Recent reviews by Angry Volcano

My go-to game whenever I want to escape from the grim reality that is my 9-5 job.

Really great and addicting game

not based devs :(

This is the dark souls of eroges.

In the beginning, it takes more than a few hours to get used to the game and its mechanics, but its worth the pain.

It has so much side-content and so much to do, it's never is a bore.

The story and its characters just keep getting better through the expansions, from its core.

But my favorite aspect about this game is the community. The interaction with it is never a sore.

I highly recommend to take a shot at the game, you never know what you will gain.

TL:DR; The puzzles are fun to play but the whole game feels superficial without any essence. The girls are a clear letdown compared to the first.

After 5 years of waiting and some delays, I was really concerned that HuniePop2 would follow the trend of 2020 and other long-awaited games (*cough* cyberpunk *cough*) and it would botch our expectations. And, in some aspects, it did.

After passing the tutorial, I was completely drawn into the game. Gorgeous art, clean UI, great voice acting, lighthearted and humorous story, fun characters, chill soundtrack, creative puzzle mechanics and, of course, many sexy ladies.

But after playing for sometime, you can clearly feel that there's something missing. What made HuniePop so special just isn't there. While the visuals look stunning, the experience feels hollow. The characters are very two-dimensional and they all boil down to forgetful stereotypes without any essence or deeper meaning.

While there are more CG's and outfits, there's barely any dialogue between the player and the girls, aside from the tutorial. This makes the player character feel very unimportant and even meaningless, like he's just an accessory to the girls. Sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder what was even he doing there.

In the original game, the player was seen as a total loser and he would have to use his perseverance in order to change the heart of the girls. This was both expressed in the girls dialogue and the game's mechanics. In HP2, the player is instantly acknowledged as handsome and attractive without passing any challenges or trials, making the whole experience much more meaningless. Additionally, he even isn't recognized by the girls after a successful date, like he was never there.

The only clear upgrade are the puzzles. Many more mechanics were added to them, making no puzzle the same and the experience much more challenging and entertaining.

However, without any meaningful reward, you can't help but wonder why even bother doing them. Unlike the original, there even aren't any steam achievements or trading cards, which always were fun bonuses. Especially when the original HuniePop has some the best steam backgrounds to this day.

All style but no substance.

The game is called Cyberpunk but the game has little do with it as a genre. The main story is hot garbage. The side quests are boring. The RPG elements are irrelevant. And much more...

Even if they manage to get the game running properly, its still a waste of time.

It's truly a waste of potential and a huge marketing scam.

The only hope i see for this game is that the modding community can make something out of it in the future.

Great waifus, soundtrack and it's free! What more could you ask for?

TL;DR: If you are a Tsubasa anime fan and want to play for the story, I recommend buying for around ~20$, otherwise stay away from this.

-- EDIT: Patch 1.10 --
A new patch was released a few days ago with 3 new DLC characters and a new story route (3 months after the games release), which are always welcome additions. But it also included a brand new feature not written in the games patch notes: MICROTRANSACTIONS!

That's right! Microtransactions on top of a 60€ incomplete game filled with bugs, softlocks and hackers!

No, but seriously, go f*ck yourself Tamsoft & Bandai.

-- END EDIT --

Please take this review with a pinch of salt, it is more of a vent than a review but it still holds truth and represents my experience with this game.

This game is a very mixed bag for me. I am in a love-hate relationship with it.

The good : The story mode is great. There are 2 modes for the story, one where you play as the young Tsubasa and his team for the national junior championship. And the "New Hero" mode where you create your own character and play for Japan for the World Cup.

As a nostalgic Tsubasa fan, this game truly shines in Story mode. The in-game animations are fun to watch and faithful to the manga/anime. The story plays itself in a nice 3D visual novel style with some dialogue choices for the player.

In the "New Hero" mode, you play with your custom player. The better your performance is, during the game, the better stats the custom player receives. You can select original players (Tsubasa, Hyugga, etc...) to make friendships with and learn their moves/skills. This makes for some really cool movesets combos and allows for your creativity to flow into the game.

It's a really fun mode to make new character builds and do some re-runs to see new events/story development with players or learn new hidden moves. This is the mode where I spent most of my time playing this game.

Mixed : Play Point(PP) shop. There is a in-game currency in Captain Tsubasa called PP. You gain these points by completing overall challenges, doing story challenges and increasing Friendships. With PP, you can unlock new cosmetic items for your player and buy card packs. The cosmetic item shop is fine but the card packs are terrible.

The card packs include player cards, that increase the level at which you gain Friendship with that player, and consumable items that increase the stat growth of your custom player during "New Hero". I have a real problem with this because there is a real discrepancy between the amount of PP you get for each run and the amount of items you use in that run. Once your overall challenges are done, there is a real lack of gain for PP points without any place to really grind/play for it.

And i hate the fact that you share the same currency between cosmetic items and packs. After 100 hours, I barely have any cosmetics for my custom players. That's because if I want to grow the best stats for my character, I have to spend everything in card packs just to get a few decent items. I think cosmetic items should be unlocked on challenges or friendship goals, so you can use all your PP in card packs freely.

The bad : The online. It's unplayable. I don't even know where to start with this one. You spend 15-30 minutes searching for a match so it can be ruined by terrible latency, lack of any collision register, miracle goals or straight-out softlocks. For brevity sakes, I'm just gonna give some examples that happened to me:
- There is a very good chance for the ball to jump randomly in the air into oblivion, during any long pass or corner kick.
- The game can freeze during a goal celebration and either player must leave to end the game. Whoever leaves, loses the game and receives penalties for quitting mid-game.
- Miracle Goals. Some shots have a slight chance to be instant goals, bypassing the goalkeeper and defenders health. So no matter how much character stats or how well you play, there is a chance of you drawing or losing the game.
- Once, the ball got stuck under the ground and neither team could reach it, making that half-time unplayable.
- Sometimes, the game makes it impossible for you to select your own players, making it impossible to make them move or pass. The game comes to a dead-end because the goalkeeper cannot pass without him selected.
- The run animations can straight out crash making it impossible to steal the ball from that player.
- It is impossible to pause mid-game, making substitutions only possible in half-time.
- It is possible to greatly stall for time after your first goal without any consequence or punishment.

It is no wonder most people never play again after their first match.

The Terrible:: Predatory gameplay incentives and marketing schemes. This last patch introduced the CC shop. A new currency that allows to buy better items than the PP shop. This currency can only be gained with the new dailes/ weeklies mechanics. And this is where I draw the line with this game.

Why is there a second in-game currency in the game? If you want to make items rarer, you could just increase their price or lower their drop chance in the card packs. There is no need for another currency (Although I have my theories on why they put it).

This game never needed dailies or weeklies. Not only is it mostly an offline game but people won't spend 15-30 minutes waiting to play a mode which is riddled with bugs and crashes so they can do their daily for some few useless virtual points. If you want people to play the online mode, you have fix the mess that are the online games and smooth the matchmaking/gameplay. None of these issues were addressed in this patch.

One month after its release, the game goes to 40% which is a spit in their supporter's faces. They still haven't addressed any issues that shouldn't even be in the release of this game. Their priority is to implement some shady currency (which would probably be monetized if there were any online players yet) with dailies/weeklies in hopes that their players will stick a bit longer. After one month, they haven't released any character from the DLC pass, which, at this point, I probably think they aren't even coded yet.

Conclusion: This game was released incomplete and unpolished. What it should be a fun/casual football anime game was ruined by rushed releases, weird game mechanics, predatory rewards systems and greed. I was hopeful for many things to be fixed in this patch (1.07), but now I have no doubts that this game was a shamless attempt to install a 60$ predatory micro-transaction online system inside the Captain Tsubasa fandom.

The offline story is still pretty great though. So if you are a Tsubasa fan, I still recommend buying this game when it goes to 20€, which shouldn't take too long considering its current development.

Thank you for reading my review. I would appreciate any criticism you have for it.

Regards, ThunderEye

I really want to like this game. There are really cute waifus, great sexy art and some excellent writing, but the gameplay is just horrendous.

The only way to get any progress in this game is by buying with swirlies (game currency).
You want to level up? You buy levels.
You want to develop relationships and see more events? You buy gifts.
You want better gear, other costumes or food? You buy them.

This makes the game a huge grind fest for swirlies, where 90% of your time is killing mobs. I would rather be more rewarded for exploring and interacting with the world, rather than just blindly killing mobs.

Add insult to injury, you have to walk everywhere without any means of transport or teleport. Both the loading and save times of this game are ridiculous, taking up to 20 seconds sometimes, anytime you enter a new area or want to save the game. Not to mention bugs and softlocks everywhere.

My saves got corrupted after a new version was launched, meant i had to restart my whole progress at some point.

Achievements sometimes don't trigger on steam, making you reload just to get them.

Something as basic as a map is missing, meaning that you will spend your first 10 hours wondering aimlessly, just trying to learn the map.

All of these things just make the game incredibly frustrating to play. (At least, without any cheats).

At this point in time, its impossible for me to recommend a game in such a state. But I will edit this review when these issues get addressed and the game gets substantially better.