Title: ラブピカルポッピー！
Developer: SMEE
Release Date: 26th April 2024
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~20 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
Due to their father’s crippling debts Tetsuya and his younger sister Suzuka have lived a frugal life in a small apartment. However their lives suddenly change when their home is rendered uninhabitable following a fire. With no roof over their heads, no money or jobs to fall back on, and their only parent working in a different city they find themselves at a loss for where to go from here.
Luckily, Suzuka manages to find a place to stay at one of her high school’s all-girl dorms. When Tetsuya goes along to talk to the head of the dorm, an eccentric old woman, she offers him a job looking after the students in the dorm & working in the attached cafe in exchange for a room. As if he’d refuse an offer like that?!
With summer quickly approaching, just what awaits Tetsuya in his new role?
Thoughts
For some reason, a game being made to commemorate some sort of anniversary or event always makes me have higher expectations and hopes for it. Lovepical Poppy – a title celebrating Smee’s 15th anniversary & 1.5million game sales – is no exception to this, and I found myself really looking forward to this release. Did this manage to live up to its claims of being a great moege?
If I had to describe Lovepical Poppy in one phrase it would be that it feels like an old-school moege made for the modern day. It very much has the same vibe and colourful cast as say an older Smee game like Loverable but at the same time feels like a reflection of 2020’s culture (I mean we get a social media influencer heroine). As someone who enjoys going back and playing older games, I actually enjoyed this aspect of Lovepoppy and it made me feel nostalgic a little.
Given that this is a Smee title, there is a lot of humour and this game clearly doesn’t take itself that seriously, with an almost absurdist approach to a lot of the jokes. While some of the jokes didn’t land with me personally, there were more than enough that I found the game overall to be pretty bemusing.
As fun as the game is, it has one glaring issue – the romantic progression between the common route & start of the heroine routes is terrible. It kind of works for some heroines who already have an interest in the protagonist but for the others the confession feels awkward and rushed. This is one of the most important parts of a moege for me so I can’t say I appreciated the way the game handled the early parts of the heroine routes.
Nozomi
As far as the heroines go, Nozomi feels the closest to your typical Smee heroine (if that makes sense). She’s a weirdo in the absolute best way and is completely adorable. She has a wicked sense of humour and her crush on the protagonist is also a source of entertainment during the common route. I would say that Nozomi’s route was one of the better ones in the game and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Suzuka
Suzuka is Tetsuya’s younger sister and is also pretty funny with her cynical takes, particularly about relationships. Suzuka’s route is another good one, with a good mix of comedic and sweet moments. If you want drama with your imouto route then this is not the place to get it.
Miu
Reflecting the modern setting of the game, Miu is an online Micro Influencer focused on fashion and beauty. Miu is an interesting character by way of the fact she’s kind of a piece of trash – I can’t say I liked her as such but she was fun at points. I’m more surprised it’s taken so long for social media to creep its way into eroge.
Tamaki
Tamaki is the dorm prefect, and thus is in charge of helping to manage the students at the dorm. This makes her a mature, kind, and somewhat firm girl. Before I had played the game Tamaki was the heroine I was most interested in – she spends so much time looking after others that she just wants someone to spoil her and that’s adorable. Sadly her route was pretty weak overall. There was a particular lack of perspective changes and use of the other system quirks in her & Miu’s routes.
Tanpopo
We get two side heroines in this game – colourful + kind gyaru Tanpopo & the self-depreciating cafe manager Ayako. I liked both heroines a lot – Tanpopo is so sweet & a healing presence, whereas Ayako is actually a decent route for an adult heroine. I just wish these two had longer routes!
There’s only a small number of named side characters or those who have sprites, they were fine and were typically used for comedic roles. It really sucked for a game set in a girls dorm that there were no sprites for the other dorm residents aside from the heroines.
Ayako
I personally really liked the cute and colourful artwork from Hanamaru – not to sound like a broken record but it felt like a callback to early Smee games. There were enough CGs overall. The backgrounds were similarly nice. No complaints here.
The sound department was pretty decent too. I enjoyed the upbeat electro-pop style of BGM and the opening song in particular has really grown on me. Despite the game using a less familiar cast than usual, I thought the voice acting was great. Nekota Mike as Nozomi was my personal standout.
Despite the map choice you can visit all four heroines without penalty
The game features a lot of unusual “gameplay” elements. Discounting the meaningless map choices which are nothing new, the first of these is little speech bubbles that pop up during the story that you can click on to read a heroine’s thoughts. These ranged from sweet to hilarous and were a simple but fun addition – I’d love to see this come back in another title. The other is that you can turn the H scenes into a point and click game, essentially a worse version of the Doukyuusei remakes. This was fine I guess but I personally didn’t see the appeal.
Final Thoughts
My Score: 7.5/10
While Lovepical Poppy may have nailed the comedy, it missed the memo a bit on the romance aspect of a romcom. That being said, it was a light-hearted & fun game with a colourful cast of characters so I did enjoy the game overall.
If you’re a fan of Smee’s usual sense of humour then this should probably be on your radar, otherwise I would recommend to people who are interested in a particular heroine.
I personally hope we get a fandisc for this game but who knows.
I’m definitely quickly becoming quite the Smee enjoyer – I plan to play the Loverable fandisc next from their back catalogue & then maybe Pure x Connect at the end of the year?
Thanks for reading!
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