Alright, alright alright. It's finally here. I bought it, played it, and now I'mma tell y'all about it.
Can't say I didn't expect to be disappointed, so I got what I expected. Plenty of charm from the first game is still here, but I think overall there are more fuck-ups than improvements. Here's what I've noticed so far:
First off, the main 'double date' puzzle gimmick
It adds a surprising amount of depth and complexity to the puzzles. I was hoping for a more difficult game, and in that regard it delivers. However, it also adds tedium & frustration.
The most disappointing new aspect of the puzzles is that you're punished for matching 4+ tokens, which costs more energy. This was the only outright terrible decision I've noticed about the new puzzles, but it is a serious fuck-up. Ignoring the difficulty it adds, it is completely anti-fun--and I love challenges. I often find myself having to go for 3 token matches because RNG hasn't blessed me with enough energy tokens to afford better matches. 'Losing' a date because of something like this really sucks. There are still some gifts which benefit you from getting 4+ matches, but you risk running out of Energy and therefore instantly losing the date if you go for them.
On top of managing Energy, you can also randomly activate a girl's 'Baggage' through conversation. It's difficult enough talking to girls given how conversation, puzzles, and gifting all share the same pool of Energy. But Baggage adds to the difficulty of the puzzles as a contextual gimmick, like giving Jessie Emphysema so she doesn't recover energy 20% of the time. By itself I kinda like the idea, but this is just one of several new challenges in the game and I worry how difficult it will become later. Puzzles still scale over time, requiring more points, but playing on Normal with about a dozen dates I'm already having some trouble.
Lastly, date gifts were given a significant nerf. I haven't found them all, but nothing seems as broken or exploitable as in HP1. Again, I like this change by itself, but it's yet another challenge on the pile. Each girl starts with only 1 Gift slot. You have to 'equip' the gift to her and only she can use it until you remove it. The way you gain Sentiment to use gifts works the same, except on top of costing you a turn it'll cost you energy as well, like every other match. This leaves me with a constant feeling that I'm wasting precious Energy going for Passion or Sentiment tokens over points.
All that said, I like the new puzzle mechanics overall. They take some getting used to, but there's a lot more puzzling to these puzzles and I'm fine with that. I'm not so confident others will be as charitable as I am, however. And if the game doesn't give me better tools later, I can see myself becoming a lot more frustrated by the increased reliance on RNG, specifically for Energy tokens.
The other aspect of the double date gimmick is the threesomes, seemingly the only way to get laid in this game. I wasn't sure if this was just me, but I have zero interest in threesomes. Maybe in the right time and place they can be cool, but they're generally just not sexy to me.
Then I read the other reviews on here and it seems like most everyone agrees. I much prefer the intimacy of 1-on-1 dating & sex, and that's totally missing from this game. It also stretches my suspension of disbelief that every single girl you run into is totally open to threesomes almost immediately. There were some sluts in HP1, but the girls mostly felt down-to-earth, even the alien from another planet.
In HP2, every girl is a slut without exception. Some people might be into that, but I imagine most people who liked HP1 appreciated the flirting and several dates they needed to earn the big pay-off. It was more realistic and rewarding. It actually gave you time to get to know the girls. In HP2, I haven't learned more than one detail about any girl before we were fucking. It's prohibitively difficult to get the Energy to talk to them (I'll get to that), and it feels like half the time I only trigger their Baggage anyway. So most of my interactions with the girls has been their scripted dialogue, which only leads me to the conclusion that they're all(?) lesbians because the first interaction is generally along the lines of 'I like sex' and 'I want to have sex with this other girl.' Supposedly some of the girls aren't compatible but I haven't found them yet.
As others have mentioned, the sex itself feels like you're only a 3rd wheel or voyeur, who I suppose just masturbated onto the girls while they were getting busy. That feeling is mostly due to the girls spending more time flirting with each other than with you. Maybe a girl playing this game would be into that, or it'd make some sense playing as a female MC, but undoubtedly most players will be guys playing with male MCs and it just doesn't fit with the situations.
I only liked a couple of girls from HP1, but I could talk to them, 'date' them and have a good time. I didn't care much for the erotic content anyway, but it was nice. Sadly, even if I was into the sluts from HP2, I would never get the same feeling of simulated intimacy, one of the few reasons to play a dating sim, right?
Lastly, I wanna complain about the conversation phases. As far as I can tell, these are the only chance to have 'one-on-one' time with the girls, though it's technically not 1-on-1 and the other girl will sometimes chime in with some mundane comment.
In HP1, you would always have enough energy to talk to your favorite girl Audrey a few times before your date. On top of that you'd almost always have food you could buy to talk with her more. It's technically optional, but there was no downside to doing so and you could potentially earn points for it.
In HP2, you can talk to either girl twice at most before dating. Each time you talk to them increases the difficulty of the date by reducing their pool of Energy and potentially triggering Baggage. Giving them gifts costs Energy from the same pool. You can buy food, but it seems like on average you get about 4-5 food items total each day to split between all the girls. That's 4-5 food items for 8 girls, and there are 4 different currencies to buy them with which you may or may not have when you need it. Food also perishes in about 1 day, for whatever reason.
In HP1, all food was bought with the same Munie and had a 1:100 ratio of Energy to Munie cost and never perished.
I thought the system in HP1 was a bit too simple and straightforward, but HP2 goes in a totally weird and wrong direction with it. Conversations shouldn't be a micromanagement game that makes dating more difficult. It should be a way to get to know the girl, build some mutual interest and relax before the 'date', i.e. the puzzle. HP2 just makes conversations part of the puzzle.
I haven't actually finished the game but I doubt any of these things will change unless the game gets updated. I will say my opinion is much higher than it would otherwise be because I always treated HuniePop as a ridiculous game with fun puzzles, and I don't totally dislike the new puzzles.
Last few notes about the game:
-music is about on par with HP1, average--some reused tracks were a bit disappointing though
-I haven't listened to much of the voice acting, but enough to know it's worse. That said, I think the VAs did a great job in HP1 so it set a high bar
-if you have to put an option at the start of the game to give a girl a penis or not, maybe just don't have it, or do have it but put the option elsewhere
-I like the outfit design more in HP2, though it's annoying that they are seemingly ALL absurdly slutty/revealing, at least that I've seen. A few tasteful casual outfits would be welcome
-art is slightly better I'd say, though I like the girls less personality-wise. Tits definitely look better, but it's a bit weird that there's only one girl who could be called "petite." Love big breasts but c'mon...
-also Kyu's tits are clearly bigger. Immersion destroyed
-I miss the pic texting from HP1, along with the girls who weren't dumb as fuck
