Harem Kingdom (ハーレムキングダム) Review

The first time I heard that SMEE — the “matchmaking game maker” — was doing a harem game, I was shocked. SMEE has always emphasized “pure love,” and not just that, but a kind of “realistic romance.” I’ve praised them for doing that well more than once. And then, before they’d even done it well a few times, they got cocky.

What’s weirder is that they basically swapped identities with their parent company HOOKSOFT.

In other words, HOOKSOFT, which usually pulls settings out of its ass, started doing pure love. And SMEE, which usually does pure love, started doing settings.

Sure, both SMEE and HOOKSOFT have done settings plenty of times, with all sorts of gimmicky elements — “gradual conquest,” “a friend of a friend,” “corporate drone matchmaking,” “conquering and being conquered” — but none of that shit ever mattered. What sticks with you is always the bickering between the protagonist and the heroines.

So I think the core competitive strength of SMEE, and of the now-SMEE-fied HOOKSOFT, has become “couple bickering skits.” Nobody cares what story you’re telling, nobody expects any wild developments, nobody even thinks you’ll throw in a “memory flashback.” The core is always that “lovers’ quarrel,” and that’s exactly what everyone wants to see. Actually, don’t underestimate “lovers’ quarrels” — not many people can do them well, which is one of the reasons I keep praising SMEE.

If I were the president of SMEE, I’d lock in the protagonist and heroine names. Copy-pasting the same template of “unpopular protagonist suddenly hits his popular phase” every time is exhausting. Just use one name, like Wu Laoji or whatever, and put the protagonist’s name in every game title: Wu Laoji’s Country Adventure, Wu Laoji’s Matchmaking Odyssey, Wu Laoji and Miss Wang’s Space Adventure, Wu Laoji and the King of Another World… Keep that up and forget sales — SMEE could become famous overnight, get a theatrical film, and build a national IP.

But that pattern feels familiar… Oh right, speaking of “another world,” this time SMEE actually did go with an “isekai” setting. The title is pretty blunt too: Harem Kingdom. The protagonist suddenly gets transported to another world, becomes its king, and gets a harem.

To this day I still want to complain that this setting is just so not-SMEE!

But the content is still very SMEE.

The protagonist isn’t the only one who gets transported — his childhood friend Hikari comes along too. They arrive in another world and are told the protagonist is “the new king summoned by the sacred stone.” Since he’s king, a harem gets arranged for him: neighboring countries offer princesses as wives, and the chancellor tells him the more wives the better, because it determines the nation’s fate.

Turns out the king has to regularly cast spells on that “sacred stone.” Producing minerals, magic stones, all that crap requires the king to do it personally — personally preside, personally command. All this “personally” naturally drains the king’s stamina, so he needs to replenish it. And the way to replenish is to take more wives and replenish more magic.

But does having more wives really replenish magic? Isn’t that just slapping on Light Mage’s Mana Drain?

Anyway, that’s not the point.

Even though this is a harem game, the dialogue is still very SMEE. The protagonist’s reactions to arriving in another world and his interactions with Hikari carry the entire first half. Honestly, if the game had kept going like that — as an “otherworld adventure,” walking the line between harem and not-harem, and eventually returning to the real world after some chaos — that would’ve been a fine route too. It would’ve felt fresh and COOOL～

But the game does the opposite and starts… plot exposition and development.

Yep, SMEE’s game started doing memory flashbacks and unfolding the plot! Shocked my mom!

The game starts explaining that our protagonist was originally from this otherworld country — the illegitimate child of the king before last and a prostitute. He has an older sister, who is the current chancellor. The bastard child hid in the outskirts for years, cared for by his sister, until one day he met Tina, the sole surviving princess of another country. They hit it off, then suddenly a green light from the sky sucked them both away and transported them to Japan. The two became orphans — the bastard child is our protagonist, and Tina was named “Hikari” and adopted by a different family, becoming his childhood friend.

What, you ask about the king before last? Supposedly he was gay, like Miss Wang — deep in the closet. Refused to sleep with women and got drained to death by the stone.

Since the protagonist and Hikari aren’t native Japanese, when the country was in its most danger, the chancellor performed a summoning ritual and brought them back…

Which is where the protagonist’s initial transportation came from.

Honestly, I still can’t figure out what the point of this whole setting was. To show they “care about story”? To prove they can “tie everything together”? But remember, SMEE’s core strength was never any of that — it was the “married couple bickering” in the first half.

In fact, most of the game is still those “married couple quarrels,” just with a lot more “five women fighting over one man” in the second half.

I have to mention SMEE’s route structure here. The game claims to be a harem, so picking a single heroine seems pointless, but there are still heroine routes — they just all go through the “harem” process. The game divides harems into several types: “harmonious harem,” “infighting harem,” “protagonist-centered harem,” and so on… all dressed up with “otherworld-style” flavor.

Personally, it’s just “pick which harem drama you want to watch.” I don’t have a problem with that structure. I still think…

All that “the protagonist goes back and then comes back again, and the chancellor is actually his sister” stuff is redundant, boring, and kills the “freshness of being transported to another world.”

If it’s a “harem world” and it’s an SMEE game, why not just go all out with the comedy, learn from those internet dramas, take the fun all the way, and throw in some true love at the end (even though SMEE’s HCGs have very low utility)? Wouldn’t it be nice for the game to end happily like that?

Overall I’m positive about SMEE’s game this time. We should encourage every attempt at innovation. The “isekai harem” setting isn’t new, but for SMEE it’s genuinely not easy. Stepping out of the comfort zone and challenging new content deserves recognition.

But I also hope SMEE plays to its strengths and avoids its weaknesses. Just because you’re doing “transportation” doesn’t mean you have to goddamn fill in a whole setting. And even if you do… what about losing the “immersion” the games usually have?

Before, the protagonist was always a loser, and even shut-ins could enter their own name and roleplay as him.

Now the protagonist is literally descended from anotherworld royalty. Facing the name input, I could only type “Zhu Niubi,” because only that name suits the status.

Oh right, about the article title. I heard a well-known Chinese fan translation group started translating this game and rendered Harem Kingdom as “Harem Emperor.”

Truly a Zhu Niubi-style English translation. To commemorate me naming the protagonist Zhu Niubi while playing, I’ll use that name for this article.