DISCLAIMER: This Review has been written for version v0.1.1 Public. I am not a supporter of the game as of time of writing.
TL;DR and verdict up front - clear 5 stars.
This thing is a passion project that is well worth your time - of which you can expect to invest 4-6 hours of if you are not skipping any of the story texts and just rush through it. So if you enjoy yourself getting immersed into a well-written, character-driven story with characters that (depending on your liking) range from initially unlikable, comedic relief to extremely well-rounded with surprisingly powerful arcs that will actually manage to get an emotion out of you, I'll gladly take your coat.
But, for those of you that want to read further, here's the actual review of the game:
So, Hero's Harem Guild then...
After playing through the game (multiple times even, despite being a linear story with no branches or anything like that, I just wanted to experience these moments again) and reflecting a bit on it, I feel ready to write down a review for this. First up, I gotta say that I'm honestly stumped to have missed out on such a great game. but we need to take it from the top with a look at the story:
In Hero's Harem Guild (HHG for short) you take control of a young man (that has the default name Zack) that lives an idyllic if poor life with Elizabeth (his mother) and Ari (his sister, that is if you uncensor it). Your world gets turned upside down when you have to not only save Ari from an ogre attack while running errands in the village, but shortly afterwards get attacked by a demon and end up presumed dead, only to awaken in some faraway location where you have been touted to be the new hero of the town. From there on out your adventure takes place, if at your own pace.
So, to sum it all up, the story is driven by its characters and their actions, with an overarching plot looming in the background that you will gradually learn more about.
So I think it is time to briefly talk about those characters. No worries, I'll keep it spoiler free and talk in very generic terms, as they are the meat of this game:
On your sandbox journey to explore the new world you've been thrown into you will meet a variety of different characters, not just in looks, but also in personality. Their models not only look exceptionally well-made, quite varied, but also their actual characters are: They all have excellent writing, with their own personal backstories, flaws, preferences and interactions between each other. Those can range from rivalries, to loving care and even some strong outbursts when things start to boil over, but when it really matters, you can totally count on them helping you, yet they never come out as some hamfisted clichee. You can see different stereotypical influences on some characters, but like I said already, the writing gives their presentation the edge in making them feel just as alive as some people you might know from the real world and not have a feeling like you are talking to a piece of wood - either through comedic moments (which have been extremely well realized - Johnny is the bestest bro) or through the exploration of their backstory and their way forward, which have some really hard hitting moments in them. Even characters that feel abrasive and unwilling to listen will eventually open up to you and give you their support and in due time, thus you might learn to appreciate these characters just as much, if not even more. Hell, even characters that at first glance feel like joke inclusions or comedic relief turn out to be really well integrated. This all just oozes production value in terms of writing. Moreover, due to characters and story being quite heavily intertwined here, you will always feel like they are actively reacting according to their previous behaviour and thus give your immersion an even stronger effect. You generally just want to keep on playing only to see what happens next and how these well-rounded characters will react. There is never that moment. You know that moment when a character reacts so far out of their usual behaviour that it just rips you out of the experience entirely. This all does mean however, that in order to progress the story, characters will also need to progress. So if you want to have a more story-driven than character-driven experience when playing, this might not be for you.
Well, since I'm now talking about playing, how does it all play?
For the most part, it's about exploration and finishing Quests of the Chapter you are in. This means that you're tasked to check certain conditions, like meeting a person at a specific time of day in a location to drive forward a certain event, or to progress the affection with the different characters. This will unlock more locations, more actions you can do and more characters to interact with, while also progressing the story. So far so typical. The player has different stages of the day to do whatever they want to: be it making money, advancing with characters or explore somewhere specific to advance a quest. The game has no timed events or anything similar, meaning you can fully immerse yourself in the sandbox and explore the characters to your hearts content. This, combined with the clean and easily readable UI makes for an experience you usually don't expect from a game made in Ren'Py. You aren't just clicking through a ton of dialogues and select your reaction from a bunch of possible sentences to "maybe" hit the right note and thus maybe unlock some sexy funtimes with all the different characters you meet - God I hate games that do this - no. You just interact with them on a general basis throughout the town and at a certain breakpoint in their affinity, you trigger an event at a certain time of day to advance them, which is once more where the excellent writing comes in. The only issue I have here is that due to the amount of characters, limited locations and all you will potentially end up with events that overlap on a timeslot, sometimes even location - if you happen to level multiple characters at once - meaning that you will have to trigger one first (which generally advances time), the next day the other. Not even the minigames with which you earn money (like fishing and later down mining) pull me out of playing, if only for the excellent choice of music:
This game uses some excellent music as a backdrop. Some for certain events, something different for all the locations and they all sound astonishingly good. I'd even go so far to say that many of the tracks you will hear in the game, you most likely haven't heard in some other game. Lots of care has been taken to select the appropriate music strings for events and locations, just amplifying their effectiveness further.
Guess with all the technical stuff out of the way, you probably want to know about the smut and all that, right?
Right: It's great, simple as that. Not just in technical execution, but in pacing... You don't just unlock the standard variety of sex scenes you are used from other games flooding this forum at the given breakpoints in the characters stats, this would make no sense if you've been reading through the character and story section. No, this is paced out like you'd actually expect from someone faraway just stumbling into this new life and getting the grips on the world and its characters (sometimes quite literally), meaning only very specific events have intimate actions. So while you aren't getting bombarded with quantity of sex events that you can repeat ad nauseam - which is a quality of its own - you instead get some of the most high quality stuff out there at the time it is actually appropriate. Honestly, these scenes are just flat-out great. While it's a shame that as of right now only a very select few select scenes are repeatable, their production value is just top notch and you might have a bunch of saves on different events for that reason alone. At the time of writing, this is not a sex game with story elements thrown in haphazardly, but instead this is a well-written story game with a nice aside of sex in it, and one that is well worth your time.
With that I feel that I have covered basically everything there is, except maybe content available, which I shall touch upon right now:
I generally am under the impression that the version numbering is a nice indicator of content, and boy was I wrong. This game has from start to finish of all available content (assuming you actually play for the story and don't just skip through everything) between 4-6 hours worth of playtime, with only marginal amounts of grind. I remember my first playthrough of what the game had to offer clocked in at nearly 9! hours, though this was more due to me trying to get as well immersed as I could. This is exceptional amounts of content for something with a version number label of v0.1.1.
So, to sum it all up in my final verdict...
I honestly have very few complaints for the game as of right now. What little complaints I have there is nitpicky at best - the performance dipping in some moments is the only one that I feel comfortable leveling against it, and that is being adressed at time of writing. Honestly, a fuckton of devs could really get a slice of this methodology and take this game as a shining example on how to get your audience hooked, instead of releasing the same old tosh you see day in day out here. I can't really say much other than that this really is the stuff that raises the bar for game development in the adult industry to the point that I will most likely consider supporting this project, not for some early access or other shenanigans, but because this actually deserves to be seen through to the end.
To those that have managed to read through this wall of text with all of its writing errors (or just scrolled to the bottom), congratulations! You won nothing from doing so, excepte my gratitude.
