Version played: 0.12
Time played: Roughly 7 hours. Completed Prologue and saw all of current content
With that out of the way, let's talk about HHG. HHG plays out like a Saturday morning anime--with porn! Seriously, in a positive sense, the story set up, characters you meet and overall progression feel like it came straight out of the Land of the Rising Sun...with the poor translation quality that plagued the 80's and 90's to match. This poor translation sadly colors the player's perception of the characters and ultimately negatively affects the experience by quite a bit. Thankfully, since the characters are essentially the tropes you often see in most harem anime, you know who is who, but I can't stress enough just how disappointing it is especially in light of just how well done everything else is. The menus are clean, well-designed and of high quality. A lot of time and care has been put into the world and design and the girls are absolutely gorgeous with cute animations. I'm not sure if the creator is using a newer version of Koikatsu, but whatever it is, the result is a joy to behold. (Koikatsu pink stick dick notwithstanding.)
Positives
+ A delightful bevy of beautiful girls (seriously, "best in show" level for Koikatsu)
+ Breezy, easygoing gameplay and story. There is conflict and drama driving the plot, yet it manages to maintain a pleasant atmosphere.
+ MC is a good person with a heroic quality to him and, as such, makes the harem feel a bit more earned than other games in this genre.
Negatives
- English dialog needs a lot of work. It is stilted and unnatural and really brings the whole experience down.
- Grindy, but honestly not too bad since the activities you do for cash (fishing and mining atm) aren't as odious as other grinds.
- No bush. Again, bush adds personality and is a great differentiator in games like this when everyone basically looks the same below the waist. (Also, like the cat girl who can't even be bothered to bathe is gonna be clean shaven. C'mon.)
I know I'm stressing it a lot and, normally, poor English really isn't that big of a deal; I've played plenty of games that I count among my favorites that have English usage of a similar quality. What really causes it to hurt here is that this game relies heavily on creating a story with charming and likable characters. I wouldn't go as far as to say the sexual content is secondary to the story, but it's important enough to cause the deficiences to stand out and detract greatly from the experience.
So there you have it. While I clearly enjoyed the game enough to stick with it for as long as I did and spend real money on it, I often found myself trying to rewrite dialog in my head and I couldn't help but imagine just how much more enjoyable and entrancing the game could be if the writing were punched up.
Note to devs: Thank you for the time and effort you put in this game. Please try to find a native speaker to help with writing and dialog. By and large, you are so close to being one of the best in the engine and genre, but having natural English dialog and writing would really take this project to the next level. Also, consider adding some bush to some of the forthcoming ladies.