LoveKami: Healing Harem Review – Shrine Chores Just Became More Exciting

The title for developer MoeNovel’s newest visual novel, LoveKami: Healing Harem, leaves little to the imagination about what you’re getting yourself into. If I may break it down just a little for you, I can tell you that this is definitely a love story and most definitely a harem story. So when jumping into the game, my first in the LoveKami series, I had an idea of what to expect, but still, I was holding out for surprises.

I don’t consider myself the biggest fan of the harem route, surprising considering how much I’ll joke about it, but LoveKami: Healing Harem is one of those visual novels that you have to go into with the mindset that you aren’t going to break new ground with this story. By doing that, I think there’s plenty of fun and interesting moments that happen during this relatively short visual novel.

LoveKami: Healing Harem stars the watcher of a shrine named Akira. He normally tends to the chores and keeps things in order. With that said, he also has a knack for helping people, which ends up getting him in trouble when a Tatarigami Goddess named Yukari shows up at the shrine. A Tatarigami is a goddess that most people keep away from, they’ll bring misfortune and suffering to anyone who comes into contact with them. Her missions that day was too rid herself of the Tatarigami title but finds out that Akira can touch her without being affected by her Tatari. This triggers her to fall madly in love with him and instantly ask to marry him.

It sounds desperately silly, but in the context of the game Yukari hasn’t had contact with many people and after finding Akira she was just a little overwhelmed, very yandere. However, Akira is known for helping Goddesses and it just so happens that this Samaritan has been spreading his good deeds around to other goddesses who have their eye on him, Shion, the Goddess of Misfortune (who are hated as much as the Tatarigami), and Kaede, a former Tatarigami. During the first hour, all three characters are introduced and so begins the quest to meet all their needs and fall in love.

As I said, this is not going to be a ground-breaking story, but the characters are all charming in their own way and they do begin to grow on you. As the main character, Akira is a strange one to get a grasp on, I found that I didn’t really like most of the time, but I appreciated that he has so much inner dialog with himself to explain his actions. During the common route, which is kinetic, the girls have a contest to win his love, however, as the name of the game suggests, this is a harem and Akira lacks any backbone to make up his mind which makes the whole contest feel useless.

Akira aside, you’re going to want to play LoveKami: Healing Harem for the dialog between the three goddesses. There is no lack of hysterical moments as the three do their best to get Akira’s attention in their own way. What makes it better is when two of the girls momentarily join forces to put down the third, but then realize that they are also competing and quickly switch sides. It’s clear though that Yukari is the most forceful, she’s also the one who seems to be the most off, mentally.

As far as the routes in the game go, players can choose a girl in the middle of the story to complete the story with. These routes usually contain the more romantic moments between Akira and one of the girls. The main route was most likely supposed to Yukari’s, but I think I enjoyed Shion’s the most just because she never really seemed like she cared about Akira until she came out with her issues and showed a different side of her.

Systems in the game are vast and offer enough for players to customize their visual novel experience. I don’t have many complaints although the descriptions of some of the text options were a little confusing at first. I’d also like to point out a really cool system where tips would pop up during the story that explains keywords. However, once these are gone there’s no way to access them, such as, in the glossary or config menu, which was a bummer.

This is an all-ages game, which is the only current version of the game available in all markets. There is no lack of CG scenes which range from just plain adorable to more intimate moments. The character illustrations use the emote system that gives life to the characters, but moments, when the characters are close, cause their illustrations to become a little fuzzy, which I didn’t understand. The backgrounds in the game are all nicely done and there are plenty of locations that the group visits.

LoveKami: Healing Harem can be completed in 6-10 hours. Considering the price of the game and content, I’d say it’s worth it to someone who enjoys female anime trope personalities of girls trying to win the love of a single guy. The game has its moments, but each route ends in a similar way with the conversations between the three main heroines being the main reason you’d want to stick through until the end.

The LoveKami series seems to be on a decent trajectory to getting progressively better with each title. Fans of the series are in for a good time considering it shares similar themes to the previous titles and after playing, it’s made a fan of me. Although predictable and lacking extra content outside of the gallery, LoveKami: Healing Harem is your basic harem package, offering everything you’d want and expect with the added bonus of some funny goddesses.