HuniePop 2: Double Date (2021)

This review is about as clean as the game itself, so I'll be wrapping it all in spoilers at a certain point.

If you don't know, HuniePop 2 is an adult sex-comedy match-3 game with light dating sim mechanics. Your match-3 games serve as "dates" you are taking women out on, and after a 3 successful ones they have sex with you, and you're awarded with a straight up hardcore porn image of them, covered in your DNA. The story is intentionally ludicrous, the humor is filthy, and is a male harem fantasy at its core. I haven't watched anime for many years, and hentai really isn't my thing. I say this to qualify that the game itself is fun, and that one not need to be "into" that sort of thing to enjoy it (they must have the stomach for it, though). I was a big fan of Puzzle Quest years ago, so I do like a match-3 with added mechanics. And, plus, the game is so raunchy, so in-your-face, and the girls treat you like an L.O.V.E. love machine, it's hard not to enjoy. It's a weird game version of being in a strip club? Like, I know this is all fake, but it's nice that, for once, someone is begging to bang me. It's just an experience that your average guy never has. So I'd be lying if I said there wasn't that little titillation in the back of my mind.

The game is more difficult than its predecessor. If you've played the first (which, if HuniePop 2 at all interests you, stop now and do that) you will notice a difficulty spike early on that feels insurmountable. Don't panic. The rhythm of this game is different. You are allowed to fail as often as you need. As you feed the girls powerups and gifts you will increase your level, thus making your matches more powerful. It almost feels rogue-lite in the way that, when you lose, you still get currency to buy gifts with. Those gifts level you up, so there's progress being made. The game is not clear in explaining this rhythm, and it can be jarring. But once it clicks, and you start using the one-time buffs (food) in conjunction with the in-match powerups (date gifts), the strategy becomes interesting. The girls also develop debuffs (baggage) that throw you curveballs, so you need to work around those, too. Some of the criticism I've seen about this game talk about the difficulty and baggage, but once the game clicks it really does flow nicely. Sure, you'll lose, but it's really not that bad. As a casual player, I was able to get through it.

So the game is fun, it's funny, the girls are sexy, it's the kind of hyper-dumb male sex fantasy that feels like it was dreamt up by a middle school lunch table. But the funny thing is, that middle schooler is still inside us all, somewhere. So allowing oneself this brief indulgence once every few years is more whimsical than anything else. I want to talk about something more serious now, and will be spoiler tagging the whole conversation.

I stated earlier that I don't watch hentai, so this could perhaps be a "culture shock" moment for me. But I was really disappointed with the lack of variety of the women's vaginas. Every single clitoris is identical. Every lip, every curve, every hole is exactly the same on 12 girls. One of them has a piercing, and some have a little fur, but it is just minor window dressing. This will be TMI, but in the interest of being open, I am a lover of all vaginas. Innies, outies, tiny clits, massive ones, full bush, freshly waxed, you name it. And the game gives me 12 girls, each with an identical vagina. I found it, frankly, boring but also juvenile. Has the artist only seen the one? Worse, is this what the audience thinks they all look like? Is all hentai like this? Is it the kind of cycle where "it was drawn this way, so viewers expect it, so it's drawn that way so viewers expect it"? I don't know, man. It was just disappointing to see, because these folks don't know what they're missing out on.