For Andrew Xu. You’re a great friend, but why did you do this to me?

Disclaimer!! I did not purchase this game nor have any intention to do so. I am writing this to honor the request of a good friend (and also because I think it is worth talking about). However, be warned. This is very much a graphic game, with more cussing, nudity, and scenes of gratuitous content than many may feel comfortable with. Please read with caution.

You Get What You Buy

The first thing you see when you open up HuniePop 2: Double Date is a harem of women, all scantily clad and playing in a pool and having a good time, inviting you to join them. And after I chose to join them, to partake in their revelry, I am now a changed man. I feel dirtier after playing HuniePop 2: Double Date. It is not trying to be the next little indie darling or the greatest visual novel/ puzzle game ever made. Instead, it’s a game about getting into threesomes with anime women. Instead of shooting for the stars, it aims much, much lower, using its characters as a selling point and marketing itself as what it is, a hentai game. It is gross, hammy, and crude on nearly every level. It degrades women by making them nothing more than objectives you must conquer and eventually sleep with. The writing is crass and immature, with many jokes devolving into nothing more than laughing at the sheer absurdity of what sentences these voice actresses were forced to say when they stepped into the recording booth. It is obviously catered to those attracted to the female form, made even more blatant by the fact there isn’t a single male NPC in the game you can interact with. Yet for all my problems with it, from the questionable character writing to the humor that seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator, I will say that there is something here. The puzzle gameplay is honest-to-god addictive, with it being one of the best approaches to the “match three” puzzle game that I’ve seen in many years. HuniePop 2 manages to have a deep gameplay system that made me always come back wanting more.

The match 3 gameplay is absolutely fantastic. It’s merely everything else about the game that puts me off.

A Great Puzzle Game Hidden Behind a Strange Dating Game

The pitch for this game is silly: Talk to a pair of women to eventually go on a double date with the both of them, then match orbs to score enough points to win and be rewarded with the chance to have a gratuitous sex scene with the both of them. Repeat until you reach the end, and you’re done. The depth in the gameplay comes with the whole matching system itself.

There are a multitude of factors that can result in your date going well or poorly. You can feed them food or talk to them before a date to increase your relationship status with them, or use date gifts during the date in order to gain the benefit of changing the board state to your advantage. But the closer you get with each girl, the more you learn about their possible “baggage,” a mechanic that negatively modifies the date adding a  variety of difficulties to make it more likely that you’ll fail during the date. Not only that but now you have to focus on pleasing two girls at once instead of just the singular person. You are then forced to switch back and forth between the both of them to try and maximize the amount of affection you can receive per turn. If you focus too much on one girl, you can exhaust or anger her, resulting in her being forced to leave the date as you focus on whooing the other girl as best as possible until the first girl comes back. If both girls leave, you fail the encounter and have to try again at some other time. 

Honestly, although I never played the first once, I can say without a doubt that this double-date mechanic adds a lot to the “match 3” system. It adds a surprising amount of fun as you strategize and try to account for all these small factors and modifiers before a date and while it is happening. There are times when you are forced to exploit a moment of vulnerability in order to raise your affection as much as possible quickly and other moments where you need to defensively think about how to conduct your next moves. There’s also just a lot of planning involved at the base level, as you can move each piece as far horizontally or vertically as you desire. This makes it easy to enter a flow state as you begin thinking two or three steps ahead as to what your next move will be. A good player is always searching for the perfect combo, but it is easy to get blinded by ambition. Tension can increase or decrease at the drop of a hat, and success feels so good that you can’t help cheer when things all go according to plan. Combined with a stellar soundtrack that never feels too obnoxious or stressful, and HuniePop 2 has a natural loop that leaves you wanting just one more shot at the date.

The Writing Just… Doesn’t Work

HuniePop 2 doesn’t take itself seriously whatsoever, and honestly, that’s for the best. It means it’s self-aware enough that it knows the entire concept is absurd to the point that the writers can have fun using self-deprecation to lighten the mood. The game isn’t afraid to pull punches on both the fantasy it tries to convey and the demographic who is most likely to purchase a game like this one, as shown by how annoying and terrible the Japanese-obsessed Sarah is made out to be. More often than not, the writing comes off mean-spirited and harsher than likely intended. For example, Sarah has a possible baggage modifier that is merely labeled as “Smelly Pussy,” with a picture of a dead fish attached to help sell the joke. How is this supposed to be funny? Another character, the returning adult actress and fan-favorite Tiffany makes a reappearance from the first game. One of her defining baggage traits is that she’s depressed, probably due to the fact that her daughter now hates her guts after the events of the first game. Fun! And seeing how this game isn’t meant to have deep or emotionally impactful characters, there’s no way for you to get closer to any of these girls to the point that you can help them get over their insecurities. You can’t help them get over their childhood trauma or body dysphoria or suicidal thoughts, simply because this isn’t a real romantic dating game. The story treats itself as just another shallow hentai game, which I mean is fine, as there is very much a viable market for such a thing. I just find it sad that there really isn’t a way to make these girls’ lives better, that you can’t actually date them or try to help solve their problems. The game is simply not ambitious or deep enough to want to do so. Hey, at least you get to sleep with them. Isn’t that a hell of a reward…

Conclusion:

To reiterate, HuniePop2 is exactly what you pay for. It is a hentai game through and through. It has some really interesting gameplay moments, especially when it centers around the puzzle game portions, but the story and character writing should be taken with a grain of salt. I attribute that problem to the fact that this game forces you to always date these girls twice at a time. The first one, for all its problems, had a better sense of romantic pacing to it at least. It took longer to really get close and romantic with each girl, which made finally going to bed with them a more rewarding experience. In this one, it literally only takes two successful tries to get both women to make love to you. These are all just shallow relationships and without the ability to really change these girls for the better, HuniePop 2 ends up being just another porn game, that doesn’t bother trying to break the mold or really building off the first one in a more dynamic way.