A short adult VN with multiple decision points and associated endings, but it's not as good as the developer's other games.
[h1]Introduction[/h1]
Hanapon Princess is the latest anime-style adult visual novel from Kavorkaplay, indie developer of the Witch College and Pleasure Airlines games.
It's another male protagonist in high school or college setting, and the story is extremely silly and unbelievable, even for a VN. It does have a free Adult DLC, though, so I suppose that's a plus!
[h1]Story and Writing[/h1]
Our protagonist is chased one day by a Chihuahua and hides in an antique store, where he buys an ancient statue that turns out to be Poncho, the ambassador to Hanapon. Poncho pleads with the protagonist to return to Hanapon with him, but the protagonist is only finally convinced when Poncho tells him there are four princesses that have come of age and are looking for a human husband. (At least that bit was realistic, I suppose!) The old king died and one of his daughters has to become ruler, but to do that she has to marry a human man.
As you can probably guess, it's really just a setup for a series of extremely unlikely relationship match-ups to take place. Making it even more unlikely, the game is so short that it only covers a single day in time, and for baffling reasons the princesses all seem to be pretty happy about getting together with the not-very-likeable protagonist. It took me less than 50 minutes to reach my first ending and, having made regular saves at every decision point, only another few minutes for each of the others (even with the engine issues).
The writing quality is slightly worse than Witch College, with a number of basic grammar errors. The script and characters are completely unbelievable, but still amusing in places, with lines such as this one being the highlight: "After all, she seems to be very princess-like, and I came here to get me sum princess dammit!" The four princesses are all very different from each other, but mostly anime stereotypes/tropes: the innocent, but elegant sophisticated one; the relaxed, happy-go-lucky one; the tsundere one; and the energetic, sporty one. Sadly their lines are written in a voice that really doesn't match the setting; one of them even called me "dude".
[h1]Presentation[/h1]
The title screen looks pretty nice, though the girls are all rather more well endowed than might be strictly _normal_. It's accompanied by some great Japanese-style music (Shamisen, I think?), which continues throughout the game, but with only very few different tracks. There are no true voiceovers, but there are some occasional grunts and groans.
Character art is good, in the same style as the title screen and consistent throughout, with CG images looking like they're by the same artist as the paper-doll sprites in the VN sections. Animations and expressions are very limited; don't expect any fancy Live2D stuff here. Backgrounds are good, too, with a couple reminding me a lot of Witch College; I wonder whether one or two are touched-up versions of backgrounds from there. The subtle product placement is great; I loved the Witch College image on the protagonist's computer screen.
The engine appears to be exactly the same as used in Witch College -- VNMaker, I think, which uses NWJS -- and unfortunately the issues with it still haven't been addressed. The menu doesn't quite work properly, with toggles on the settings menu not doing what they're supposed to, and some dialog/menu choices not working at all. Skipping text doesn't work properly, making it painful to go back and look for decision points and follow paths to different endings. And some lines are attributed to the wrong character, too.
Early on there was an issue with the adult DLC not working properly, but it seems to have been fixed in the last week or so. Hooray!
With no Steam Achievements it's hard to know whether I've completed all the endings. The CG gallery isn't yet full, but that was the case with Witch College even after I'd completed everything, so I'm willing to believe that's just a bug (or "feature"?).
[h1]Pros & Cons[/h1]
Pros:
+ Lots of choices; multiple endings
+ Uncensored
Cons:
- Broken skip
- Very short
- The writing isn't that great
- Limited voices
- Confusing CG gallery
[h1]Final Thoughts[/h1]
This is a hard one (ooer!). On the one hand, the art isn't bad and the branching choices with multiple endings are good. But on the other hand, it's very short and tracking down all of the endings is made difficult by the rubbish interface, and the writing isn't that great this time around. It has all the same cons as Witch College -- one of the developer's previous games -- but isn't as good, in my opinion.
Recommended, but only just. If you're interested, make sure you pick it up on sale. If you haven't played any Kavorkaplay games before, try Witch College first. It's better in basically every way.
[code]For more of my reviews, please check out [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/genkipro]Genkipro's Games[/url] and [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36592842-GG-Genkipro's-Games/]follow me[/url] as a curator.[/code]
