Just like the recently released Suzumiya Haruhi no Tomodai for the Playstation 2, this game cashes in on the popular series and is exclusively available for the Playstation Portable. I would have loved to review this game properly(even though it’s quite old), but heck, I couldn’t get whatever that’s taking place on screen due to obvious reasons. Instead, I’ll just mention bits and parcels of the game so that you can get a better idea of what to expect from it, in case for some reason you might want try this for yourself.

First off, instead of a lazy visual novel spinoff, you can tell that quite a lot of effort has been put into developing this game, evident right from the moment the familiar anime intro is played, with its fair share of unlockables and fun minigames that should be able to please the average Haruhi fanboy.

Of course, before delving into into the juicier parts of the game, players must first wade through the dating sim aspect of it, and because I have no idea what to do, I cheated and downloaded the complete savefile instead lawl. Still it looks to be decent looking, with multiple endings for the characters including Tsuruya and Kyon’s Imouto.

Apart from the obligatory CG gallery, other unlockables include a BGM test and the minigames that you would have played in the main storyline;

Beach Volleyball - Don’t be expecting a full fledged game of beach volleyball with this. This minigame mainly involves you timing button presses before the time limit expires. It gets progressively difficult, but by difficult I mean an additional 3 buttons for you to input before the time runs out…

The Day Of Sagittarius - Fans should know this by now. This is very same game(to put it loosely) that the computer club challenged Haruhi and her minions to in one of the episodes. Slightly more complex than the first minigame, this game pits you Battleships style against the AI, where you deploy your selected captains from a choice of any of the SOS Brigade members, each with their own strengths and weaknesses on a grid-like map. You then move around the battlefield blasting your opponents into smithereens, accompanied with CG from the show of you doing so. Fun for the first few tries, but it gets repetitive after a while.

Love Poker - A straightforward game of poker where you play as Kyon battling against characters from the show. For the sake of this review, I decided to choose a topless Itsuki as my opponent, in hopes that I can ravage his sweet, sweet ass after winning a match or vice versa. After randomly mashing some buttons(I don’t know how to play poker) I somehow managed to win, but unfortunately, no gay secks scene orz

Yuki Alarm Clock - Just like its namesake, this is pretty mundane and somewhat pointless. Oh, and it has an alarm clock feature too ^^

And before I end, here’s some random gameplay screenshots:

So there you have it, Haruhi in your pocket. This is probably worth a purchase if you’re a fan as it comes with goodies like an art book, a Sony PSP stand, a UMD case, headphones and keychains. For everyone else, don’t bother with this unless you know moonspeak and have a penchant for anime based visual novels. Shin out.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under The Melancholy Of Suzumiya Haruhi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.