This game has everything needed in a successful video game: love, drama, comedy, action...

It truly has transcended our generation's understanding of what makes a video game. This is something more; this is the quintessence of artistry in a digital medium. There are little words to express the absolute majesty of this game, from the cutting edge graphical quality to the intricate character detail with every well-purposed polygon to shape a beautiful beast on the screen.

This video game will no doubt continue on for generations to be remembered as one of the art masterpieces of the 21st century, much like the works of William Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Stephanie Meyer, and J. K. Rowling.

Truly the capability to own such a game for the price of $4.99 is a steal, but if you manage to acquire it at its sale price of $0.99, you should be reported for theft for even attempting to get away with such a heinous crime.

Truly, in short, this game is no doubt underappreciated, as it is ahead of its time. Aptly said, this game is like Batman: it's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. Perhaps in a world where chauvinist bigotry is not the societal norm, we can all learn to appreciate this game for its truly artistic nature.

This game is a true masterpiece of a video game. It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to play this kind of game. Much like Secret of the Magic Crystal, another game I both reviewed and conquered, HuniePop is a transcendental work of art that has become manifest as a playable game on Steam for under $10. It’s like the Mona Lisa, but if you could buy the Mona Lisa drinks, receive lewd texts from the Mona Lisa of the Mona Lisa deepthroating a purple sex toy, and then lose your virginity to the Mona Lisa.

The story of HuniePop is a familiar tale. You’re a complete loser average Joe getting drinks by himself at the bar when you’re approached by an attractive brunette dressed in red (that’s important, you should take note of that for later) named Q Queue Kyu talking to you. After fumbling some basic human interactions with a girl, we learn that Kyu was actually drawn not to your looks or social skills but to the emanating aura of patheticness and other smells, looking to for a real fixer-upper. She later visits you in the night in her true form, a pink fairy clad in a bikini, explaining that she’s a love fairy, tasked with the job of getting pathetic idiots laid.

Under the guidance of Kyu, you undergo a great quest to have sex with as many girls as possible. The writing is… interesting. The storytelling is mostly contained with the initial meetings of each of the girls. Beyond each of those initial meetings, you’re essentially just learning more backstory behind each of the girls that you’re seducing and cheating on. You learn the interesting lore through asking questions of the girls (though don’t ask the same question twice, that’s rude) like how much they weigh and how big their rack is. Their answers to these introductory dating questions make this game not only a masterpiece of art and literature, but also truly a self-help training simulator for people looking for dates. You begin to see the archetypes that each of these girls is meant to portray, gaining a better sense of who they are, whether it’s the single mother who goes to the gym but will indulge in sweets, the blonde college cheerleader, the pornstar mom of the college cheerleader, or the cat.

The two major aspects of gameplay are the dialogues and the dates.

Each day, you go out in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night to talk to several different girls. After the first initial meeting of a girl, you can interact with her, gaining “Hunie,” which is essentially experience points for upgrading traits to succeed in the dates portion, by asking and answering her questions. You might ask her about herself, like her occupation, weight, cup size, or birth date, which she will later ask you as a pop quiz to see if you remember. If you don’t like talking to girls and remembering information, then good news! This part is completely optional and unnecessary, there’s even achievements for never talking to the girls beyond your first meetings! Like real life, you can just throw expensive gifts, purchased with “Munie” (more on that later), and alcohol at a girl to succeed. Indeed, later on in the game, it’s almost mandatory to get a girl drunk before a date, since it increases your base Passion meter. This is truly a positive message for the children.

The date aspect with the girl is the infamous match-three puzzles. You ever play Candy Crush? It’s basically like that one version where you only have a limited amount of moves to score points. As another layer of complexity, each girl has different likes and dislikes depending on their personality. Getting a four match of tokens may not be that big of a deal if that girl doesn’t care for that particular token. There’s additional layers of strategy and complexity with “Passion” and “Sentiment” tokens, which act to increase your score multiplier for matches and earn points to use items on the date, respectively. Depending how you do on the date determines how much Munie you earn (I’m not sure how you make money off of a date, I’ve never been on a date, can someone explain in the comments? Thanks), which can be used to buy gifts for the girls to get experience and upgrade your traits.

After four dates with the girls, if you’re taking a girl out at night, she’ll ask to come back to your place, where you play the match-three minigame except with a decaying score meter instead of a limited amount of moves and also the girl makes moaning sounds so your parents yell at you and kick you out of the house for not getting a real job and just playing your “cartoon pedophile games” but it’s okay they just don’t understand the complex layers and nuance to a game like this.

Nice.

The artstyle, as you can tell, is reminiscent of anime. The settings and backdrops are pretty interesting. One thing to note, though it may be fixed unbeknownst to me in one of the official/unofficial patches, is that the game does not support a widescreen resolution. You can adjust the aspect ratio, but that just stretches the game out and looks weird. You should probably play this in a small window anyways, you need to be able to quickly hide your shame if someone walks in.

You should probably play with headphones on. The voice acting is legitimately worth hearing (though there is a “boops” in lieu of voice overs option if you need to hide your shame), and the cheerful music is pretty good at making me angry for not being able to solve a hentai match-three puzzle game.

There’s someone for everyone, I’m sure, though stay away from Kyanna. I’m serious, back off. You can have Beli, her yoga instructor, she’s uhhh… “awesome,” as Kyanna says. Go for whoever you want man, I’m not here to judge. You can go for Momo, if you want. I won’t tell your parents. Just not Kyanna.

It’s a great purchase. Whether you’re purchasing it for yourself for the artistic value or for a friend so they can also appreciate the artistic value, it’s a great game to buy. It’s a game for everyone of all ages. This game will probably be playable at booths in the Louvre in a few years, once the Mona Lisa has faded enough to be too boring. Do you know how much it costs to enter the Louvre? €9, that’s a lot. Unless you’re visiting after 6pm on a Wednesday or Friday, then it’s only €6. In freedom units, that’s basically a Hot-N-Ready® Smokehouse pizza from Little Caesars, including tax, or a footlong sandwich from Subway before tax, when HuniePop is as cheap as a McPick 2 for $2.50. Plus you don’t have to fly to France to enjoy this work of art. You can enjoy this masterpiece in the comfort of your own home, in a dark room, with the blinds closed and the door locked! Truly inspirational.

To close out the review, I'll echo the sentiment from the beginning by backing it up with a voice of authority. I’ll leave it to the man himself, Stanley Hudson from the Office with his words of wisdom:

"It’s called hentai, and it’s art."