Hentai Heroes

HentaiHeroes, aka Harem Heroes! It’s time for more Nutaku game reviews! Today we’re looking at one of their flagship games that’s been raking in the big bucks with hot visual novel action and Pokemon-style collect-em-all gameplay. I’m talking, of course, about Harem Heroes. This game used to be its own independent title from what I can remember, when it used to be called Hentai Heroes. Today, you can find it under the Nutaku banner as one of their most successful titles, and it’s no surprise; this game has everything you might expect to find in a browser porn game title.

A Fast Paced Visual Novel

To call Harem Heroes a visual novel would honestly be an insult at this point. Most visual novels have you stuck on one image or animation while they shovel text down your throat. Harem Heroes has more of a comic book styled approach to the storytelling where you actually see different scenes with every dialogue delivery. In other words, there’s a lot of unique hentai art. You’re not stuck in place having to read a fucking essay. This makes fapping to the game’s story portions really fucking easy. Right from the second you load up the game, you’re dropped into a hentai sex scene, with shot after shot of smut action. I appreciate the no-bullshit approach.

These smut sections get interrupted frequently with the actual gameplay. No, the visual novel parts are not the core gameplay, the combat and city building are. You get a decent amount of FarmVille inspired maintenance work plus actual RPG combat that flows really well. I’ll talk about those parts more, but regarding the visual novel aspects, there’s a ton of them, and they’re the break you get from all the action.

Perfect Art Style

Most Nutaku games have an art style that sticks out and gives me hard ass boners. They know how to draw a sexy chick getting plowed up the ass. The thing I like about Harem Heroes, though, is that their style is very different from other Nutaku games. It seems to be heavily inspired by Dragonball, for some reason. You can even see a Dragonball styled character that looks like a straight-up rip off on the very cover of the game. But, the second you get past that splash screen and the game starts, the artists’ original approach starts to poke through.

Yes, it’s Dragonball inspired, but it doesn’t copy that style, per se. There’s a lot of originality that the artist pushed into the work, and it shows quite well. Plus, the quality can’t be understated. Every single girl in this game is perfectly fuckable and arousing. The proportions are spot on. There are giant breasts all over the place, and it all just meshes well together. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that everything was drawn exclusively for the game, even the backdrops. This makes the game feel a lot more immersive overall.

The Passive Gameplay

Before I get to the meat of the game, which is the combat, I gotta discuss the part where I get super frustrated and annoyed by this otherwise perfect game. I don’t know whether this game was made for Nutaku initially or if they purchased it after the fact, but I’m not surprised either way, because it’s a natural fit for their formula. It’s a freemium title that encourages you to pay real money every step of the way.

You don’t have to spend a single cent to play this game, technically. But, if you actually want to experience everything that the game has in store, well, you’re shit out of luck. You’re going to need a crazy amount of Nutaku coins to get to the best part of the content, and you’ll go broke if you want to clear the entire goddamn game. You’d be better off just getting a porn subscription instead.

But, let’s say that perhaps you’re the kind of person that is always on the PC. Say you work from home doing high-frequency stock trading or some shit. Well, in that case, this might be the best-suited game for you, especially if you like jacking off during your lunch breaks. Consider this: You could play this game over and over again once every hour for a few minutes, giving you some much-needed respite. Plus, you wouldn’t have to spend a single cent. When the game forces you to wait to perform another action, you can just get back to work and click back when it’s ready. That way, you’ll pretty much be able to flex on everyone, even people who flat out paid for the game.

The Combat

The combat excites me exactly as much as the passive gameplay pisses me off. There is literally nothing wrong with the combat in this game. It’s properly balanced RPG combat with all of the bells and whistles of optimizing your party and wearing the right items. Plus, you gotta level up your girls and make sure that they’re ready for combat. Yes, that’s right, your harem is actually your battle party. It’s that dual concept of getting to know the girls romantically while also leveling them up for combat. I can’t explain why but it’s really arousing. I guess it has something to do with appealing to both my need for senseless violence and smut in media. It’s a bonus on top of a bonus, and you keep switching between your two favorite things.

I wouldn’t describe the combat as difficult. It’s a bit of a challenge, but generally, leveling up the girls will suffice. You get enough in-game currency to get items that raise your attack stats enough to plow through every encounter.

Adventure Mode

This is probably the best part of the game, and it’s entirely single player. It’s probably where you’re going to get stuck the first time you play this game, just because it’s so much fun. It feels like some sort of anime, to be honest. I clicked my way through it and enjoyed every bit of it. First, you get whisked away into an adventure by a magical bunny girl who explains that you’re going to be banging a lot of hot chicks. You agree, of course, because why the fuck wouldn’t you.

Then, you end up on a ship full of captured mermaids whom you’re offered to fuck for free. But then, they tell you that they’re prisoners and that they don’t want to be there. They want your help to rescue them, and in reward, they’ll bang you willingly. The adventure mode basically continues like this until the very end. The story just keeps pushing forward and there’s hours’ worth of content within. If you completely ignore all the other parts of the game, you’ll have a ton of fun here.

Gachas and Gotchas

No-one would fault you for only wanting to play the adventure mode. It’s really sexy. The problem is, you’re going to run out of energy, eventually, and in the world of Harem Heroes, this means that it’s time to fork over some cash. This is where they get you. To play adventure mode further, you literally have to wait, unless you want to loosen the coinpurse.

They take these tricks a step further with the gacha machines. This is the part of the game where you can gamble both your in-game and your real currency away on the hopes of maybe, possibly landing some useful in-game items for your girls. I have mixed feelings about the gacha, because, on the one hand, it is a great way to get some awesome items, but on the other, it’s a gamble, and I’m not a fan.

If you’re rich, none of this is actually a bad thing, and you can consider this game a much better pastime than say online poker, since in this game, no-one’s actually betting against you. Plus, you can ignore the gacha entirely if you’d like.

Multiplayer Elements

There is no actual player versus player combat in this game in the literal sense. It’s all simulated, like a leaderboard contest. You want to be the best, better than other players, but you never get to interact with them directly. I guess they didn’t want to stretch their coin so far as to have actual servers for player vs player combat. Still, the multiplayer works great and it’s a welcome addition to the gameplay.

Unfortunately, if you’re not paying real money for in-game items, the chances of you being the best at anything are really slim. You’d be better off just playing this game for the fun story and the hot faps you’re going to get from the adventure mode.

The most important comment I can make is that for the first few chapters of the story, the game is entirely free. You won’t need any micro-transactions or even waiting for energy, so you can, at the very least, sample the game without worrying about getting bounced halfway through your fap session.