Note: I don't believe a complex opinion can be properly represented by a number but I do understand some people are impatient so I don't use the star system normally, my ratings are as follows. 1 don't recommend, 3 unsure please read review, 5 recommend.
Hero's Harem Guild is a conundrum. It's got good art, a good story, interesting characters and a gameplay loop that isn't completely terrible, and yet the problems with it are numerous and frustrating.
The story is a classic, ordinary guy becomes grand Moff Tarkin type shit, but it gets a lot of praise from me because the author understands how to write a story well within his medium. There is a lot of stuff that you as the player can pick up on despite going unsaid, how "hero's" in this world are, what happened years ago, what different characters are, and so on. It's refreshing getting the chance to use context clues to think and come to conclusions on my own as opposed to every piece of information you can imagine being shoved down the players throat and carefully explained. Unfortunately this also causes some inconsistencies.
Shino is a great example, she's the blonde with huge titties, she is established to be a drunk slut since you meet her wasted in a bar and she's the first one you actually have sex with. Okay cool, but then eventually it's established with a single scene that she's a mean drunk, I guess, then you're character acts as if this happens all the time and blows up on her. Her story line then becomes about redeeming herself for being a mean drunk? Which for the player, happened once, and why isn't her story about her quitting drinking? That would make way more sense. I understand through minimal research that this game has been in development for a long time and has gone through several changes and I assume one or several of those changes likely altered her story a bit so now it just feels inconsistent. Regardless the writing is very good especially for a porn game and even with these issues I still enjoyed it.
The gameplay is confusing to me, It's simple point and click kinda stuff, you can wonder around at different times of day clicking on women or flowers or fish to obtain items and what not, additionally you can also manage your guild members time by assigning them to parts of the map to do jobs, this gets your guild stuff, but why? This is the part I'm confused by why do all this stuff to obtain money? after you get all the money you need for upgrades and items why continue? As of right now the gameplay is just kind of in the way and has little bearing on anything other than as a way of obtaining the necessary funds to continue, which to be honest kinds just makes it annoying since the game is designed around you doing the gameplay constantly, I know this because after you level up each girl you need to wait 2 days before you do anything else which is annoying as fuck but the game in the current state has no need for all this repetitive ass gameplay when it does nothing for you, additionally there are skill trees for each thing you can do, you first need to unlock the respective skill tree in the skill tree skill tree, then half of them have a single thing to unlock WHY?!?!? The reason is that this 10+ hour experience is just the prologue of the game and there will presumably be more to come, I would argue however, that the entire prologue should be simplified and shorted if that's what it's meant to be, it's way too long and has way too much unnecessary shit going on for something that's meant to introduce the game/story.
One of the main reason's I don't outright recommend this game is because of how long it is verses how much sex there is, and how much of it is repeatable. There are 27 scenes both events and repeatable not counting the snowy days content, which we'll fucking talk about, and the Halloween event. 27 from 10+ hours might seem like a lot but when you consider the scenes are max like 2 minutes depending on the individual deciding the speed, that's 54 minutes of sex scenes out of more than 10 hours, less than 10% and again these numbers are approximates, for me it was probably more like 32 minutes. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if 90% of your porn game is not porn it's not a good porn game. What makes this even more confusing is that I have found out that the dev removed scenes from the game, I cannot fathom why you would do that unless those pixels some how guarantee a crash, I mean seriously even if you changed up characters and shit you can still have them in the game just make them non-cannon unlockables. It's the mentality of someone who doesn't recognize that they're making porn, well news flash you are, this is masturbatory material, I do not engage with what you have made with my pants on please just make the porn game have more porn.
The snowy event, Christ I hate this event. This just pisses me off and it's the thing that really cemented this my negativity toward this game. To explain a bit, the snowy event is a thing the dev made presumably for the Christmas season? where you run around and do Christmas stuff and fuck girls and fish, but where it all falls apart is that the dev made the event to take place AFTER the first chapter. Confused still? Oh well you see the first chapter isn't out yet, you can only play through the exceedingly long prologue at the moment so you finish that and load up the event and fucking every goddamn thing is different, I need to clarify right now that the developer makes it very clear upon loading it up that the snowy event takes place after chapter 1 and that the characters and relationships will be a bit different, what I didn't expect is how drastically different they are or how much different the characters that aren't even an option yet are. You spend the first day of the event looking for a girl you don't even know in the prologue WHAT? The dev claims this is simply a teaser for the first chapter, expect teasers tend not to take place at the fucking END of the chapter, the chapter that's being released in 3 parts might I add. Whats most frustrating though is the reason. I have no clue at all why you would make this event at all given how much work needs to be done on the first fucking chapter of the game, but if you're going to anyway, just for a mental break or whatever, then why not have it come after the prologue? That's because, "it doesn't make sense to make content for the prologue after the prologue" . . . . MOTHER FUCKER THE PROLOGUE IS THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME AT THIS POINT!! AGGHHHHH AND AND THIS EVENT IS WHERE THE REST OF THE SEX SCENES ARE, HALF THE GALLERY IS IN THIS SPOILER FILLED EVENT!!!!
Okay now that I have said all that I will also be fair and tell you the dev does recognize that it was a mistake to make this event and he strives to do better in the future which is awesome and I want to commend that behavior, it takes a lot of humility to admit your mistakes and it makes me trust the dev will make this right eventually. However I am not reviewing the eventual product I am reviewing whats in front of me and what's in front of me is a game with great writing and also a game where 90% of it is long pointless gameplay with that last remaining 10% being the only real pornigraphic payoff. I think a lot of people will eventually enjoy this game when more of it comes out and is playable and I look forward to that, until then though, you can move on to gayer pastures
