Chapter One: Introduction
Hentai Girl Division is a lewd shoot-’em-up with RPG elements available on Steam. It took me about two hours to complete the “Campaign” on “ARCADE” mode. Players interested in pursuing “Challenge” missions may enjoy another hour or two of gameplay.
Chapter Two: Gameplay (2/5★)
Section One: Overview
As a “supreme military general”, you are tasked with leading the “Hentai Girl Division” into battle to reclaim your planet. Featuring twenty “campaign” missions and twenty challenges, your mission is to destroy everything Hera throws using by employing an elite team of girls with spaceships.
Section Two: Combat
Enemies approach the player from all sides of the screen. The key to survival is to weave through lasers, bullets and missiles and quickly element the sources. At the end of each level is a boss-type enemy, a challenging fight with devastating, seemingly unavoidable attacks.
Section Three: Progression
Girls can be upgraded by spending “stars” and “Power Cores”, earned by defeating enemies and bosses. In addition to improving overall survivability and damage output, each “level up” grants a single “power point”. Power points provide some control over level-ups, allowing players to selectively invest into girls’ stats and reduce the cooldown of equipped “skills”.
Section Four: Balance
When starting a new game, you may choose “ARCADE” or “HARDCORE” mode; in ARCADE mode, your girls can respawn without penalty; but in HARDCORE mode, the game will “Challenge your limits” by enabling “game overs”.
You’d have to be crazy to bother with HARDCORE mode. It’s not just hard, it’s impossible without playing in a specific way. Despite investing purely into damage, enemies were unreasonably tanky.
As the game progresses, the best defense is offense. Left unchecked, enemies will fill the screen with unavoidable projectiles. Bosses are even worse, boasting instant-kill attacks that are impossible to evade. The skills “Iron Will” and “Time Stop” are mandatory to chain invulnerability. In my experience, allowing bosses a chance to deal damage is a death sentence.
Section Six: Controls
The application controls as expected, but players without a “gaming” mouse may struggle to avoid projectiles. I found myself alternating between DPi settings based on the number and speed of oncoming attacks. There is no way to change speed or adjust sensitivity in-game.
Skills are activated using the “Q” through “E” keys. My fingers were able to remain in a comfortable resting position to fire off skills as needed. Unfortunately, controls cannot be remapped; if you don’t the keys unlocked skills are assigned to you’re just shit out of luck.
Chapter Three: Sexual Content (4/5★)
Section One: Content
There are five unlockable sex-scenes. I couldn’t be bothered to replay the game long enough to unlock the full gallery, so I can’t speak for all images — but from what I could gather, Hentai Girl Division features one consenting scene for each girl.
Section Two: Implementation
Sufficiently leveling up girls unlocks toggleable nudity and one of five sex-scenes.
Section Three: Interactivity
Dialogue may be progressed to advance sexual content.
Section Four: Quality
The art and animation are fun to hear and watch! But the voice acting could be more convincing. It sounds like the girls are reading from a script.
Chapter Four: Story (2/5★)
Section One: Overview
Representing the King of Romia, you have been enlisted to participate in the “Prince of Hera’s birthday party”. Unexpectedly, the Prince is assassinated — assuming Romia was the culprit, Hera launches a full scale invasion to destroy you and all of Romia.
Section Two: Characters
There’s a cat girl, a witch, a knight, a cheerleader, and a non-descript fantasy girl. I’m unsure if Hentai Girl Division was intended as a “spin off” game featuring characters from other publications by Mature Games.
But if had to guess, I think Mature Games just repackaged assets for quick development.
Section Three: Writing
I was so bored. Most of the action that is described does not reflect the actual gameplay. It’s difficult to care when most dialogue is utterly meaningless.
Chapter Five: Sound (1/5★)
Section One: Soundtrack
The music was cool for five minutes — by which point I realized there’s only two tracks for most of the game. Frustratingly, the music was constantly reset, forcing the first few seconds onto my ears every time I clicked onto a new menu or encountered a boss.
I love how the “Level Up” fanfare is played right on top of the “theme” music. As they compete for attention, they form a cacophony that made me regret wearing headphones.
Section Two: Sound Effects
The sound effects aren’t bad on their own, but they are played too many times too quickly. For example, increasing “FIRE RATE” will result in projectiles drowning out the music.
While navigating the game, the user-interface plays back sound as the cursor is rolled over buttons. It’s not atypical for games, but the sound Mature Games chose is especially annoying.
Section Three: Voice Acting
I wasn’t expecting voiced lines! Choosing to “Talk” to waifus from the general’s ship offers a mix of fun voices. But to my dismay, the “campaign” dialogue is not voiced.
Chapter Six: Visuals (2/5★)
Section One: User-interface
A few icons here and there feel like stock assets, but overall the user-interface looks great. Navigation is a non-issue with clear labels and predictable icons. I enjoyed the distinctly sci-fi graphical elements which somewhat match the setting of the story.
Section Two: Graphics
The game doesn’t look that bad, but it’s clear Mature Games just mashed a bunch of premade animations and sprites together to sell a few pieces of sexual content. Everything but the girls look as though they should be in a shitty Google Playstore App .
Chapter Seven: Verdict (2.5/5★)
As an inexpensive shoot-’em-up, Hentai Girl Division provides lots of bang for your buck. Featuring difficult challenges, this game will appeal to bullet hell enthusiasts on a budget. But compared to say, Epido, this game fails to impress with unbalanced gameplay and a general lack of sexual content. If you haven’t already, go buy Epido instead.
