天下制覇

I think if we keep squeezing, we can get even more blood from this stone!

Love Love Maximum is Prism Heart is officially being numbered as Prism Heart 2.5, but doesn’t actually shed any light on what the ‘real’ ending to Prism Ark is. The real Prism Ark, not the strange and unnatural creature that ended up being the anime. Unlike Prism Ark, there’s no real gameplay involved. It’s just a series of short epilogue stories plus one much much longer new one featuring a couple new characters in what could generously be called a ‘harem’ path, but should probably more likely be called the ‘Hyaweh is a man-whore’ path. There is a mini puzzle game included, but meh.

Anyway, the experience started off poorly for me since I unexpectedly had the volume up a little high, so my first contact with the game was Filia shrieking "PAJAMAS SOFT KANNA!" at me, and as I scrambled for the volume controls, "PRISM ARK LOVE LOVE MAXIMUM!!" followed by the rest of the cast all scrambling to assault my ear drums. The game can’t really be 100% blamed for that, but let’s just say that we didn’t get off on the right foot.

Being a right thinking man, the first choice of the stories came down to Fel or Kagura. Like a fool, I clicked on Fel and was immediately thrown into porn. Hoping it was just a fluke, I backed out and went through Kagura’s story, which did not start with porn, but… and you’ll notice that this will quickly become a recurring theme, Kagura took every other chance that she and Hyaweh were alone to sneak a quickie in. Anyway, a happy little story about Priecia coming to terms with her own feelings for Kagura and happy confessions of friendship and caring followed.

Not quite ready to tackle Fel’s story, and fearing yet being curious of Filia’s, I quickly churned through Priecia’s marriage preparations, which was the epitome of tsundere to a ツ.

ANNNNYYWWWWAAYYYYYY… I started on checking out the ‘harem’ story, featuring Ettil. Who is this mysterious full bodied woman with the green hair and blue accessories… and why is she never seen in the same room as Litte? It is a mystery. Or is she not not really Litte? Oh ho. Now I’m confused. Anyway, aside from having a chest that puts even Kagura to shame and the miniest of mini-skirts, Ettil seems to have an almost magnetic attraction to Hyaweh’s package. So do most of the girls in this path for that matter. I think every time Hyaweh was alone with one of them, they jumped his bones.

Still, it’s not until the late night King Game that the story really became entertaining for me. Well, the athletic festivities were fun, but the King Game took the cake. Frankly, I’m amazed that they let Jung, Ein and Acty play with them, even if they didn’t make it to the *ahem* final rounds. And of course, being dedicated to porn, it’s no surprise that this would eventually lead… places. I’m amazed that it took thirty (30!!!) rounds before things got suggestive. I’m pretty sure that’s longer than Kagura’s entire story. Then Filia was dared to show her panties, Hyaweh peeked, and within the next couple rounds, Kagura and Ettil had him in a headlock as Filia seized his pants (but thankfully retired from the action to feel up Fel instead of proceeding to the main course). You can probably guess how things progressed from there. Let’s just say that while Hyaweh tried, he still falls short of Taiga in number of ladies pleased at once. Nobody will top Taiga’s conquest. Nobody.

That was enough of Prism Ark for a day, so I let it stew before picking it up today to finish off Ettil’s story. There wasn’t too much more actually, though the Angel part at the end was great. Angels come swarming in like the lions from Voltron and… suffice it to say… Fel and I’veAlreadyForgottenHerName’s Angel powers are… certainly something else. At least Kisarov’s statue survived. That’s the important part.

Curiosity finally got the better of me, and I poked at Fel and Filia’s arcs really quickly. Fel, we quickly learn, is quite the deviant. It’s probably best to just leave it at that, but let’s just say that shot of her flying with Hyaweh is only the start of one of her scenes and there was also a golem raging around, feeling up Kagura and Priecia.I took somewhat of a breath of relief when I found out that Filia doesn’t actually have sex with Hyaweh in her story, thus maintaining one of the few non-incestuous relationships in hentai game history, although she does french him at the end. Unfortunately, her story is all about people barging into her room and imagining her having sex with Hyaweh. It’s a fine line, but… I think I’d rather just purge my mind with bleach and move on.

There were two other games included with Love^2, Puzzle Ark (ULTIMATE BATTLE!) and Challenge Ark. Incongruously enough, Puzzle Ark is what the original Prism Ark’s battle system should have been. It’s basically just a collection of battles under certain conditions and with limited Prisms available that you have to figure out how to beat. Some of them are embarassingly easy… like Filia and Hyaweh vs Priecia. Hyaweh only has about 6 Prisms available, one does a ton of damage but reduces Hyaweh to 1 HP, and another does more damage the less HP Hyaweh has. Combined with Priecia always attacking Hyaweh (and auto-killing the party at round 3) and Filia’s ‘Cover’ Prism… it doesn’t take much of a leap to figure out the solution. Of note though… many of the challenges are especially weird. The Rank III challenges, for example… feature the low polygon count, blocky characters completely nude, which is about as erotic as Lego pornography. There are also challenges featuring the characters in swimsuits fighting against giant watermelons though… so.. you know… it runs the gamut. I lost interest before I unlocked more CG, though I think I can safely assume that it’s yet more porn.

Challenge Ark is pretty much just a modified rummy game. I guess since it’s from Japan, it’s based on Mah Jong… but a very very crippled version of it. The goal is to get three triples of the various character tiles by drawing and discarding each turn. Once you reach two triples and one double, you can declare Richi, and from that point on, your hand is set (you must discard the same tile you draw) until you win (or lose), but if your opponent discards your winning tile, you can pick it up for the win. There’s really very little strategy involved here, except to note what’s being discarded and what’s left and once your opponent declares Richi, try not to discard what they need. Some hands are also worth more points than others, but since you don’t know what’s worth what until you get that hand once… and there are over 100 possible winning hands… don’t count on that actually being useful. There’s a short story mode attached to Challenge Ark, but it got nonsensical fast and was basically an excuse for Hyaweh to bang Priecia, Karen, Hell and Litte one more time, so I really didn’t pay close attention.

At any rate, most of the disc is straight up fanservice and sex, which is how it’s being advertised, so I wasn’t really that surprised. I had been hoping for some more of the nice art scenes and the wacky cartoonish CGs, but there’s an almost even ratio between those and the pornography. Take it as you will. Etiil’s story certainly entertained me enough for me to not regret checking it out, but the others were a bit weaker than I was expecting. I don’t think I’ve got the will power to give a real run through Litte, Kagura, Filia or Hell’s stories until boredom creeps in, so don’t count on hearing about them from me any time soon and the ‘games’ are somewhat lacking. Still, if you’re a rabid Prism Ark fan and you’re desperate for as much blood as they can wring out of this franchise, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. It’s not like they were advertising it as an epic continuation anyway… just a sex romp which is pretty much exactly what I saw. I think Hyaweh needs to learn to keep Ala Gladius in his pants, because he is so going to have some kind of horrible sexual disease after this one.