Videogame Review #5 - Love hina on ps2 - By the animereviewguy

It was the year 2002, I had just been introduced to manga for the first time, having little idea that the animations I enjoyed so much were always based off these books. I had enjoyed the usual shows that were on free to air television, but it wasn't until a fateful trip to the local comic shop that would change my outlook on life forever. It was there I picked up my first manga, Love Hina, a romantic comedy series by Ken Akamatsu, and now I have come full circle reading the manga, watching the anime and now, playing the game. >>You sure you have remembered EVERYTHING you were supposed to do? Oh yeah that right! Opening Credits! Love Hina, yet another dating sim, however, this one takes it WAY too far. If you were ever looking for a bragging right, ever looking for a game that I guarantee that even the Japanese would of had trouble with, this is it. For you see, this isn't just a dating sim, it's a freaking exam. The story focuses around Keitaro Urashima, a 20 year old who failed to get into Tokyo University trying to fulfil a promise he made to a girl when he was 5 to go there together. After failing the entrance exam again he goes to manage at an all girls dorm for his grandma, to which the girls are none too pleased with the new arrangement, but over time they all fall in love with him, you know standard stuff. Eventually he starts to wonder if one of the girls here is the same one he made the promise with and every waking moments he is getting hit, stabbed, flung, whacked, threatened and most likely sustaining mortal injuries that he is just shrugging off. Keitaro has many hobbies you will watch him partake in such as falling in the bath time and time again, being hit and smacked around as a side effect of said falling, and randomly copping a feel and pulling down skirts. Of course, such activities are really quite attractive to the females of this dorm, and the more he does it, the more the relationship points go up. Is this really that attractive in society, clumsiness to this magnitude? Oh well, I'm not one to doubt the life lessons being taught here. The game play here revolves around two types of interaction. One plays out much like the games we have seen thus far with dialogue and the occasional text box which impacts on the relationships you have and the girl you can end up with. However there is also one where you take control of.... CHIBI KEITARO! You make your way around the dorms interacting with characters who will either initiate mini-games or improve relationship status'. 0:03:19.001,0:03:23.000 The map is found bottom right of the screen with key events shown as stars. Its surprisingly easy to get around, yet the controls can jar up occasionally with your hand sometimes having a hard time distinguishing just what your trying to point at. As you start out, you come across little mini games that involve moving the analogue sticks in specific patterns. This can include moving them gently from side to side to keep a heart in a box, moving them in match to arrows displayed, or just flailing away on them until you are declared victorious. Your reward is always a scandalous photo, what you came here for, so you better be on your toes because this is how you unlock the majority of them. Now you still need to get into Tokyo University so I guess there's got to be some sort of mini-game to that effect... What the crap.... Ok wait, is it just me or does that make absolutely no sense to anyone? Is that just basic Japanese curriculum? I never learned math of that magnitude, let alone JAPANESE math. How is anyone supposed to get this right? WELL I GUESS I KNOW JAPANESE MATH.... Ok but seriously, you think that's hard enough? But I'm missing the main question here, why is this in a video game?!? I mean I get it, he needs to study to get into university, that doesn't mean I should have to study to finish this game. And this isn't just a one-time thing, it's a major aspect of the game, and can decide your fate, so get your notebooks ready it's time for some learnin'! Your studies and results can be impacted on and altered by two variables, sort of like the system in Persona 4. One involves you studying and levelling up your subject proficiency, and the other is how well you answer the questions. Studying is played out with a mini-game that if you can pick up what's going on immediately I wonder how you did, but I'll explain it anyway. You have a wheel of five subjects, you can choose to study all different subjects over the course of your time, or choose to study a single subject. Studying a single subject gives you an experience multiplier, but drains your energy faster, while studying separate subjects has an opposite effect. You can modify bonus, fatigue rates and other values that can be found on the right hand side by interacting with other characters in the dorm beforehand. Points are accumulated to impact your experience growth by pressing circle and trying to have the small box match up with the highest value on the graph below. Let's see it all in action. You understand all that? Nope, neither did I. But it all makes sense once you've done it a few times, it's just not very fun. I admit, it can be fun trying to achieve the impossible with these questions, but seriously, I haven't seen an idea as bad as putting an actual exam in a game since they asked Pearl Jam to write the new Bakugan theme song. Anyway I guess we should start trying to play through this thing. Of course I sort of stumbled along for the first hour not knowing what was going on, wondering what the mini-games were and how you played them, messing up questions and downright annoying the heck out of every female in the vicinity of my lumbering pointless existence. It wasn't until my second set of questions that I saw hope, that I realised that we may in fact have an advantage in one specific field, a field that I have specialised my entire life in. That's right, English! I present to you... Occasionally you will come across questions, be asked questions etc that are based on wording sentences correctly. These are a god send since you can actually do them and can lead to impressed looks from said females. Some still don't make sense since the instructions are in Japanese, but overall they are what you will be hoping for in the long run. For the first half of the game you go through the same routine every day you get up, go to uni, study, come home, walk around the house talking to people til 3:00. Then you study, walk around the house til 8:00, then study, then go to bed. This continues with your two study partners til I actually got one of the other girls, Shinobu, to come study with me instead. I don't know how but whatever, it's better than that Naru whacking me every time I talk to her. You can negatively impact on the girls and lower their relationship points, but its far and few between when that happens, I mean if it goes up when you basically just in the bath with them all naked inside, then what could possibly be so bad to lower it? Oh right, hanging out with a 13 year old... Eventually you end up at an amusement park which seemed to be my determining point for who you end up with since the girl I went on the Ferris wheel with sort of sealed the deal. I didn't mean to pick Shinobu mind you, I wanted naru, since I could tell she wanted me, oh yeah, use those ellipses... Eventually the game made note that the final exam was coming up so I better get my act together, although I don't really know how much impact these levels have on my scores since regardless what level I was at I still only got D's and a C. So with a hug from my beloved and quick sneaky peaky I was ready to hit the books. I didn't care that all the practices had me down as a guaranteed failure, I didn't care that grandma was coming back and if I didn't pass I was off to America... or something I don't know, it sounds right. So I go in there knowing I've got this thing by the balls and.... ...I failed. Oh well whatever, turns out grandma didn't come back and I'm still manager of the dorm til I try again for the exam next year. It counts as a finish, Im gonna take it! The game allows you to save after the credit screen, but there is now New Game + option, just the ability to restart from the save file with no real advantages for it, whoopty freaking doo. There might be differences in dialogue or something but I can't tell anyway. There you have it, Love Hina. A game that decided to go beyond the call of duty and become a game about studying... nope it still doesn't sound very exciting. But at least it has some fun original artwork, a unique way of implementing and using mini-games and by far the best interactive area ever. Overall now that I look back on it, it really isn't that bad of a game. A play though takes a good 4-5 hours and has no way to skip text at an alarming rate, so if you're after ever picture and to see the ending for every girl it'll take you a good 20-30 hours of gaming if your clever with your saves. While its jokes wear thin and premise of exams runs dry, it's still an enjoyable enough game with those characters I basically grew up with 8 years ago. If the questions stayed the same I could at least trial and error it but they are randomly selected so, who knows, maybe someday I'll learn to ready Japanese and super human speeds and come back to claim my prize... SUPRISE ***! >>Well, you failed that game, and you failed to save Chii... Hey I finished the game just like I said I... OH CRAP I FORGOT CHII! >>Yeah... >> Is there still time to save her? >>Dude, I said you had 10 minutes. That was like 2 months ago. >> Oh...Right...the whole laziness thing I have going... >>Its all over, you have lost, now cut off your leg or something If only I had a special group of people who could help me out. I would need a time traveller so we could go back and save chii, an esper who could protect us all, an alien for new technology and a normal everyday sort of lame dude with nothing special about him. >>Why do you want that guy? >> I don't know, convention? Besides there is no way they would make this any more complicated than it is now. Oh hell no I'm not playing that game. I'd have to be god or something...