HuniePop 2: Double Date

I was looking forward to this game for years now, and now that it is here I am very happy that it is finally out, but not so happy about all aspects of the game. The core gameplay however is excellent, They really improved the match 3 formula from the first game and added more twists and is more challenging, but in a good way. There is a new leveling system for skills that is a bit confusing at first, but once you figured it out it is fine. I still liked the system for the first game better tho. What I really don't like is, how the game treats the characters. The cast is very diverse, which is good and there are even some returning woman, that have some interesting story developments. The problem is, you don't learn about the characters like you did in the first game. You had to talk to them, get to know them and get on multiple dates, in this game everything feels rushed, you don't even have to talk to the girls if you don't want to and even if you do, there is no getting to know them. You basically go on 2 dates and then sleep with them and that's it. They also don't send you messages with pictures anymore. The characters in hunie pop 2 feel more like a piece of meat that is very good, but missing all the other ingredients of a good dish. I still recommend the game if you are a fan of the first game, however the first game is by far better, and I am a bit disappointed after such a long wait for the game.

I stumbled across the first Huniepop by accident years ago. It completely blew away my expectations. It was a fun erotic puzzle game, but what really made it shine was the quality of the writing and the depth and richness of the characters. They felt alive. I felt like I really wanted to get to know them. I hadn't waited with this much anticipation for a sequel to come out since Starcraft 2. I was over the moon when I saw it was finally available. Then I played it for a few hours and quickly found that everything that made the first game special was now gone. Where the first game had interesting, well-written characters, Huniepop 2 mostly has us dating flat, one-note, one-dimensional caricatures whose personalities—or what passes for personalities—are obnoxious, abrasive, shallow, and/or borderline sociopathic. Even Kyu, one of my favorite characters from the first game, is reduced to a cardboard cutout of her former self. I quickly wished she would just stop talking. Without the magical ingredient that make the first game so special, Huniepop 2 is just a mediocre puzzle game: the kind of low-mental-effort passtime you play to play to unwind and then forget about as soon as you've finished. Huniepop deserved a better sequel than this.

I was looking forward to this release, but unfortunately I feel it has lost some of what made the first one so enjoyable for me. Hunniepop's girls had a lot of personality and getting to know them was worthwhile, both for its impacts on the puzzle solving side of the game, but also because they were interesting characters in-and-of themselves. In the sequel, however, there's a lot less of this kind of development on offer. "Completing" a chain of dates takes only two successful games of match-three; one to get the girls interested in each other, a second to unlock the sticky bits. Once this is done, there's no reason to take the pair on further dates. You're actually discouraged from doing so, since every date (whether successful or not) increases the difficulty of the subsequent date. In the original, it took four dates to complete a chain, each of which was followed by a unique interaction with the girl; it didn't rush to the finish, you actually got to know them. They had more depth. In Double Date, you're even penalized for engaging the girls in dialogue; doing so unlocks Baggage, serious debuffs on how the girls behave during dates. In the original, getting to know them earned you buffs. I appreciate this game's attempts at making the puzzle solving more complex, but for me, it was the interesting characters that were the main draw.

Sexy and hilarious. Similar mechanics as the previous game but increased complexity, which (in my experience) makes the game more fun to play. The uncensored patch can be downloaded from the developers website: https://www.huniepop.com/patch/HP2SteamyPatch.dat . Just place it in the same directory as the exe file (more info at www.huniepop.com). Well done, Huniepot guys.