Love Hina Advance - Historical, if not so Enjoyable

14/02/24

It’s February, love is in the air, but of course, I’m just here writing about obscure dating sim visual novels instead of being out and about with my partner. Of course, she’s right next to me as I write that, but I just wanted to find some way to poke fun at myself. Anywho, since it’s seemingly the most romantic day of the year, if you believe in that shite, what better time to tackle one of the seemingly few dating sims available on the GBA, an adaptation of one of the most famous romance-harem anime ever made… even if I’m not quite sure if it quite hits the mark or not from an outside view. Either way, this week, we’re taking a look at Love Hina Advance.

The fact that I’m playing Love Hina Advance at all is interesting in itself. From what I can tell, Love Hina was one of the first games to ever receive a translation on the GBA, period. Of course, visual novels are all about the, y’know, *writing*, being able to actually read what you’re doing, and saying, is way more important in Love Hina for reasons I’ll get into soon. Either way, this is a piece of history - on Romhacking.net, it’s the oldest listed GBA translation, which is just.. Fascinating. Were people *that* obsessed with Love Hina back then? Frankly, I’m not one of those people. I barely know the first thing about Love Hina, beyond some of the character designs, but I *did*, the better part of twenty years ago, play one of those bootleg dating sims that were all over Newgrounds back in the day that were the most barebones, poorly designed experiences you can imagine… but it’s still fond to think back on. So, more or less, I’m going into this blind, beyond knowing Love Hina is one of the cornerstones of the harem anime genre that’s… sadly consumed much of the industry, filling so many anime seasons with shlock after shit, again and again. But that’s neither here nor there - for now, we’re taking a look at Love Hina Advance.

For the most part, Love Hina Advance is a pretty standard dating sim. Via normal pathetic everyman protagonist Keitaro, you’ll be playing through a rough enough adaptation of the Love Hina anime, befriending, romancing, and far more often, be brutalized by these lovely ladies in unequal measure. Suffice to say, all the mainstays of the genre are here; a lot of text, still images of girls - albeit, this time many of the screenshots are seemingly plucked from the anime - and getting thrown a choice here and there, though the game is remarkably more linear than most other dating sims, with any real difference in romance routes only occurring towards the latter half of the game. Of course, the biggest draw for these kinds of games, especially as someone who doesn’t have any real knowledge of the love HIna franchise, is the girls, and they’re… well, they’re fine, I suppose? With more than half a dozen girls to pursue, you do have a decent set of choices to work with, but they are ultimately walking tropes. Naru is the tsundere, borderline abusive girl, Shinobu is the demure, anxious mess, Su is the bizarre, almost otherworldly foreigner, and so on. These aren’t bad, per say, but they’re tropey in the way that Star Wars is tropey - they’re progenitors, at least to an extent, of the kind of tropes present in the harem anime genre. But yeah, the writing isn’t really anything special, but I am someone who exists outside the franchise, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it works better for someone more familiar.

Two major mechanics help separate Love Hina from more traditional dating sims. Firstly, our protagonist has a health bar. Being one of *those* kind of harem series, Keitaro frequently - and I mean *frequently* - suffers physical abuse at the hands of the many ladies of the inn. I ain’t going into the ethics and morality of this kind of comedy, because that’s an argument that’ll never end. Anyway, whenever Keitaro upsets or accidentally pervs out on one of the girls, he’ll normally get slugged, stabbed, powerbombed, or who-knows-what else, and he’ll lose a health point. These can both be caused by picking the wrong option in dialogue choices, or just naturally as a part of the plot. Run out of health points, and it lights out for Keitaro, who seemingly… maybe actually dies? It’s kinda unclear. The other main mechanic is, since this is a harem title with a decent chunk of girl’s constantly advocating for your attention, whenever a romanceable girl is on screen, you’ll get a little meter of hearts showing how well you’ve endeared yourself to her, which is constantly in flux as Keitaro is almost constantly somehow pulling out some really thoughtful gestures… whilst being an accidental pig at the same time, so expect to see the heart meter rising and dropping almost constantly. But yeah, beyond these two major mechanics, this is just like every other dating sim, just… smaller, I guess. Maybe these mechanics would’ve helped the game standout, but unfortunately, I think they create more problems than they solve.

The issue I had with the health point system reared its head pretty early on. Let me set the scene: I’d just completed the second chapter of the game, which introduced Shinobu. Going into chapter 3, which brings Motoko into the fold, I had three health points remaining. No matter what permutation of choices I made, no matter how many times I reloaded to try and slip through and get to the next bath to regain health, it was impossible. All of the options seemed to end with Motoko beating the shit out of Keitaro, and she beats him up at least once no matter *what* you do, so… yeah. For that save file, I was essentially soft-locked, there and then, and since I assumed I couldn’t be screwed *that* thoroughly, I’d only been using a sole save file, forcing me to replay the forty-five minutes or so I’d only played, much to my chagrin. Honestly, I should’ve been splitting my save *anyway* since I didn’t realize how linear this game would actually be, but oh well.

On that note, the game’s ‘heart’ mechanic also falls flat. As this is a generally quite linear game, any branches that occur only pop up near the two-third mark of the game, when you actually go on a date with a girl of your choosing. From what I can gather, your heart level doesn’t really factor into this much at all, as the date itself is where you’ll get the majority of the heart points - assuming you don’t royally screw it up - needed to reach that girl’s particularly ending, making the whole raising and lowering of the heart points through the rest of the game feel relatively pointless. Honestly, I was getting a bit stressed as I felt I just couldn’t control the heart levels of the girl I was trying to date, but now knowing I didn’t have to really worry about that from the jump leaves me a little bummed out in retrospect.

On the other hand, and to be honest, Love Hina Advance visuals are actually really impressive. One of my biggest criticisms - and secret joys, based on how awful they usually look - of many licensed titles is that when they pull footage from their source material, it just looks atrocious. Think when Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers throws a few cuts of the movie in, and how much you had to blink at the pixelated mess before you. Love Hina doesn’t look amazing, but the vast majority of its visuals are stills from the show, and it actually uses a decent selection of short clips that keep the pace of some of its most comedic moments nice and steady. The music certainly isn’t quite on the same level, having a very safe, forgettable mood to them. If you’ve ever watched an anime before, think of the most generic ‘walking down the street song’, or ‘sad, introspective mourning’ theme, and that’s exactly what Love Hina sounds like. Still, the only real criticism I have of the visuals is the tiny text box, making pretty much all the dialogue and prose come out line by line, which coupled with its relatively slow text speed, may make a fast reader like myself more than a bit frustrated. Of course, I’m not sure if this was a case in the native version of the game, as you can put a lot more Japanese characters into a text box of that size then English ones, so I can’t really blame either the devs or the translators, and it’s nowhere near a dealbreaker.

From what I can tell, Love Hina Advance, through and through is a stripped down, yet loyal adaptation of its source material, and that’ll be enough for the die-hards of the franchise, but that’s ultimately a sticking point for me. My frustrations with the breakneck pace, stupid violence-based health system and general apathy for the genre and setting… it’s not the game, or franchise’s fault, but I’m just not connected to Love Hina. If I’d seen the anime, maybe I’d know which dialogue options would result in not (or at least, less) getting the shit beaten out of me, or I’d have a girl that I’d gravitate to, just like that, but without that connection, it’s just an average, slightly unique dating sim that only really sticks out to me due to the historical nature of it’s translations. I don’t think fans will adore the game, it’s nothing *that* crazy, even I can tell that, but if one gives a shit about Love Hina, I think there’s something special here for you. Otherwise… eh? There’s many other visual novels - maybe not on the GBA - that are probably better worth your time.

Love Hina Advance, despite it’s bells and whistles, is a generally more linear run-of-the-mill dating sims. If you’ve got the slightest idea of what that entails, odds are you know how Love Hina Advance is going to go. Its integration of the comedic violence so inherent to the show, bundled with the generally excellent graphics, help it stick out here and there, but there’s not a ton in play for those not already enamored with the series. Despite some setbacks, I don’t think it’s a particularly bad game, nor a notable one, but more so then much of the schlock I wade through in the Game Boy Abyss, I think you could make a good bet that Love HIna fans will walk away decently satisfied - and with how sparse the genre is on the Game Boy Advance, maybe you’ll just enjoy a different slice of life.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Love Hina Advance! Another quick and easy one this week, and hopefully I’ll be getting back into the swing of my regular reviews this year! As always, thanks for all the kind words, and you can find me over at Twitter @Lemmy7003, email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com or cckaiju@gmail.com if you have any requests or questions, or follow me on Twitch @GameBoyAbyss. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you in my next review!