Heavily influencing the Monster Rancher series, there was Princess Maker 2. By Gainax of all production houses! 0_0
You live in a castle town, which allows you access to shops and side-jobs, as well as access to the castle itself. At the start of each new session you can talk to your daughter, take her shopping for stuff, and stop by the castle to try to talk to the haughty inhabitants. You actually spend the sessions choosing what she'll do each day though- every 10 days she could A. Take a class at the local academy. Classes are expensive and change as the years go by, and they each build up experience in a certain area. B. Get a job to earn money and build up experience in a certain area. C. Take part in an RPG-like mini-game where she can learn how to fight and D. Rest. It is VERY important to rest because she has a stress level. If the stress level rises too high, she could die very quickly. Or get sick and end up using a lot of precious time having to recover. Other things are a risk to her health too, you have to make sure you have enough money to feed her every session, and the shops include different clothing that impact the various seasons- for instance, if you don't have a winter jacket in the winter, her stress level would rise. She could also run away from home for a time if she isn't well disciplined enough. You can disipline her when she's bad or reward her with a present for her hard work. She might have somebody visit the house someday (don't get too excited, of the very few there are, they can be hard to trigger), and there are occasional festivals you can take part in if your skills in the game are good enough. These will give you quite a jump start in progress. She has a birthday, and time passes with each session of the game until she goes from being a little girl to an adult that is ready to leave home (and end the game.)
There are 74 possible outcomes.
You're supplied with not only the ending- but a rather detailed cut-scene to let you now how good of a parent you have been. The celestial judges are not too easy to please, and neither is fate. For instance, in one situation, I had my daughter take a dance class and all but one of the many statistics adhearing to that path were very high. So she ended up being a dancer- and failing in the middle of her career just because of that ONE statistic being not quite up to par. So I ended up with a mediocre rather than great ending. Finding a balance and using your time wisely is the key to success.
That's where some of the faults in this game lies- the system is very particular. As non-linear as this game is, It is entirely possible to play the game for the four-six hours it takes to complete and absolutely fail at everything because you are not exactly given many hints as to what path you should take. You have to seek them out for yourself, and dedicate yourself to a choice few rather than multi-task. No hand-eye coordination is needed. No timing or button mashing. To succeed in this game you have to think with different levels, I ended up judging this one as "Just Right" because of just how much experimenting with the different attributes and vast amount of playthroughs is needed in order to really get a hand on how to do a good job, and get your all out of this title. However I never got tired of this game after 20 hours of play, and was quite charmed by its originality.
Anyway, back to the 74 possible endings. To give you an idea of just how awesomely diverse these are, your daughter could have an ordinary career- like becoming a hairdresser, lumberjack, or grave keeper. Succeding in the RPG-like mini-game I mentioned (which I found to be on the challenging side) could have your daughter end up being Officer Of The Royal Guard, a bounty hunter, or a furtune teller. You could end up having a role in the aforementioned castle in this game- the biggest goal in this game is becoming the "Princess". Besides careers in the arts and education, your daughter could possibly get a job on the "dark side.." these are very amusing and surprising outcomes. Basically your daughter has a "Sin" rating. If you can somehow manage to bring it up very high, she could end up a crime boss, a prostitute (don't worry, you don't see anything. ^_- I would like to see the pissed off reaction of the celestial judges if you manage to pull off that ending though).. or one of the neatest jobs I could imagine, a Lord of Darkness.
For being the second in an inventive series, this title is not too rough around the edges. There are so many paths that make the value high, the gameplay is awfully skewered so I can't say it would be for everyone- how it is so strategy and decision-based was interesting to me anyway, the graphics are pretty with diverse character designs..
There are three other games in this series as well as some points where it diverts into gaidens. I'm not sure how the other ones turned out, but there were much room for enhancements regarding this game alone. While it is possible to have many daughters on seperate save files, it would have been neat if they were different in appearance and nature, if you could have them all under one roof and guide them torward different things, and there is room for a bunch of new options (a great many more NPCs and events to further spread out the possibilties, more stats for different personality traits, more areas to visit, more mini-games and items to acquire, a log for keeping track of your progress- but I like a log in any game. ^^) That could make this sort of game extremely fun and not just extraordinary. If the other games had followed that path, it really is a pity that this is the only one that is available in english.
Now you may be wondering- I've never heard of this game before, is it really available in english? It's a very sad story. This game was completely translated- and then canceled at the last minute when all of the venues for release fell through. Piles of hard work wasted.. and now outside of importing it in the original Japanese (some games have also been translated into Chinese), this one in particular is only available through various questionable outlets on the web. Still, perhaps someday we'll see the latest game in the series (Princess Maker 4) available now that there are actually gamers out there that could take potential interest to ideas that are so outside of the norm, as long as the gameplay is sound.
While a 7.4 might sound harsh giving the praise I've given this title, I reserve mid 8s-10s for games that are nearly all-around perfect (or amazingly well done in at least a few areas), that I've spent a substantial many hours of fun with. This game is fun, but still too rough around the edges to reach greatness. Understandable, seeing as how it is just the second entry. I still found it much worth playing though, and perhaps even a must-play for those who are very interested in unusual strategy games.