examples include unlocking an alternate cutscene, gaining access to a different ending, or simple gameplay buffs/bonuses.

Almost all Dating Sims have these, and, indeed, they are usually the whole point of the game. Strategy games may also have variations of this, like 4X games tracking your relations with other factions (and theirs with each other), or Tactical RPGs tracking bonds and conflicts between your own units.

Sub-Trope of Personality Mechanic. Sometimes called Affection Values. Sometimes coupled with a Karma Meter or Romance Sidequest; sometimes makes you Level-Up at Intimacy 5 or makes You Lose at Zero Trust. Poor design often results in More Friends, More Benefits. Compare Match Maker Quest and Alliance Meter.

Examples:

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Action-Adventure

Grand Theft Auto:
- Grand Theft Auto 2 had an approval meter for each of the three gangs in the area. Doing missions for one against another would boost your standing with that gang, and turn your target against you. Them being in a triangle of hate results in you usually being able to max out only two of them with the third shooting you on sight.
- A large part of Grand Theft Auto IV is about Relationship Values; both romantic and platonic. Having good relationship values unlocks areas, gives access to cheap guns, medical treatment, and a host of other advantages.
Metal Gear:
- In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Snake can gain notoriety or anger from the rebel side of the two warring armies in the game. If you help them, then when they see you they might assist you in return, but if you hinder them, they will become more aggressive. There's really no point to hindering them, though, because the PMCs under Liquid will treat you as hostile no matter what you do.
- This mechanic is fully utilized in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Venom Snake can alter the Bond level between three of his four Buddies (Quiet, D-Dog, and D-Horse; with the exception of D-Walker). The Bond level can be positively increased by taking a Buddy along for missions, while inflicting any physical harm or dismissing them from duty will obviously worsen their Bond. The Bond level for each Buddy must be maxed out in order to unlock all of their respective abilities and equipment.
Onimusha series:
- In the second game, some of the plot turns in the story and even whether several members of the supporting cast live or die may depend on what sort of relationship you have with them.
- It comes back up in a much smaller manner in the fourth game, where Soki having a better relationship with the other members of the party will unlock additional dialogue options and make them willing to craft more items for you in one sitting. However, since you get relationship points every time you go into battle alongside the other party members, and nearly every stage has a secret you will need to revisit with your companions in order to unlock, having a high relationship with everyone is all but inevitable.
In The Walking Dead, the decisions Lee makes affect how the other survivors see him. He can earn their respect or disdain, and how they treat him changes accordingly. When Kenny states "No one gets left behind" in the first episode, for instance, he'll add either "Especially a good friend" or "Even if he is an asshole" depending on his opinion of you. In the final chapter when you need to save Clementine before Lee succumbs to the infection, your relationship values determine how many people will come along. You can have an entire team of True Companions, get stuck going alone, or anywhere in-between.

Action Games

In Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star, you have Bond Levels with the servants. Not surprising, given the franchise's visual novel origins. You raise Bond Levels by selecting the correct options in dialogue events and completing side-missions. Reaching certain bond levels will unlock bonuses, such as alternate costumes or gameplay items.

Action RPGs

Alpha Protocol has Mike getting a Reputation with each major character, which ranges from -10 (enemy) to +10 (friendly). Not every character's reputation can be maxed out in either direction, but most major ones can. Depending on what you want from that character, antagonizing a character into negative values may be just as useful as playing along with them to get a positive value.
- First, they give you story options. For instance, if you can make Albatross hate your guts, you can beckon him into sending his forces to kill you, leading to a helpful Enemy Civil War. Secondly, good and bad reputations give you stat bonuses on missions. For example: If you're unsubtle and threatening while Albatross is your handler, you get a health bonus. But if you're stealthy and manipulative instead, you'll get a stealth bonus.
- In addition, one particular character (Marburg), after doing a lot to deserve death, can only be goaded into a battle if he really hates you. If you've been playing the game telling everyone what they want to hear, then you will never have the chance to kill him.
- Marburg can also be killed by completing Madison's dossier and discovering her secret fact (she's the daughter of Alan Parker), then if you choose to contact Parker in the final mission and pick the "dossier" option, and if Parker has a high enough reputation with you, he'll believe you and try to kill Marburg and end up getting killed himself, then you get to fight Marburg again, only this time, you fight him to the death
- Max out Marburg's friendship, however, and he'll show up during the end cutscene and reject the Big Bad in a satisfying way, causing Thorton to snark, "Looks like Marburg's had enough of you, too."
Dragon Age:
- Dragon Age: Origins has approval ratings which are affected by the Player Character's decisions and dialogue options, and can also be helped along with gifts. As each party member's approval of the PC increases, they gain stat boosts from the inspiration the main character provides. The relationship value also determines whether the relationship is of a friendly or romantic nature. These use the same number and are determined in the same way, but are differentiated by their description on the status page. Although the player can engage in multiple romantic relationships at once, they will eventually be forced to choose a single romantic companion. Shunting the relationship value of the other involved characters from romantic to friendship usually comes with a pretty hefty reduction in the value. Thank the Maker you can just bribe them back into being your BFF with a few shiny gifts.
- Dragon Age II instead has a Friendship/Rival meter similar to Alpha Protocol, which gives party members different passive upgrades and can affect how the Romance Sidequest with characters go. While this allows you to earn their respect even if you disagree, not going far enough one way or the other has the same effect as You Lose at Zero Trust, and can lead to you fighting each other.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition returns to the approval system, but hides the exact numerical values, just listing which characters approve or disapprove of any specific decision of yours. Occasionally, instead of simply approving or disapproving, they "slightly" or "greatly" approve/disapprove. Unlike most games with this mechanic, you cannot always prevent approval gains or losses by not taking specific companions with you; the consequence of the player being the leader of a massive organization means that the approval gains for large-scale, world changing decisions affect your entire party, even companions located elsewhere. They even retroactively gain or lose approval for big decisions you made before they were recruited.
The Elder Scrolls:
- Daggerfall has a system where every NPC starts with a unique opinion of you, tempered by a faction opinion of you.
- In Morrowind, every NPC has a Disposition toward the player, ranging on a scale from 0 to 100. A high disposition will make NPCs more likely to share information, give quests, will make prices better if the NPC is a merchant and makes them less likely to attack you^note. It is determined by factors including the player's race, Personality attribute, Speechcraft skill, Reputation stat, and allegiance to any guilds or factions. Disposition can be raised permanently by bribing or admiring the NPC, raised temporarily by intimidating the NPC (which is easier to do than admiring,) or lowered to the point where the NPC may attack you by taunting them. Success for each is determined by your Speechcraft skill and, in the case of bribes, the amount you offer.
- Oblivion has NPC disposition based on each one's responsibility at first, compared to the player's Fame and Infamy (i.e. high-responsibility characters, like Fighter's Guild members, will like you less with a high Infamy, while members of the Dark Brotherhood will become increasingly amicable). Disposition can be adjusted permanently through quest choices, a dialogue Mini-Game, or simple bribery; or temporarily through Charm Person spells. At low enough levels, people might attack you on sight; at high enough levels, they'll even ignore it if you're a Vampire.
- Skyrim has a simplified relationship system, in which the disposition of an NPC is only designated as variants of "enemy", "neutral" and "friend". These designations are invisible during gameplay and influence how the NPC will act towards the player and what kinds of dialogue they'll have. For example, an NPC designated as friend can offer cheaper prices if he's a merchant or offer to travel with the player if flagged a follower. The only way the player can influence this is by doing quests for an NPC, improving the relationship or by committing crime against them, lowering it.
Each companion in Fallout 4 either likes or dislikes certain actions, which adjusts their hidden affinity value. At certain milestones of positive approval, the companion will speak to you, usually revealing more of their past. Once you reach 1,000 approval, the companion idolizes you, tells you how positive your influence has been on them, and you receive the companion's unique perk. Some companions have personal quests that you have to complete before their approval will plateau, and one can't advance beyond a certain limit until you complete enough quests for his faction. On the other hand, doing actions which the companion dislikes will cause them to scold you and, at low levels, they will threaten to leave, only reconsidering if you pass a difficult speech check (but only once: if you continue to do things they disapprove of, they'll leave and never return).
Genshin Impact gives each character other than the Traveler a friendship meter that slowly progresses doing most side content with them in your active party, letting them live in your Serenitea Pot, or giving them foods that they enjoy. Reaching higher levels unlocks pieces of their backstories, new voice lines, extra expressions when using them in Photo Mode, new dialogue when talking to them in the Serenitea Pot, and at maximum friendship, a unique nameplate.
.hack//G.U. has an affection system that can be altered through e-mail, cards and gifts. This will allow for better trades and morale boosts for your party members. In addition, (with two notable exceptions) the main character can marry the female characters or become best friends with the male characters at the end of the game assuming their affection is maxed out.
- The two exceptions being Natsume, who only views you as a friend, and Endrance.
LunarLux: Talking to individuals in a region and performing sidequests raises your affinity level with said region, which then grants discounts at the local shops.
Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect has Shepard develop friendships with their squadmates by completing sidequests for one half of the team, and romancing one of the squadmates in the other half. Urdnot Wrex, especially, because once Shepard recovers his family armor, persuading him to rejoin the heroes on Virmire becomes several times easier, since they've earned the krogan's trust.
- Mass Effect 2:
  - Shepard can earn loyalty from each of their squadmates by completing their loyalty missions. It's a more oversimplified relationship system, as Shepard can just complete their respective loyalty missions, and boom, instant friendship! However, earning their loyalty also increases their odds of surviving the suicide mission; after all, when you're friends with someone, like Shepard's teammates to Shepard themself, your will to get the job done increases, as you're motivated to do it for those friends.
  - Shepard also have to mediate two arguments, one between Jack and Miranda regarding the former's life as a Cerberus experiment, and the other between Tali and Legion regarding the latter uploading data from the former's people. Shepard can either side with one of those teammates and risk losing the others' loyalty, or if they have a high enough Paragon/Renegade meter, persuade both sides to stand down and work together as a team.
- Mass Effect 3:
  - There is an unspoken one between Commander Shepard and either Ashley Williams or Kaidan Alenko, whomever is still alive. During the first third of the game, they're hospitalized, and depending on various actions Shepard undertakes, or already undertook over the course of three games (building a relationship with them, becoming romantically involved with them, not cheating on them with someone else (or being honest about it if you do), dropping by to visit them in the hospital, getting them a gift, or having a heart to heart about them thinking you betrayed them by joining Cerberus in ME2) their trust for Shepard is increased. At the climax of the mission where Cerberus attacks the Citadel, they are locked in a Mexican Standoff with you. A high relationship will have them trust you unconditionally, while lower (but not too low) ones require reputation checks to avoid shooting and killing them.
  - There is also another hidden one that affects all party members, it determines which squadmates will emerge from the Normandy after it crashlands (if there are any survivors). Love interests are given highest priority. It also influences who will place (or don't) Commander Shepard's plaque on the Normandy memorial wall.
  - The Citadel DLC has some more low-key examples, tracking who you take with you the most. The story begins with Shepard being ambushed alone - one squadmate comes to the rescue and another assures them over radio that the team is coming (love interests get priority). It later lampshades the Arbitrary Headcount Limit — when Shepard is forced to take two and leave everyone else, one will complain that they wanted to come, and your least-used squaddie will complain that they never get picked.
Pandora's Tower: Interacting with Elena, be it talking to her, giving her gifts, spending special moments with her, etc. will increase the bond between her and Aeron, which in turn also strenghtens the Oraclos chain. This determines what ending will be unlocked after the game endsproves essential to unlock the Golden Ending.
Radiata Stories has this, although it's nearly impossible to figure out. All female party members (of which there are many) can get a short scene during a festival late in the game where they watch fireworks with Jack. This character will also be seen following Jack out of town in the human side ending, implying they plan on leaving with him. If you choose the non-human side, then it affects nothing, as Jack's love interest will then become Ridley.
The Star Ocean RPGs feature this prominently.
- In the first Star Ocean, the way the main character reacts with the other characters affects his relationship values with them, which in turn affect the way the story unfolds and which of the the Multiple Endings the player gets.
- In Star Ocean: The Second Story, every character has a relationship value with every other character, and a multitude of different scenes can play during the ending depending on who you recruited and which character each one of them ended up with.
- For Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, actions mostly affect characters feelings towards Fayt and determine who he ends up with. This also determines who fights alongside a Fayt duplicate in one of the bonus dungeons.
- In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, actions again only affect relations with main character Edge and the others. It doesn't determine who he ends up with, but a high enough value shows an extended ending for each character.
Tales Series:
- In Tales of Innocence, relationship values go up based on cutscene dialog choices, and between any two characters at the end of battle if one used a healing or support skill on the other. The game is unusual in two ways: first, the game shows you the numerical values for every decision and at the end of every battle, even letting you check values at any time in the status screen, and relationship values can exist for every pair of the six characters, though only the main character's values affect the ending.
- Likewise for Tales of Symphonia, although the ending is only marginally different — relationships affect certain in-game cutscenes more. Particularly frustrating because one character (Colette) is noted for her devotion to the main character, and as such, it's difficult to shake her and get a different character to be Lloyd's closest companion. Fortunately, your wanted character can be anywhere in the top 4 highest values, instead of only the highest. You choose which character wins during the Flanoir event, and can simply refuse Colette if you want someone else.
  - And the real ending is only with Colette, even though 2 of the other characters, Kratos and Zelos, can fly. The rest are only shards of the epilogue where Lloyd is tacked into someone else's ending, but in the previous dramatic cutscene only shows affection for Colette.
  - This can be avoided by keeping your Relationship Values on a New Game Plus. This means, you can actually force Colette to be second or third on your second play through and have your wanted soulmate on top. If you want to get a certain cutscene with Zelos (that Colette normally speaks during The Reveal involving Kratos, he must be the second or third person on your first play through before he can be the first. This works for everyone though. If you play the game again after that, you can move Colette further down the line until she's no longer on the top.
  - It's fully possible to get Zelos - the character who starts with the lowest affection for Lloyd - as your soulmate while pushing Colette fairly close to the bottom of the list (low enough to be one of the four characters who leaves Flanoir for the snow conversation segment) on the first playthrough. It's possible, but you have to answer every question in the game in a way that angers Colette and pleases Zelos, with no indications or hints as to what you should pick, pursue some sidequests and not others at certain times, keep Zelos in your party every time, find all of his skits, and get at least one of his optional costumes. This means it's also possible to get any character as your soulmate on the first try, and always possible to bump Colette off the list - you just have to know what to pick in advance.
- In Tales of Xillia 2, raising Ludger's affinity with other members of the party allows him to learn one of their artes and unlocks a special Mystic Arte he can perform with them, among other things.
The World Ends with You has two much different than usual values. There's synchronization, a percentage that affects your partner's performance in battle which resets every day, is increased by feeding them food, and goes down when you flee from battle. Then there's your friendship gauge with shop owners, which you increase by spending money at their store and unlocks items' abilities (as well as making their dialogue much friendlier).
Xenoblade Chronicles:
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 uses a variation. The game keeps track of each party member's "affinity" with the others, doing things like helping them out in battle or performing sidequests together can increase the relationship. Once it reaches certain values, you have the option to view "Heart-to-Heart" events between the two, potentially increasing their relationship even more. Interestingly enough, this only really affects gameplay: characters can learn skills off those they have a high affinity with, make better gems while crafting and get slight boosts in battle. The NPCs in the game also have affinity values with each other, which can be strengthened or damaged based on your choices during sidequests (such as how you resolve an NPC Love Triangle, for example). These don't really do much, though, aside from providing Videogame Caring Potential.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X keeps the Affinity system, though now it only tracks the relationship between the Player Character and teammates. Increasing a party member's affinity is necessary to access their Affinity Missions.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  - The Affinity system has been changed to just be another name for the skill tree. However, most Blades require a high Trust to reach the better rungs of their tree. In addition to granting access to their better skill nodes, Trust also increases the speed at which you can use Blade Combos.
  - There is a very minor one for the Rex and Pyra/Mythra relationship. When Pyra and Mythra obtain their Super Mode, Rex asks what he should call them. You get to decide whether to use Pyra or Mythra's name, which changes the voice clip used for the Super Mode for the rest of the game. Then at the very end, when Pyra and Mythra have been revived from their core in separate bodies, the one you chose mouths "I love you, Rex" as the game ends.
In Zenless Zone Zero, each Agent has a Trust meter representing their affinity with Phaethon. An Agent's Trust can be leveled up interacting with them whenever they appear in the overworld, either by chance encounter or by proactively inviting them to hang out, provided you select the correct dialogue prompts while doing so. Increasing Trust past three specific thresholds will unlock the Agent for use as a promoter for Random Play, a Resonium that can invoke one of the Agent's Mindscapes during Hollow Zero missions, and a dynamic wallpaper featuring them front and center.

Adventure Games

Detroit: Become Human has an assortment of relationship meters that can influence the path of the story.
- Hank has one for his relationship with Connor, which changes depending on how compassionate Connor is to him and the various deviants they run into during their investigations. If his relationship level is low enough late in the game, he ends up resigning from the DPD and commits suicide in a later scene.
- Markus has to contend with the relationship stats of North, Josh, and Simon, as well as the approval level of Jericho as a whole. Obtaining a high enough relationship level with North allows for her to romance Markus as well as sacrifice herself for him in a few scenes, and if Jericho's approval level is sufficiently low by the chapter "Crossroads", Markus ends up being ousted from Jericho due to his poor leadership.
- Kara has Alice's relationship level, which if low enough by "Crossroads" results in Alice rejecting Kara and wandering off on her own, causing Kara's story to end right there if she doesn't choose to go look for her.
- Shared between all three protagonists is the "public opinion" meter, which represents how positively the general population perceives androids. Markus' decisions have the biggest influence on it since he's leading Jericho, but Connor and Kara can influence it in their own small ways. This meter affects one specific thing: whether or not the army kills Markus and the last remaining Jericho protestors in the final chapter, during the Demonstration route.
Every character in Doki-Doki Universe has a meter that tells you how much they like or hate you, which you can influence by summoning things they like or hate, or by picking them up and throwing them around.
In Goodbye Volcano High, the characters' closeness to Fang can be seen in the game menu, with each character appearing as an icon orbiting around Fang. When the player makes choices that improve a relationship, the icon will move into closer orbit. Stronger bongs will cause certain sequences of the story to play out differently and unlock flashbacks and photos. However, there are a limited amount of choices the player can make, and prioritizing one relationship can cause others to be neglected.
Life Is Strange:
- Chloe has a simple relationship meter, based on five specific choices Max can make regarding her. If you side with Chloe on at least three of them, then in the Sacrifice Chloe ending the two will share a passionate kiss.
- In the prequel Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, Chloe has a more complicated one with Rachel. The more flirty you are with her, the more flirty she is back, culminating in the school play where (if you complete the play perfectly) Rachel will improv a proposal on stage, and later Chloe and Rachel can have The Big Damn Kiss. If you choose less flirty options, Rachel will instead give Chloe a much smaller kiss; if the values are low enough, Chloe won't even have the option to ask for a kiss at all.
- Daniel in Life Is Strange 2 has two relationship meters which are affected by Sean's actions: one for "morality", which represents his ability to distinguish right from wrong, and another for "brotherhood", which represents how close he is with Sean and how willing he is to trust his older brother. While the latter influences, at most, whether Daniel will defer to Sean's judgement in a few scenes, the former affects his overall attitude throughout the game as well as which pair of endings out of the main four you can obtain from the big decision in the final episode.
In the Tex Murphy game The Pandora Directive, the player's choices determine whether he ends up with wholesome, lovable Chelsea or scheming Regan, though it's really not so much a choice of which girl to end up with as it is a choice of whether to be on the moral or immoral path. Ending up with Chelsea nets you the Golden Ending, whereas pursuing Regan instead gives you a Bittersweet Ending at best.
Ms. Director keeps track of how often you interact with Ida by examining objects while she is in your party, and you need at least a few in order to achieve the best ending.

Fighting Games

Tekken has this in the way the characters react to each other and cooperate as a team, as well as affecting win poses. It's a little around the place but makes the game worth playing to see the different combinations.

Hack and Slash

Dynasty Warriors:
- The fourth incarnation possesses a relationship system which keeps track of how every single playable officer feels about every other playable officer, strengthening relationships by saving them to encourage them to appear out of nowhere to save the player and weakening relationships by defeating them causing them to spontaneously defend your enemy commanders if they're on the same force; even challenging you to a duel if they really hate you.
- This relationship concept returned en masse for one of the spinoff franchises, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2. Characters will like you or hate you depending on how you treat them in your missions. Of course, this will affect if they come and reinforce you in certain missions or what licenses you can earn for using other major giant robots in the game. This becomes especially painful when you realize it's necessary to befriend certain annoying characters to actually unlock them to use in the game. Luckily, the game does give you "friendship building levels" to at least try and patch up those problematic character relationships.^note
- The Empires spin-offs expands on the relationship system, allowing players to forge bonds with other characters. At high enough levels, players can take on other characters as sworn siblings, or even marry another character of opposite gender.
- Warriors All-Stars has the Regard system. Regard Levels are increased toward the player character by using support abilities during battle, using Musou Rush, activating special events in the Sanctuary, and encountering characters in the hot springs. Different abilities/items will be awarded when reaching certain levels. When two characters have high Regard for each other, they will trigger character-specific events. Regard is split into 5 distinct levels, from lowest to highest: Associate, Acquaintance, Friend, Companion, and Confidant.
- The [[One Piece: Pirate Warriors One Piece spinoffs have Crew Levels in the third installment. These are raised by calling upon support characters during battles, and by racking up KO's during Kizuna Rush mode. Raising these will unlock that character's Gallery entries, such as the model viewer, portraits, voice lines, etc. The crew levels go from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest.
- The Samurai Warriors games have Friendship Levels. In the fourth installment, maxing out Friendship Levels with a character will allow your avatar character to equip that character's weapon type.
- The Fire Emblem crossover spinoffs feature Supports. You can raise the support level between two characters by pairing them together during battle and slaying enemy captains, or by completing side-missions that they request of you. Raising supports will reward the player with rare items related to those two characters, which can be used to craft skills and blessings. The Support ratings are split into 4 distinct levels: None, C, B, and A/A+. Getting two characters to "C" rating will gift the player with both characters' respective silver materials. A "B" rating will gift the player with both characters' respective gold material. An "A" rating will gift the player with a unique gold material from both characters, which is that character's "Essence", which is needed for other characters to learn that character's personal skill. Some pairs will have an "A+" rating in place of the standard "A" rating. These pairs will trigger a custom, personalized dialogue event between them when the "A+" support rating is obtained.

MMORPGs

In Star Wars: The Old Republic each of your companions have a relationship meter with you that can be increased through selecting the right dialogue options while they're around, or just bribing them with gifts.
In World of Warcraft, two values were originally used for hunter pets: Loyalty, which grows over time (if the pet is happy), and happiness, which is raised by feeding the pet food it likes. While Loyalty was pretty much meaningless after a while (unless you let the pet starve long enough), happiness affected the pets base damage. Both were eventually removed, though.

Platform Games

Played for Laughs in A Hat in Time when you befriend Mustache Girl in the second mission and a rainbow-gradient gauge with her name on it appears that fills about halfway and lights up with "FRIENDS!" to imply these will be a thing in the game. However, the very next mission you and her have a falling-out, the gauge goes so far into the negative it explodes and reads "ENEMIES" instead, and gauge never appears again with there being absolutely nothing you can do to influence relationship values with any character in the rest of the game. It makes sense, after all; the gauge blew up.

Rhythm Games

Evolving members in 8 Beat Story requires maxing out intimacy values first. Repeating the process after the members have evolved increases said member's stat.
All idol cards in Tokyo 7th Sisters have intimacy values, which has a higher requirement for rarer cards. Maxing out intimacy for any idol cards give a stat boost on them. Doing the same on idolized cards of silver rarity and above gives Seven Coins, this game's in-app purchase currency and unlocks intimacy scenarios, in which the idols get personally close to you.

Roguelike

Griftlands: The main method of increasing relationships is by drinking together and giving them money, while the main method of decreasing relationships is by betraying them or murdering their friends^note. Characters who like or hate your grifter will stand by or against them in negotiations and combats, and characters who love/hate your character will give passive perks.
In Hades, Zagreus can strengthen his bonds with other character by gifting them nectar, or the more spendy ambrosia. At some point, every character will hit a lock and Zagreus can't bond with them further until the story progresses.

Role-Playing Games

Every NPC in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Henchmen, shopkeepers, guards, rats, every single one - has a Reaction score indicating how much they like the PC, and this score can be changed depending on a number of factors; don't expect to be well-liked if you have a reputation for running naked through the streets of Tarant. Party members can be persuaded to remain just when they're about to leave in disgust by giving them a certain item (such as cakes or snuff tobacco).
Baldur's Gate II had several romances you could pursue, though people complained that it had limited choices for female players (namely, just one), as well as the romances being tightly scripted (so you were required to give the "right" answer to your prospective partner at every step to make the romance continue). The expansion pack Throne of Bhaal continued the romances, and the epilogues were different depending on who you romanced and what you did in the end.
Baldur's Gate III has approval values with your companions, with choices you make being either approved or disapproved of. Higher approval makes it easier to influence their decisions and determines if they are open to a romantic relationship. The vampire spawn Astarion is mostly selfish, largely approving of manipulation and things that benefit him personally while disapproving of getting involved in other people's problems, cleric of Shar Shadowheart starts with similar priorities but makes exception for being kind to children and animals, githyanki warrior Lae'zel prefers direct, violent solutions and likes it when the player character stands up for themselves (sometimes even against her), while Wyll enjoys heroic acts and dislikes engaging in dark bargains due to his personal experience with them.
Beastieball: Beasties that interact with each other will eventually form bonds, which grant both of them access to a powerful combo move.
Breath of Fire II had the Dragon Tear, a memento left to Ryu by his mother. The color of the gem reflects how certain people feel about you, ranging from solid black (lowest) to shifting rainbow colors (highest). Not too surprisingly, the people in the solid black range are usually evil and you end up fighting them.
Circus Electrique:
- Devotion serves as a loyalty gauge for each of your performers. High Devotion makes them more effective both under the big top and battling the Vicious. Some moves even require spending Devotion. If any of your Performers lose all their Devotion, they may decide to take off... and take any Gadgets you might have equipped to them with them.
- Performers also each have Chemistry with each other; they enjoy working with certain other types of acts, and dislike being paired with others. This also effects how well your shows go.
CIMA: The Enemy features this for the various settlers that you have to protect, which increases if you kill monsters in their presence and decreases when they take damage. Having a negative value means that the settler won't be able to craft items for you (and an event happens early on that puts this value into the negatives for every character, forcing the player to regain their trust.)
In Contact, there are a number of girls that Terry can romance, based on his rank in the dozens of statistics that game has.
In Disco Elysium, your Good Cop/Bad Cop rating is actually just a rating of how good your relationship is with Kim. This means you can maintain a good working relationship with the Lieutenant by sneaking out to do Police Brutality and Dirty Cop corruption stuff late at night when he is asleep. The game also has multiple other trackers, some of which are visible and others of which are not, which trace your political ideology, your 'copotype', your Honor Points, the number of times you have announced you are going to kill yourself, the number of times you have told people "I am the law", and so on.
Earthlock: Party members generate "Battle Bond" by fighting in pairs. Leveling up the bond unlocks passive benefits, which are different for each pairing of the six characters.
Exist Archive: Characters increase their Affection for each other by fighting together. Increased affection increases their chances of learning new skills from each other, and gives the player a reason to keep switching up the party, instead of finding a preferred group and sticking to it like glue.
In Faery: Legends of Avalon, saying certain things to some characters — mostly joinable ones — will cause you to gain or lose approval with them. Usually, you gain approval by picking nice conversation options, although one of them likes it when you snark at her. If characters like you enough, they'll present you with gifts of equipment.
In Farmagia, befriending the Elemental Spirits and raising your relationships with them unlocks more monsters and Fusions to use in battle.
Some of the Final Fantasy games feature the use of relationship values.
- In Final Fantasy VII, whoever liked you the most would take you out on a "date" at the Golden Saucer. Many people get Aerith because of her extremely high default affection value towards Cloud, and arbitrary jumps in points for seemingly random events. However, the Tifa date is still rather easy to get, and with enough dedication, Yuffie, or even Barret can be your suitor.
  - Your relationship value with Tifa also affects her interaction with Cloud while under the Highwind, prior to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. The high affection variant heavily suggests they did more than just spend the night together, while the low affection doesn't.
  - A more complicated system that took into account Cloud's treatment of the girls/Barret in battle (gaining him points for healing them/Covering them, losing him points for hitting them/having them Cover him, etc) was planned in development, but scrapped for being too confusing to implement. This does lead to some dialogue being Dummied Out due to it being impossible to gain enough Affection to trigger the scene without using cheats (specifically, Aeris telling Cloud she hoped he would be jealous when finding out about Zack).
  - Final Fantasy VII Rebirth expands this system by adding timed dialogue choices at specific moments, as well as sidequests that affect a character's relationship with Cloud. In addition, the system now applies to the entire party. Interestingly enough, the game also codes some of the "dates" as non-romantic, with those with Barret, Red XIII, and the group of Cait, Cid and Vincent shown more as friends having a guys' night out and deepening their friendship. Only Yuffie's, Aerith's, and Tifa's are clearly shown as romantic, with the latter even ending in The Big Damn Kiss.
  - They had something similar for the prequel Crisis Core, where the actions taken to find the thief who stole Zack's wallet can lead to a different type of conversation with Aerith. For some reason, having Zack act like a Schmuck and listen to all the unhelpful bystanders earn points on Aerith's affection scale.
  - In a similar fashion, completing certain side quests would effect how many people joined Zack's fanclub and its final mail message.
- In Final Fantasy X, alternate scenes and dialogue can be accessed depending on who likes you most out of Yuna, Rikku, and Lulu. Perhaps most notably, your relationship values determine who aids Tidus in the cutscene of his ultimate overdrive.
  - Also happens with the male characters, although the varying scenes aren't as plentiful. The snowmobile scene is the most obvious one; Rikku and Lulu are by far the most common options, but it's possible to also get Kimahri or Auron to buddy up with Tidus for that scene.^note
  - Yojimbo, one of the optional Aeons, decides its next move based at least partly on the Relationship Value.
- Final Fantasy Agito possibly tops all others to the degree it's compared to a dating sim and you can wind up with multiple girlfriends or boyfriends from the main characters.
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has an influence system that governs interaction with your party members. The higher your influence with a party member, the more their alignment will shift towards the player character's alignment. The system rewards both very high influence scores (adoration) and very low influence scores (contempt). With the appropriate influence, your party members will reveal their secrets or inner turmoil and depending on the character, can be trained into Jedi or Sith. Justified in that These are both unique in-universe abilities of the player character, draining the life from foes to add to their own strength and twisting the minds of those close to them, which terrify others so thoroughly when they learn this they consider the player to be a Humanoid Abomination equal to the main villain.
In Legaia II: Duel Saga, certain actions and choices presented to the player affect Lang's relationship with four different girls: Maya, Sharon, Nancy, and Phanta. It is possible to make all four of them fall in love with him, though unfortunately, this has no effect on the ending. It does affect the in-game cutscenes and dialogue, however. The way the player is able to tell how the different romantic relationships are progressing is by going to the fortune teller in Phorchoon Casino and getting a reading for his love life.
Both The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel have events that allow players to hang out with the other characters. Before the final chapter of the game, they get to hang out with the character they've maxed out their relationship with and get their ending. In Cold Steel IV, maxing out a character's bonding point at Mishelam Wonderland has them giving Rean an accessory that's only exclusive for him to equip. If the character is female and the player has done their romantic events, then players get to watch the fireworks with said girl and ends up kissing them, unless they're minors then he doesn't.
Lunarosse lets you manage your relationships with Gloria and Noel. You can earn up to three points with each, at which point they get a new move. Generally not too hard to get, as long as you treat them both and listen to the in-game hint on how to do so during the winter dance. The tricky part is that if you don't get make the right choice after the boss battle in the underwater temple, you can easily screw up and not be able to get the one point you need to ensure they both max out. And that's before the relationship values are even introduced to you.
In Miitopia, party members can form bonds with one another, which will then lead to them aiding one another in battle in various ways. These can be formed gradually by having characters room together at the inn between levels, but bonding scenes can also happen at random either at inns or during levels, and in-battle actions can also bring people closer. Conversely, characters can be angered by others' behavior, but rather than actively lowering the relationship values it freezes them in place and replaces the positive in-battle actions with negative ones until the quarrel's over.
The Neptunia series has these, and given the cast is nearly entirely female, it terms them Lily Points. Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 merely had every party member have a ranking with Nepgear, while Victory and later has a Lily rank between every possible pair of your party members. Some of the more frustrating trophies to get require you to max out all of them.
In Opoona, you can befriend certain NPCs. Each "friendable" NPC has their own story associated with them, and by doing events to advance their stories, you can increase your friendship with them. Near the end of the game, you'll need to gather up a number of your friends with a high affection in order for their help in storming the final dungeon.
The later Persona games stand out among other examples because the Relationship Values system is an integral part of the game; half the gameplay is leveling up these values (known as Social Links), and it has a huge impact on the other half of the game - the actual dungeon crawling. Even if you wanted to, you can't ignore this aspect of the game, as the fighting would be way, way too hard if you don't have Personas boosted by Social Link points.
- Persona 3 has a system in which you get access to the best Personas if your relation with certain characters (not necessarily party members) is high enough. Your team is a Social Link that levels up automatically, but some members of your party, along with a colorful cast of NPCs, have individual Social Links. Getting all links maxed in one run is a Bragging Rights Reward and the equivalent of a No-Damage Run for the non-combat aspect of the game, but even with a guide, it's still beyond difficult, particularly since the game loves to mess with players by changing your schedule. Did you choose to spend a night boosting a stat instead of pursue a social link? You might as well start over: your school-based Social Links are unavailable for the next two weeks. Have fun figuring out how to level up your base stats quickly enough to initiate certain Social Links while also maxing out the ones available to you.
  Additionally, maxing every social link in Persona 3 unlocks bonus content and each maxed link yields an otherwise unobtainable item and the benefit of being irreversible. Which means that you need to date several female characters simultaneously in order to finish the link, then do it again with another set of female characters (Playing the Portable remake with a female protagonist allows you to keep your relationships platonic, but you still need to max each social link). The Social Links are one of the game's logic puzzles — what a reasonable person would say and what you need to say to level the link are often not the same. Oh, and one link requires you to be fleeced of 40,000 yen, which hurts if you try to start that link too soon. Social link questions make up almost half of Persona 3 boards and are essentially a set of logic puzzles, with each link being its own puzzle. Good luck!
- Persona 4 does this as well, with the additional option of pursuing either a friendship or a romantic relationship with the female characters (and the Social Link puzzles making more sense than they did in Persona 3). Having a high relationship with your party members can save your neck in battle too, since advancing their link will grant them various combat bonuses like the ability to take a mortal blow for you; if you max out a party member's S-Link, their Persona will upgrade to a more powerful form.
- Persona 5 renames the system as "Confidant" (to fit with the Phantom Thief motif of the game), but it works the same as previous installments. However, now every Confidant gives a special bonus. For example, befriending the weapon store owner gives you discounts and adds new gun modifications to the store, while befriending the shogi player gives you tactical bonuses such as the ability to switch your party members in-battle.
Takes two forms in Pillars of Eternity:
- The game eschews individual Influence stats a la KOTOR2 and NWN2, instead favoring a system similar to preceding BioWare titles wherein your companions will open up to you and share more stories as you travel with them.
- The Disposition stat is a variant, essentially a measure of the Watcher's personality traits. This affects some interactions with NPCs. It's also a key stat for paladins, whose powers are either improved or penalized by certain Dispositions, depending on the chivalric order chosen at character creation: for example, a Shieldbearer of St. Elcga will benefit from Diplomatic and Honest, and take penalties for Aggressive and Cruel.
Planescape: Torment relied heavily on interactions with party members to tell the story, and you would have a more-or-less personal relationship with everyone (not necessarily romantic either). Interactions could change alignments, stats and the way the final battle unfolded.
Most Pokémon games feature a relatively simplified version of this trope, in which your Pokémon either like or dislike you. This "happiness" value affects the damage power of a couple of moves, certain Pokémon will only evolve if they like you enough, and certain NPCs will give you an item if your lead Pokémon has a high enough happiness rating.
- It is worth noting that Frustration, the move that gains more power from a lower happiness value is much harder to get and use effectively - in most instances you need a Pokémon that hates you to even get the attack, and if you do opt to use it, it will rapidly decrease in effectiveness simply by the fact that doing well with that Pokémon causes your happiness to rise. Compare Return, which is incredibly easy to get and can only really increase in power unless you're actually trying to bring it down.
- In the most recent games, your happiness affects whether or not specific Pokémon can learn some rather powerful moves - essentially Hyper Beams in Fire, Water, and Grass types. Draco Meteor sometimes counts as well for dragon-types.
- Pokémon X and Y adds another layer to this in the form of Pokémon Amie, where you can play with your Pokémon to raise their affection for you, which is a separate value from the aforementioned friendship. Raising it provides benefits like increased EXP gain and increased critical/evasion rates. It'll also change the battle dialogue to reflect the bond you've forged with that Pokémon and the Pokémon will start looking back at you while it awaits its commands if likes you enough.
Rakenzarn Tales gives all your party members, your support members and certain NPCs relationship gauges with the protagonist called "Affinity". It won't affect the main story, but taking the time to build them via combat, dialogue and events can grant stat boosts and items. For certain female party members, you can progress to a romantic relationship. However, forming a romantic relationship with a girl makes it exclusive, so you can't date multiple girls.
Rakenzarn Frontier Story gives you relationship values for each party member and certain NPCs. Increasing your party member relationships is essential for accessing the higher-level limit breaks, while you can unlock dating options and more shopping features with NPCs.
In Riviera: The Promised Land, the ending you get depends on which other party member likes you the most, with a secret ending being reserved for your cat-demon familiar. On the other hand, that character can't be used for the final battle.
- In the PSP remake there's supposedly an ending with Ledah. The CG for it has been found and looks completely genuine, but no one's figured out how to get it yet.
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song gives you Relationship Values with the gods. The quests you complete and the choices you make therein affect your favor with the various gods of Mardias, raising the chances of them coming to your aid during battle and influencing your access to certain options, as well as determining which of the three ending quests you can access. (Ironically, it's easy to buy your way into their good graces simply by purchasing spells at their temples for higher prices than normal — in fact, Elore, lord of the gods, is by far the easiest to appease this way, while the evil gods don't have this option and are thus more difficult to earn favor with. Go figure...)
In Romancing Walker, Ryle's attraction with his female companions increases when she fights alongside him (i.e. serve as an active party member) for a long enough period of time. Having a high enough points would also unlock events that would further deepen Ryle's relationship with the girl of his choice. The girl with the highest attraction would end up with him in the epilogue.
In the Sakura Wars games, how the girls feel about you (their commander) explicitly gives them bonuses in combat, and a special team-up attack is available depending on who your relationship is strongest with at a given time.
Science Girls! affects the main character's relationships with the other girls via conversations. This actually doesn't do anything - heck, you may not even know it's there the first time around - until the end of the game. No, not for a romantic pairing, but for determining who the alien hive mind kidnaps and possesses for the final boss battle.
In Shadow Hearts: Covenant and Shadow Hearts: From The New World have an "affinity" stat for each pair of characters. Its starting value is based on preexisting relationship between characters, and increases by fighting together and performing combination attacks. Higher values of affinity makes combination attacks stronger and easier to use. Also, if affinity between two characters is high enough, and one of them is in critical health, the other may shield them from a fatal attack.
Stella Glow: Whenever Alto spends part of his (measured in-game) Free Time with a supporting character, he can increase his bond with them. This is represented by a gold-colored ring that surrounds the area of a heart. Filling the ring once will in turn fill in a part of the heart gauge and unlock a special skill for the supporting character, and the process can be repeated to fill the next part later (though it will take more moments from Free Time). In the case of the Witches, shortly before the ring fills up each time it's close to, something bad or unusual will happen, preventing Alto from developing his affinity with that Witch, thus needing to take her to a special intimate zone where Alto can enter her Spirit World and tune her soul and heart (which allows her affinity ring to fill in and subsequently a part of the heart's gauge). Completely filling the heart gauge of a Witch turns her into a Goddess and unlocks her ultimate Limit Break ability, and also unlocks a special ending with her after the game is completed.
In Tyranny, your relationship with your party members is determined by their Loyalty (how much they like you) and Fear (how much they don't like you), which are measured separately. Getting either of them high enough can unlock special Combination Attacks as well as unique interactions.
Unrest has three meters that track how Friendly, how Respectful and how Fearful NPCs are of your character. In addition, their general opinion of you is summed by a one-word description over each bar.
In Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land once your party becomes a team you gain a trust score representing how much your party trusts you as a leader. Each character aside from the party leader has their own individual trust meter which can go up or down based on your actions and their personality. High trust levels allow you to perform powerful combination techniques.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Ichiban has "bonds" with the other characters, which go from levels 1 to 5. You can level up their bonds by straightforward things like fighting, buying meals, and taking the men to hostess clubs. Eri's bond can only be raised through the business Mini-Game. Increasing bonds has the following benefits:
- Characters earn more XP when not in the active party.
- More jobs become available.
- You find out more about each character's back story.

Simulation Games

In the Angelique series, your relationship values effect both the dating sim and the world-building sim portions of the game. Guardians who like you will give you free buildings and guardians who like your rival will either give her buildings or destroy yours.
Brave Soul gives each party member Character Levels as you pursue them romantically: the healer gets more powerful spells as your relationship deepens, and so on.
Clangen: Each cat has relationship values with the rest of their clan, and you can see them in-game on their status screen. They can influence how cats interact with each other in Random Events. For instance, cats with a mutually high "romantic like" stat may become mates on their own, while a cat may murder another cat if their "dislike" for them is high enough.
The Coming Out on Top demo had the option to show the relationship value as a number once you finished the game once. This way, the player can look how high the number goes after a choice to find the best option. And there's of course the fact that every dateable guy has strong preferences (be kind, be sensual, be strict) that considerably raise their value.
Dandelion keeps track of how many relationship hearts you have with each of the five main romanceable guys and they can be increased through successful interactions with them. Some of these guys require you to raise your relationship with another guy in addition to them to get their good ending but for others, raising your relationship too much with another guy will get you their bad ending instead.
In Dead In Vinland, every character has a relationship meter toward every other character. The higher their friendship values, the better the bonus they get to actions they take together; if the score dips into the negative, they get an increasingly severe penalty instead. Some pairs of characters have a Romance Sidequest together. If a character dies, the game will report how the other characters react, which can even be "_____ was overjoyed" if the survivor really hated the dead character.
In the free amateur RPG/Dating Sim Elven Relations, the girl you get closest to will defend you in combat, and your actions in combat affect how she feels about you in the story-based segments.
Freelancer has Relationship Values for every in-game faction. The more jobs you do for them, the higher the respect they hold for you; the more jobs you do for their rivals, the more they will hate you. If you push enough towards one side, that faction will become your friend or enemy. You can also pay for having a good word put upon you at any space station.
The Galaxy Angel games incorporate Relationship Values into both their Dating Sim and Real-Time Strategy segments. If you impress an Angel on the bridge, she'll fight stronger in her ship. If you let her blow up in combat, she'll hate you when she gets back.
Harvest Moon (Natsume): To romance potential love interests, relationship values must be raised. These are also possible with other characters in the games, often by gifting them.
Hustle Cat tracks the player's interactions with the other characters in the first half. At the end of the first arc, when the player goes to the basement, the character with the highest value will appear and from then on be Avery's lover.
Idol Manager: Each idol has three bars relating to her relationship with the Player Character:
- A friendship one that can be filled via casual conversation and choices made during random story events, which makes the idol more confortable with sharing gossip.
- An influence one that is primarly filled by discovering what the idol would like to do during her career and making it happen. Said influence can be used to make the idol stop bullying another, force a breakup with a romantic partner or make her stay in the agency past her own preferred graduation date.
- A third bar that exists for the purposes of an eventual Office Romance with the idol.
In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, you can track your relationships with the romanceable characters in your friend list. You can improve your relationships with them by giving them gifts and bonding with them until you max out their meters at 10 hearts. As you bond with them, you unlock more details on their profiles, including sliders that tell you more precisely about their personalities.
In Kitty Powers' Love Life, each couple has Love Meters that determine how happy they are in the relationship. Maxing them out will let you level up their relationship from being romantic partners to getting engaged, and then getting married and finally achieving "true love" and leaving the Love Village to pursue their goals. On the other hand, if their Love Meters drop to zero, they threaten to break up with each other unless you ace the quiz on their partner's personal info.
Littlewood: The inhabitants of the town the Player Character is rebuilding all have a Level that represents their friendship with them, but also second meter that can only be filled by flirting or dating the character. The option to flirt starts showing up as an alternative to complimenting the character for an extra boost in Level once the friendship is high enough. As the friendship increases, the option to flirt will show up more and more often until the Player Character's Parental Substitute and characters whose Romance Sidequest is only missing marriage to be completed can be complimented.
There are 377 Melody points available in Melody, and any player who collects at least 375 will get the Perfect Ending. However, there is no equivalent for any of the other girls in the story.
The Movies tracks relationships between actors and directors. Closer relationships between co-stars and directors give a slight (but not deal-making) boost to individual movies. Slightly related is the mood-tracking concept that The Movies shares with just about any personal-scope (Sims-style) Simulation Game.
Potionomics is a business management game in which you run a potion shop, buying ingredients to craft your merchandise and then selling them. Sometimes you sell to the very people you bought ingredients from, such as the witch Quinn, who specializes in things like unicorn horns and slime. By interacting with them frequently and staying on good terms, your relationship with these people will increase, allowing you to buy materials cheaper and sell potions for higher, being taught new skills for dealing with customers, and unlocking events such as helping Quinn obtain free chocolate samples from some candy stores they've been banned from.
Potion Permit: As you slowly gain the trust of the villagers with your skills as a Chemist, you can track your friendships with them in the task menu's Social tab. You can bond with them a little by talking to them once per in-game day and giving them Moon Cloves as gifts for a big boost. Once you max out their friendship meters and complete their Friendship Events, you unlock more details in their profiles, with the romanceable characters having one extra page than the others. Reaching Level 2 with a villager unlocks their portrait in your album.
In The Prince of Tennis dating sim Gakuensai no Oujisama, the player is put in the role of a female manager who must work interact with the Cast Full of Pretty Boys to help organize the upcoming inter-schools School Festival. The player chooses a school for the girl first, then has her interact with the dudes of said school's tennis team, and the guy that the girl interacts the most with might or might not become her boyfriend if the cards are played right. Obviously, some guys are harder to reach to than others due to their personalities ^note, plus some boys ^note are more prone to jealousy than others; if the player had the girl work on their affections but then she bumps into one of them while with another dude, their love meters will drop noticeably due to envy and resentment.
In Princess Maker 2, some particular meetings and your adoptive Daughter's stats will determine who will she marry. This includes unnamed males of more-or-less high status, a young Dragon, your lovely demon butler, the Prince of the Realm, a nobleman, a local tycoon, a normal man who may leave her in the end, the Demon Lord (who she kills and then steals his power)... or even yourself. Hey, she's your adoptive kid...
- The Princess Maker games in general are notable for this, especially since all Relationship Values are completely invisible, and there's no real way to influence them, besides indirectly. The only one that's easy to predict is the Wife Husbandry ending, because of the sparkly eyes your daughter's drawn with whenever she qualifies for it.
Roots of Pacha:
- You can track how close you are to the villagers by the number of flowers in their dialogue boxes, with 10 being the max. You can bond with them by talking to them, giving them gifts, and dancing with them. The romanceable characters are marked with pink flowers (which turn red when you start dating them and then into white Pacha tulips when you're in a Union with them) while the non-romanceable ones are marked with yellow flowers.
- Your pets and livestock have friendship meters that go up when you interact with them like the villagers. Higher levels of affection unlock perks such as letting your pets fetch items for you, riding your livestock as mounts, and breeding them with other compatible livestock.
- Your child has a friendship meter starting in the toddler stage, and bonding with them lets you teach them how to stand and then enroll them at Daari's school. Enrolling them ages them up into a school-aged kid, and bonding with them further lets you hug them and choose a job for them, and they'll eventually give you gifts like the other villagers.
Employed in Rune Factory, just like with its sister series Story of Seasons; to woo potential partners, you have to raise their relationship values.
Sentimental Graffiti keeps track of two affection values: how much the girl likes him in general (the size of the heart) and how much she wants to see him (how fast it's beating).
All versions of The Sims have this as a central aspect of the game. Relationship Values are visible for player-controlled characters, but there are also more minimal visual indicators for NPCs; icons will appear over the characters' heads when they become friends, best friends, enemies etc. Having a certain number of friends can be a requirement for getting a job promotion, or a goal unto itself.
- In the original game, one expansion added a long-term relationship meter to go with the usual short-term meter, with the icons then reflecting long-term changes over short-term ones.
- There are also situations that have temporary relationship values; you don't have to stay friends with the person, just get them to like you a certain amount in a time limit, such as trying to impress the Headmaster so your kid can go to private school.
- The Sims Medieval still has the friendship values between individuals, and adds a Popularity meter for your monarch and for the two religious leaders. Unfortunately, the one for the monarch is unseen (you only get popups that it's increased or decreased) and has virtually no effect on gameplay. Having a 0% Approval Rating doesn't change your Aspects nearly as much as quests do, so feel free to rudely deny every petition put before you.
- Sims in MySims have a friend meter. It starts at Acquaintance, then goes through Friend up to Best Friend as you give them things they like and Be Nice to them. When you achieve Best Friend status with a particular Sim, you are rewarded: Townies give you special blueprints, while Commercial Sims give you duplicates of their outfits.
Story of Seasons:
- Most of the bachelor(ette)s have these, usually in the form of hearts or flowers, that tell you how much they love you. Once you get them to a certain level, you can then use the Blue Feather (HM's equivalent of a wedding ring) to propose to them.
- There's also relationship values with townsfolk, which can open up cut scenes and/or quests to fulfill for them. Some romantic relationships won't progress without friendship with related characters such as siblings or parents. Since these aren't visible as relationships, they're often seen by either how they speak to you, interact with you, or by standing by them and pressing a key to see how they feel with various emotive images over their heads.
- The animals have it as well. The higher the relationship level is with them (and, in relationship to this, how good care you take of them), the better produce they provide. In Magical Melody, your relationship level with your horse determines what race you can enter for the Horseracing Festival, which means that you have to actively neglect and upset your horse if you want to keep at the necessary relationship level for certain races.
All the villagers in Stardew Valley have a relationship meter expressed in hearts, up to a maximum of ten. A few of them will send you gifts or teach you a new cooking recipe if you get their relationship level high enough. You'll also sometimes unlock cutscenes which give them a bit more characterization and/or can affect your relationship with them. Villagers who can be romanced will have their relationship meter capped at eight hearts until you get it high enough and give them a bouquet, and from there you can give them a mermaid pendant to propose marriage once you get them to relationship level ten.
Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV allowed you to affect your pilots' attitudes, and thus their combat efficacy, in cutscenes. WC4 took it another step by putting you in situations where you had to choose which person to be nice to, and thus which one would take the relationship hit. Thankfully, the games were easy enough to make your wingmen irrelevant.
- Also, in WC3, in a romance subplot you (as Col. Christopher Blair) were given a choice between the ship's chief tech and a pilot under your command. Choosing one made the other unavailable afterward (no Rachel meant you had to configure your own ship loadout, or else you'd launch with no missiles, whereas no Flint just means one less pilot to select for the final mission set), or you could choose neither and make both a little less pleased with you, but keep both of them around.
In World Neverland, you can become friends with any of the 300+ kingdom residents wandering around. They start as Strangers, become Acquaintances, then Friends and Good Friends. Same-sex friends can become Best Friends, while opposite-sex friends can become your Boyfriend/Girlfriend and eventually Husband/Wife if you're single. You have a limited number of "friend slots," however, and the people you have the lowest friendship with will go back to being Strangers if they fall off your "friend list."

Strategy Games

Crusader Kings keeps track of all sorts of relations between characters. First of all between rulers and characters in their courts (a "loyalty" ranking) then for rulers and their vassals, then relations BETWEEN vassals and between rulers and other rulers. Mess things up too much and you can have your empire implode. All of these traits are based on a multitude of factors (prestige, piety, badboy score...) including your character traits (skeptical and zealous characters do not get along) some of the worst traits in the game ("Heretic", "Excommunicated" and "Kinslayer") has the effect of turning you into a real pariah...
- In the sequel, these are scrapped and replaced with a new system wherein every character has an opinion of every other character.
4X Strategy games such as the Master of Orion and Civilization series are won or lost by your relations with your neighbors — or at least by your ability to placate them until you can get around to properly crushing them under your heel.
- Also, in some of those games, you can win Diplomatic or Alliance victories by having extremely high Relationship Values with all the factions that you haven't converted to smoldering piles of rubble.
- On anything but the easiest difficulty levels, it's pretty much impossible to keep the other civilizations happy with you. As soon as you become even moderately successful, they will start plotting to bring you down. Of course, if you have a Democracy, it often behooves you to get your relationship values as low as possible, so that the other civilizations will attack you, eliminating the need to get permission from your Senate to declare war. And there also seems to be a hidden relationship value as far as how your Senate feels about the other civilizations. If it goes low enough, you can declare war on the other civilizations, and your Senate will just look the other way.
- Rise and Fall, the second expansion to VI adds one for each city, which represents the city's loyalty to their civilzation. The loyalty effects the countries growth rates and yields and can be increased or decreased through various ways, including population pressure, city happiness, and domestic and foreign governor pressure. If loyalty gets too low, then the city will flip to a free state, who are against everyone. These free states can be taken by anyone, either forcibly or through loyalty. A leader from the third expansion, Eleanor Of Aquitaine, has this as her main mechanic, allowing her to use Great Works to flip cities and skipp the free city state when doing so.
Seven Kingdoms has a wealth of diplomacy options with other kingdoms. Unfortunately, the AI tends to be on the aggressive side and will become a sworn enemy if you do as much as build a fort in reach of one of its cities. Or reject their request to declare war on another AI kingdom that probably hasn't done much worse than that to anger them. However, there is still a benefit in forging alliances, and breaking them damages a kingdom's reputation. A surefire way to set their relationship value to 0 and thereby declaring a war themselves? Capturing their fort with spies, it doesn't matter if beforehand you're best buds for life, do it and they declare hatred on you. The second game makes these values visible in the Kingdom tab, so you can adjust fairly.
Total War: Warhammer III: Each of Tamurkhan's recruitable chieftains has a Fealty meter, which rises when Tamurkhan performs campaign actions that they like. Rising to higher tiers allows him to recruit more units from a particular Chieftain's faction, increase the bonus they provide to Tamurkhan's faction as a whole, and also unlock special abilities.
- Kayzk the Befouled is a devoted follower of Nurgle, and wants to see actions that spread the Plague God's glory. He gains Fealty by spreading Plagues around the campaign map, and by fighting armies dedicated to the other three Chaos Gods or to unaligned Norscan and Warrios of Chaos factions.
- Khargan the Crazed is an Exalted Champion of Chaos dedicated to the Ruinous Powers and the destruction of Order, and gains Fealty from razing settlements and from fighting Bretonnia, Kislev, the Empire, and Cathay.
- Ketzak Fimidirach, a mage obsessed with gaining more and more magical knowledge, likes researching new technologies and fighting Dark, High and Wood Elves.
- Mournhowl's Fealty rises when you raid enemy territory and fight Skaven, Lizardmen, Beastmen, Chaos Dwarfs and Ogres armies.
- Grukmur Three-Horn seemingly hates the undead, as he gains Fealty from fighting the Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast, and Tomb Kings.
- Ezar Doombolt is a Chaos Dwarf castellan who joins your horde mainly for the change to seize loot and slaves to send back home, and is happy when you sack enemy cities. He also likes fighting Greenskins, Skaven, and Dwarfs, the ancestral enemies of the Dawi-Zharr.
XCOM 2: Your soldiers will be palling it up in the barracks or sitting next to each other in the bar when you're looking around the Avenger, but not arbitrarily — the game keeps track of who shot down an enemy that had flanked a friendly soldier, or who healed another soldier with a medkit, and factors this in to what in the vanilla game is a hidden relationship stat. The War of the Chosen expansion lets you see the affinity between your soldiers, even assigns them compatibility values, and if their relationship develops far enough you can make them "Bonded," unlocking special abilities and bonuses when they take to the field together.

Survival Horror

In Haunting Ground, Fiona finds a dog named Hewie, who is tied to a tree via wire. She frees the dog, who in turn becomes attached to her. By praising the dog for doing something well, or giving him the jerky you find scattered around the castle, Hewie's bond with Fiona increases. Being mean to the dog will make him ignore you, and the ending will change, depending on if he did or did not survive at the game's end.
Ib's Multiple Endings are determined by the title character's relationships with Garry and Mary. Having a too-low relationship with either one of them locks you out of the game's best endings, especially with the latter as angering her too much by being overly violent to things around you or failing to get out of the doll room in time when playing as Garry causes her to kill Garry later on (although getting Mary this angry is ironically required to get her ending). The best ending is obtainable only if Garry's bond with Ib is at max or near-max too, which requires you to not only be nice to him and talk to him at every opportunity but also to talk to him a lot of times at said opportunities.
Resident Evil:
- In Resident Evil, when playing as Jill, you have a choice mid-game whether or not to trust Barry. This will influence Barry's actions near the end of the game, and ultimately affects the number of survivors.
- Resident Evil 5 has a secret trust meter. Play well and work well with your partner and there will be different animations. If it lowers then they can become uncooperative.
In Silent Hill 4: The Room Henry has one with Eileen. The more damage Eileen sustains, the more antagonist Walter Sullivan will be able to possess her. Depending on how hurt/possessed she is, Eileen may speak like a baby, recite the teachings of the Order, attack herself, refuse to move, or sap health from the player. Possession can be counteracted with Holy Candles.) This also affects the game's ending, since the more Eileen has been hurt by the end of the game, the faster she will move toward the Death Machine during the final battle with Walter Sullivan. Eileen's survival or death is one of the two factors that influences the game's ending.
Featured in Until Dawn, where dialog choices can influence them, and thereby how well the characters trust each other. This, in turn, can affect the endings, including the credit scenes.

Tabletop Games

In Apocalypse World, every PC has a 'History' stat for every other PC, which indicates not their feelings towards that character, but rather how well they understand them. This stat is rolled against whenever a player wants to help (or hinder) another's roll. It's initially set by choosing options during character creation which determine certain feelings or past events, and after that is altered by how you act - if you heal someone you understand them better, if you hurt someone they understand you better.
Getting good at your pilot's Psychic Powers in Bliss Stage depends entirely on your ability to Level-Up at Intimacy 5 and to avoid losing at zero trust.
In the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure module The Rise of Tiamat, the actions that the players undertake while fighting the Cult of the Dragon will have an impact on the opinions of the Councillors of Waterdeep, who represent many of the major factions and kingdoms of the Sword Coast. Each councillor's opinion needs to be above a certain threshold by the last episode of the module, or else that councillor will not commit their forces to the final battle against the Cult.
In Fabula Ultima, player characters can forge Bonds with NPCs and each other over the course of the campaign. Each Bond consists of one-to-three emotions like Loyalty, Admiration or Hatred, with the strength of the Bond equaling the number of emotions it contains. Players can leverage these Bonds to gain mechanical benefits under certain circumstances: for instance, a player who failed a Check could spend a Fabula Point to invoke their Bond with another character and add its strength to the result of the dice roll.
In Flying Circus. relationships between Player Characters are quantified with Trust, a binary, non-reciprocal value: either the pilot trusts somebody or does not trust somebody. These two extremes represent the intense emotions (or intense lack of) that pilots feel toward each other. Trust can change back and forth throughout play and affects Moves.
In the RPG based on Smallville, characters have relationships with other important characters rated as die type, from d4 to d12, that you can add to rolls that deal with that character. The level does not represent how good the relationship is, but rather how strongly you feel about the other character. A d12 relationship could represent love, hate, or something else entirely.

Tactical RPGs

Agarest Senki lives and breathes on this trope. The higher the relationship value, the stronger the next generation protagonist will be. Same thing goes with Agarest Senki 2.
Disgaea:
- Starting from Disgaea 2, fighting alongside characters offered an increasing variety of benefits (increased chance of combo attacks, special endings, etc.), and in Disgaea 2 is specifically used as Story And Gameplay Integration to track the progression of Adell and Rozalin's relationship.
  - Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness makes use of this through its Likability mechanic. The higher two characters' Likability ratings are, the more often they will activate Cover (taking an attack for) and Support Attacks (follow-up attacks) with each other on the field. At maximum likability, one can even earn the other's passive ability. That said, there is the "Heart's Shadow" Innocent that gives a stat boost per person with Zero likability with the holder, and these ratings can be raised or lowered at the Dark Assembly.
- Disgaea D2 has Likeability values, which can go up and down between units depending on actions like healing another character or ally kills. Higher likeability leads to better chances of initiating team attacks, support attacks, and protect abilities. Some endings can also be triggered depending on the likeability between certain characters.
In the Fire Emblem series, characters who spend a lot of time in battle together can improve their relationship, and will receive statistical bonuses whenever they're near each other on the field. Certain preset combinations change the ending, with the supporting characters getting married or otherwise pursuing their relationship:
- In Genealogy of the Holy War, relationship values are determined by how many turns a man and a woman stand together. Whoever reaches 500 relationship points with a woman first becomes her spouse and the father of her children in the next half. Values are also determined by whether or not the pairings are "predestined;" each female comes with three men as her default love interests, and building relations with them takes less time than building them with others (example: Lewyn/Erinys is one of the fastest pairings in the game and can happen in a chapter's span (and a certain talk can make them fall in love instantly), while pairing Erinys with Claud takes forever).
- In Binding Blade, only the main character Roy can have paired endings, and only characters who went to the final battle (the real final battle, that is) get more than a simple line of text stating what happened to them after the war. Its prequel Blazing Blade and the following game, Sacred Stones also has the same system, but multiple characters have paired endings, depending on who the player has them end up with.
- Awakening has a similar system as Genealogy of the Holy War, in that when a male and female reach the 'S' Support level they become committed/married to one another, which gives more stat bonuses when the two are paired up in battle. Depending on the female, they may produce a child who inherits skills, re-classing options, and statistical values from both parents. Although even those that don't have children still can reach 'S' rank.
- Fates has pretty much the same system as Awakening for all three games, with characters being able to support, marry, and have children. The main difference here is that children are now locked to their fathers instead of their mothers, with the only exceptions being Azura's son Shigure and the Female Avatar's son Kanna. An A+ rank has also been added in some cases, and achieving A+ or S support ranks allows characters to share classes.
- Three Houses retains mostly the same system as in the previous two games, however there are more methods to raising support levels than simply battling. It is also possible to lose support points by choosing wrong dialogue options. Unlike the previous two games, only Byleth can reach S support, and not until the end of the game, though endings will still mention possible relationships between characters if they reach A rank.
Fuga: Melodies of Steel makes it an integral part of the gameplay by having the kids raise their affinity with each other by talking or working together in battles. Increasing their affinity levels allows them to gain different battle bonuses and more insight between them.
The Growlanser games usually have these integrated in, where they represent the other party member's opinions of their leader.
- Growlanser 2's Relationship Values would give the player a choice about who they could spend a day in town with near the end of the game, and could effect the ending on the regular game path (Though they're all but ignored on the two other gameplay branches). One could spend it with any member they wanted so long as their value was high enough, be they male, female, or dog-familiar thing.
Interesting example in La Pucelle: Tactics, in which any monster you convert to your side has a visible friendliness meter. Training them causes it to drop, and being nice to them causes it to rise. If it hits 0, the monster leaves with all the gear it had equipped, and if it reaches 10, that monster can use the special ability Purify.
Luminous Arc have Heart levels, which increased by choosing the right dialogue choice in the Intermission sequence with the character after every battle they participated in.
- The sequel, Luminous Arc 2, use a similiar system, except with fixed chapter choices. So you have to choose between two or three characters a chapter to increase their Heart level.
- Luminous Arc 3 continues using the Intermission sequence, along with Refi spending time with a partner of the player's choice and gains a Zodiac Card to perform a Unison Strike with them.
Soul Nomad & the World Eaters has a platitude of Multiple Endings for both genders for Revya, each one being unlocked via increasing Revya's relation with that character. Aside from certain dialogue options increasing these values, putting that character into Revya's squad and using their unique Combination Attack will increase said value as well. Raising these values high enough with Levin or Endorph before a certain point will not only unlock some alternate scenes, it will let you carry either of them past the Point of No Return in Drazil, locking you into their ending.
Many games in the Super Robot Wars series have hidden relationship values between different pilots, whether as friends, rivals, or love interests. This is quite useful in the games it appears in, as it can affect the skills of the pilots if they're surrounded by the people they like.
- Super Robot Wars K has a simple version that determines which of the two sidekicks gets to pilot the mecha that combines with Mist's, affects the OG Big Bad slightly, and determines who's with you in the "fin" slide. If you do it right, you can get both girls in the ending, but you still have to pick who pilots the Selcerius.
- Super Robot Wars J has a similar instance of setting the main character up with one of the copilots, although the implementation differs. There is an instance closer to K's in Super Robot Wars Alpha where you can determine whether Hikaru ends up with Misa or Minmay.
Symphony of War: By fighting alongside each other in battle and then witnessing their Conversations from the base menu, units can be paired up from C to A-Rank relationships, which grant bonuses when fighting alongside each other in battle. Not every Bond is romantic, as they include Family and Friend relationships.
Tactics Ogre has Loyalty points which are invisible but you can read them through Characters' opinion about the main character. Having Loyalty at zero will make the character feel "Disaffection" and leave the party; some special characters like Aloser will immediately feel "Disaffection" and leave if you make a certain choice. There are many factors for raising and dropping loyalty: leveling them up on non-training battles will increase loyalty, but if you kill enemies with the same race as them they will drop their loyalty. Alignment has an effect too - if you have made "Lawful" choices the Lawful alignment characters' loyalty will increase while "Chaotic" characters' will drop, and vice versa.
Vanguard Bandits had its characters' relationship values towards Bastion based largely on two things: how the characters did in combat (getting defeated cost them), and who you chose to talk to between fights. What these meant, plotwise, depended on the story path you were on: in the Kingdom path, you needed the average amount above a certain total to avoid the Bad Ending; the Empire path resembled a two-girl dating game, and the one with the higher relationship value would end up with Bastion at the end; and the Ruin path (which had only one ending) didn't care a whit for them.

Third-Person Shooter

Each of the Squadmates in Binary Domain has a personal loyalty meter that's affected by both your performance in battle (they react positively to killing robots really well and negatively to friendly fire) as well as your responses to them. The higher their loyalty, the better they react to commands. Maxing out all of their loyalty gives you the best ending to the game.
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction had meters tracking each of the four major factions' attitudes towards you, which could be influenced by helping them (doing missions for them) or harming them (killing their soldiers). This doesn't really affect gameplay, except that if you piss one group off enough, you either have to please them again or bribe them to make them forget what you've done (additionally, pissing off the Allied Nations typically involves causing Allied or civilian casualties, which can get expensive after a while).
Warframe: The Tenno has the ability to gain standing with various factions (called syndicates), which unlocks shop wares and access to locked content (i.e. the Profit Taker boss, which requires max standing with Solaris United to access). The Solaris workers of Fortuna reveal their secret upon reaching max rank with them, which are their actual faces located behind the shutters on their torsos.

Tower Defense

Arknights has operator Trust, which builds up by taking them to missions and being present in the base on daily reset. Higher trust levels give the operators a stat buff and unlock new records, which often show the operator expressing more of their individuality towards the Doctor as their relationship deepens.

Turn-Based Strategy

Fate/Grand Order keep the Bond mechanic from the original Fate/stay night, but instead unlocks voice lines, access to Interludes and gameplay rewards.
- The bond point amount needed to reach bond 5 is often an indicator of a Servant's personality traits. Examples include: Scáthach-Skadi only requires 15k points and is an All Loving Heroine, Anastasia requires 50k points due to her history causing her to have trust issues, and Brynhildr requiring 45k for her first three bond levels then abruptly dropping to 5k at the last two is indicative of her Tsundere nature.
- Reaching bond level 10 rewards the player with the Servant's bond Craft Essence, which often contains insight into most personal parts of a Servant's history. Bond Craft Essences are often not useful in gameplay due to their subpar stats, and when combined with the long time it takes for one to reach bond 10 it lands them into the category of Junk Rare.

Visual Novels

Analogue: A Hate Story has the AI constructs keep track of how you treat them and how well your opinions match theirs. It is only used to add flavor as long as you don't piss off *Hyun-ae completely and refuse to apologize. The save file icon gives a rough estimate on how they feel about you.
- This continues in the sequel Hate Plus, but due to the low number of chances to change them, the imported save is generally controlling the values.
Bliss Stage: Love Is Your Weapon has these as its combat statistics. Relationships form Empathic Weapons; sexual relationships form Infinity Plus One Swords!
Cinders tracks the eponymous character's relationship values with not only her obvious male love interests but with her stepfamily too. If Cinders takes the time to improve her relationships with her stepsisters, they'll have friendlier dialogue with her and cover up for her when she sneaks out of the house. Similarly, if she makes a good impression on her stepmother Carmosa, she can opt to retake her father's manor by impressing Carmosa enough that she steps down to let Cinders manage the household which makes for a much less risky solution than having her arrested or killed off.
In Coffee Talk, meeting each character adds them to your friend list on the social network site Tomodachill. The more you interact with each character by getting their orders right, the more information appears on their profile. Getting their orders wrong will likewise make them hide their profile info from you, but they stop doing this in Episode 2.
In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc there's an option named "Free Time", which gives the-player-as-Naegi the chance to hang out with the other students and give them presents. They'll reward him either with skills to be used during trial scenes, or by raising the maximum number of skill points Naegi has during trials, depending on how far he's progressed in hanging out with them. (Not to mention, some show quite a bit of Hidden Depths as well.) The downside to this, however, is that there's a limited number of "free time segments" in each chapter. When students get killed, they are no longer available to spend time with, and their skills cannot be acquired. Furthermore, even if they're still alive, some characters may be unavailable to spend time with for plot reasons. Fortunately, skills and free time progress both carry over on subsequent playthroughs.
Doki Doki Literature Club! contains both several rounds of a "poem-writing" minigame where you can impress one of the three romanceable girls each time by choosing the right words, as well as other choices one of which even has the Player Character thinking about how his choice is going to affect what the girls think of him. Subverted: While your choices affect things like which girl you get a more private scene with next, and there are some kind of appeal points that have an effect on scenes, everybody's still ultimately ready to fall in love with you regardless — and the game takes a total Genre Shift before you can get an ending where you make any of them your girlfriend.
Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind gives you a compatibility check with heroine Ayumi Tachibana after the game's credits. The ratings score is dependent on your interactions with various characters throughout the game, including not just Ayumi, which could end up giving you a bad score if you just check through every interaction option.
Fate/stay night performs a relationship values check in all three routes. In Fate, if you-as-Shirou are too much of a jerk to Saber, she basically kills you in a moment of absentmindedness to get the Grail (this practically requires a conscious effort to get). UBW has Tohsaka leaving you to be killed by Archer while she goes ahead without you to stop Caster (also very difficult to get). HF has the Shadow eating you if Sakura isn't attached enough, Illya will also come after you if you don't meet her a few days earlier in the route, and if you choose not to unseal Archer's arm, Shirou will stab Sakura (and get killed by Rider) much further down the route (all of whom can easily happen if you're not careful). All of these, needless to say, are bad ends that kill you. You get scolded for these in the Tiger Dojo, especially the first.
Galaxy Angel and Galaxy Angel II have this justified in-story. For starters, the potential love interests pilot Emblem Frames, ships equipped with a system whose performance is directly linked to the mental and emotional state of the Angels, so the more they like the player, the better they will perform during the space battle segments. Each of the first games in each trilogy has a point where the player must pick an Angel who'll become the player's romantic partner for the rest of the route, and the three with the highest level of affection will be the ones available.
nitro+' Full Metal Daemon Muramasa has a subversion of the usual points system: At the midpoint of the game, you kill the heroine with whom you have the highest affection points. This is due to the curse laid upon you by your mystical Powered Armor - to slay an ally for each enemy, someone you love for someone you hate.
In Katawa Shoujo, relationship values track the player(as Hisao)'s affection with each girl in Act 1. Basically, they're split between Shizune and Lilly/Hanako: if Shizune's is higher, Hisao will go with her, if Lilly and Hanako's are higher he'll have a final choice between the two and get together with that one, and if they're roughly equal he'll get with Rin. To get with Emi he pretty much just needs to choose to try hard during their training, though it's sometimes possible to end with Shizune even after that. After Act 1 and a girl's route has been chosen, the game goes in a more Visual Novel style with choices determining whether you get a Good, Bad, or sometimes Neutral End.
All of The Letter's playable characters have relationship values with each other, which will change over time depending on the player's choices. Character relationships affect some story branching as well as the epilogue.
All three games in the Purrfect Apawcalypse series keep track of the characters' affection for you with heart meters shown over their heads. The first game has this as a largely optional system that doesn't affect your chances of getting the best ending and just tells you after you get an ending which character you made the happiest, but the second game requires you to have a positive relationship with pretty much every character to get the best ending and shows you a bonus drawing if you got max affection for everyone. The third game goes back to a more relaxed approach with the relationship values; it's fully possible to get the best ending with negative affection with everyone as long as you don't cross the Moral Event Horizon, but getting the best ending with everyone's affection maxed out unlocks a bonus drawing similar to the second game's and getting the worst ending with everyone's affection in the deep negatives unlocks a bonus epilogue after the ending screen.
Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem tracks four possible relationship values: Friendship, Romance, Rivalry, and Respect, each influenced by your actions and behavior toward a given character. Not all of the characters you can interact with have sliders for all four values... although the presence or absence of the Romance slider shouldn't always be taken at face value.
In True Love Junai Monogatari, the girls will likely be attracted to either one trait or one factor that Player Character must work on. In example, to get Remi's attention, he must work on his Academics/Scholarship, to get Mayumi he shall work on his Appearance, and so on. And in one case, it'll work against him: if the player wants to romance Mikae, he or she can't let the PC's Academics get too high, lest Mikae and Remi will end up as love rivals. Additionally, if the PC's stress gets too high, Mikae will nag him and accuse him of being The Pig-Pen until it's lowered.
Tsukihime also has a relationship values check in all of the routes, though Akiha's and Kohaku's routes are the only ones whose endings aren't determined by it. In Arcueid's route, she'll kill you if your relationship value is low (this can easily happen if you choose to rape her in your craze, which greatly lowers your value and happens right before the check). At the end of Akiha's route, Shiki puts her down if the check fails, which is still considered a Bad End in spite of Shiki living. Generally, having a good relationship with the main heroine of the route nets you the True Ending.

Relationship Values

Examples:

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