Harem Hotel is a fantastic game.. if you've never played any rendition of a dating sim/visual novel in your life.
First of all, to suggest that this game is bad would be inherently dishonest. It isn’t. I've given it 4 stars (it's closer to 3.6ish than 4) because I do genuinely like a fair few parts of it. Many of the elements within this game jell quite well with each other. A fair few of the stories presented are actually quite compelling and offer interesting insight into topics that aren’t frequently used in visual novels. The development between the characters is very varied and have unique pacing, meanwhile, there’s a large enough ensemble within the cast that you’re bound to like someone. Even a character that you initially disliked, may later become someone who genuinely grows on you.
But that’s the thing, this game is like a spring. It shoots out quickly, with great force, leaving you with a “wow!”. But then, as time passes, and the spring lands on the ground, it crashes loudly and starts becoming so interwoven by the force of its springs hitting the ground that it becomes just a jumbled piece of scrap.
That’s how I feel about this game.
The overwhelming majority of my enjoyment factor of this game comes in the early parts of it. The longer it goes, the more messy the main story becomes, the more characters there are who feel like they’re just added to fill in some sort of gap.
Here's an example.
Have you heard of the Harem Hotel? We have the nymphomaniac, we have the daddy problems girl, we have the goodie-two-shoes girl, we have the regular girl, we have the.. robot girl? Eh, why not. We have sisters who are twins, is that weird? No problem! Hare you go, we have sisters who aren’t twins. We have the big titty elf, we have the small titty elf, we have the medium titty elf, we have the edgy elf.
Uhh, what are we missing? That’s right, we have the autistic girl, we have the “awkward friend” girl, we have-..
I think you get the point.
When all you’re doing is filling in the quota, what you’re effectively building upon is less so an organic world, but more so a puzzle that you’re trying to complete. It might be fun to do as a writer, but it’s less so enjoyable when it comes to actually going through a story. Now, taking a step back, it’s not as though you can’t write compelling stories by setting up a bizarre cast of characters. People are different, that’s true, but if you talk to enough people, you come to notice how much overlap there is between each and every one of our problems. While the character might differ, we have overwhelmingly similar likes, wants and needs in life.
Fundamentally, people are often more similar than they are different. It’s the reason why even with strange characters, you find yourself drawn in by their stories. If you disregard their demeanour, if you truly listen to what they’re saying, you can almost hear the same words leave your own lips.
Here’s an example. Let’s take Ashley, who I consider pretty much the only properly explored character in this entire game. Her story arc caught me completely off guard. While I was initially going through this game, years back, with my dick in hand, it actually made me stop furiously grappling the hog. Now, as a late teen-gooner myself, this was a shocking revelation. A porn game.. that can make me feel things?
Can this be? Is this a new world, is this the greatest game ever made?
Naturally, however, none of the character stories actually appealed even remotely as much to me as Ashley’s did. I was like a druggie chasing that first high I got, all those years back, coming back to my drug dealer, hopefully and naively hoping to relive something. And yet it never came.
As dramatic as that personal anecdote of a tale I gave you was, the rest of the “main” character stories do not suck. Some of them are good. Some are even almost great. But they are not the majority of this game’s plot. There is no other way to describe the main story of this game other than “compulsive reading”. Like the book that you pretended to read back in 8th grade for your literature class, I pretend that I’m reading something of value.
I’ll keep the “main story segment” short. It’s fine enough to not fall asleep to, but you won’t derive any special meaning from anything that it’s trying to say. Parts of it come off as very preachy, parts of it are extremely random, and some parts are fairly good. However, it’s never consistent. It’s a mish-mash of ideas. I wouldn’t mind a story that’s trying to do either of these three elements, as long as they were done well, but what’s presented here seems like something I’d write in my journal on a late night after a drink.
Ultimately, focus on fewer girls, enrich their stories further, instead of introducing new ones that are “completely different and unique” from everything beforehand. It’ll come off as more organic, more enjoyable to read, and you’ll be more drawn into the world that the story is trying to present. If I cared more about the characters, I might pay more attention to the story itself (if it wasn’t obvious, the only truly good parts about this game are the characters and their internal stories).
The gameplay. Oh god, how much it sucks flaccid cock. The waiters in McDonalds have to go through less menus in a day than you do when playing this game for five minutes. If you’ve ever experienced the grueling and grating feeling of opening doors in resident evil, this game will finally put the final bullet into your carpal tunnel ridden body.
Want to interact with a girl? Sure. Let’s go to her room. Click upstairs, click upstairs again, click on the door, click to select an option. Woops, she’s not here. Click downstairs, click downstairs again, is she in the living room? No? Let’s check the kitchen, click on the kitchen, click on the side room of the kitchen, nothing here. Okay. Let’s check the bath, click out of the kitchen, click onto the bath part of the house, open the bath, woops, wrong girl.
Let’s try going outside, - ah, shit, now we’ve initiated a new quest for a completely different girl.
This is MOST of the gameplay that you’ll experience in this game, past a certain point, and it’s genuinely mentally exhausting. It’s like a more autistic version of Where's Waldo.
Then there’s the way that the “porn” part of the game is done. Let’s get some small details over. This game uses the good ol’ honey select models. They don’t exactly look amazing, but when it comes to 3d models/2d art, it’s more so how you utilize the medium you’re given, and less so the fidelity of the given tool. I find the way the characters are presented to be appealing enough to draw eroticism from the situations that your character is thrown in. Moreover, the designs range from good to great, and generally nothing under that.
So you might think, ah, so the porn game actually does the porn elements well? That’s perfect, that’s just what I wanted-
A-a-ah! Not so fast. Here’s the kicker. While a lot of the scenes are quite effortful, well framed, and well animated…
...They end and start extremely abruptly. They last less than England does in the FIFA world cup, and are never enough to get a proper squeeze out. One moment you’re hit with a sex scene, and you think to yourself, alright, great, let’s start the deed! - aaand it’s over.
There’s not enough characterizing dialogue in the sex scenes either. There’s too many one liners and not enough characterization being done. I hate the “ah, that feels good oni-chan” dialogue as much as the other coomer, but this is an overcorrection. It feels too piecemeal and is simply just not enough.
And then, as if there weren’t enough insults to injury with all of that combined, it hits you with some completely tonally different storyline right after almost every other sex scene. The amount of blue balls I’ve gotten playing this game is astounding. Purely porn games are fine, heavy story games with light porn elements are fine. But this isn't either of those. And if it is trying to be either, it hasn’t managed to hit the sweet spot.
Now, having said all that, let me share something with you. A cat does not have the ability to understand that two doors can lead into the same room. If the room in which their feeding bowl is has multiple doors, the cat will think it has multiple bowls. It will come into the room through door A, see "I have no food", will leave the room through door A and come back through door B to check if the other feeding bowls are also empty.
This also works with windows and doors. Cats can look through a window/door and see "It's raining", and then go and check another window/door to see if it's raining outside of the other “outside”, too.
Now, you might be thinking, Hey man, what the fuck did you just make me read? What does that have to do with Harem Hotel? Why should I care about some random cat fact on a website about porn games?
Well, my dear friend, you just experienced what it’s like reading Harem Hotel.
Thanks for reading.
(P.S, Ashley is the only girl that’s worth fighting for. Fuck the harem, become a Based Monogamy Enjoyer, today.)