Hanahime Absolute! (ハナヒメ＊アブソリュート!) Review

HanaHime * Absolute! was announced back in 2014, then delayed, delayed, and delayed until now.

Nobody’s heard of the developer Mira, but if you look at the intro and OP, you’ll get a strong sense of déjà vu. Where have I seen this before? That’s right—Twinkle Crusaders (ティンクル☆くるせいだ).

Same artist, same system, same coloring style, same OP animation director, same OP music… basically this is the spiritual successor to Twinkle Crusaders (I’m using “spiritual successor” correctly, right?).

And since it’s a spiritual successor, you know Twinkle Crusaders was a game built around its combat system, so HanaHime * Absolute! is also combat-focused.

As for the story? Who the hell cares…

Fine, let’s talk about the story anyway.

The protagonist’s school organizes a VR-based battle game tournament to decide the rankings of “HanaHime” and “Star Prince.” Phase one is grinding mobs for points; phase two allows PvP to steal others’ points. The protagonist is chosen as the “King,” who can only command and not fight—guess he’s like a coach. And where there’s a King, there’s a Queen. The late game is the protagonist leading his harem to crush everything and finally take down the Last Boss, the “Queen.”

You need to clear two playthroughs to meet the Queen. First run, you can pursue any heroine (doesn’t really matter who). Second run unlocks the student council president EVA’s route. EVA herself is possessed by the Queen and has a dual personality. Eventually the Queen separates from EVA, tries to control reality through the VR game, and gets defeated… game over.

In short: just chat through daily life, grind battles, suddenly a boss appears, then keep fighting—that’s it!

The focus is combat, so let’s talk about how HanaHime evolved from Twinkle Crusaders’ battle system:

1. First, battles now have 3D characters facing off, instead of just two faces smacking each other like in Twinkle Crusaders. It looks more like a semi-real-time RPG.
2. The screen now has tons of 3D effects, making fights flashier… and there’s even some impact feedback, instead of just a CG flashing and damage numbers floating.
3. Skill activation no longer uses QTE-style inputs; you just click with the mouse. This is absolutely the right call—in the old system I couldn’t even read the skill names, just saw arrows and started mashing. Made no sense.
4. Each battle lets you choose front-line and support characters, and you can designate a team Leader. Different Leaders give different team buffs—more damage, more defense, more crits, etc. Feels like it’d be even better with a faction system.
5. Battles keep Unit attacks, the “clash” mode, “knockback,” and the ability to jump the gun on Ready Go. If you’ve played Twinkle Crusaders, you’ll pick it up fast.
6. Battles keep elemental affinities but with tweaks: a new weakest Dark element and the already strongest God element (God was already there).

Quick thoughts on the combat changes: overall it’s more polished, but it feels easier. The improved system lets you plan better, and it’s no longer about (jump the gun + infinite knockback + luck). Unisons trigger more often thanks to the support system, and team auras are a real game-changer—choosing the right one matters a lot.

The game has Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties. You can skip all battles, but I don’t recommend it—the daily dialogue is insipid, just mindless harem wish-fulfillment, and the jokes aren’t great either. They clearly didn’t focus on the slice-of-life stuff; it’s just filler banter. The battle scenes don’t have CG (why would they, you just start fighting). The music is actually decent, but I think the battle tracks are better—better than the X no Kiseki series’ battle music, personally. OP and insert songs are by fripSide, so quality guaranteed.

Since the title says “Combat Impressions,” let me go over some problems I ran into and how I handled them. Difficulty is Hard—Normal and Easy are too braindead.

The prologue is a tutorial battle; I suggest doing it to learn the system quickly, plus it has story (the only worldbuilding). After the prologue, real battles start. Early on, the core is using “Yoshiko” (the little sister, voiced by Emi Nitta) + Ayane (the DJ who cosplays as Miku) + the hammer girl (voiced by Ai Shimizu) together. Sister heals, Ayane gives party-wide shields, hammer uses party AOE. That combo has basically no difficulty. Later, the lightning-element “Rena” joins; she’s the fastest character in the game, almost always gets first turn, and has an AOE knockback skill—battles become a breeze.

The first real difficulty spike is the fight against “Hou Akiko.” She’s probably the strongest character in the game, a core team member for late battles—without her, many fights are unwinnable. Fighting her is the most annoying: she’s fast, her attacks knock back the whole party, and she has various self-Unison combos that can chain you to death in one go.

To beat Hou Akiko, use DJ girl for shields, then hammer and Rena to break up Akiko’s Unison attacks. Never let Hou Akiko’s character get a Unison attack off—she’ll wipe your whole party. You must break it up, use every knockback you have. If you absolutely can’t knock her back, form your own Unison and, provided you’re at the right level, just clash with her and stun her. In short: (shield up + break their focus + wear them down). I honestly think this fight is harder than the final boss… but with patience you can win.

After winning, Hou Akiko joins your party and the game’s difficulty drops off a cliff…

Pick Hou Akiko + Rena + DJ + little sister. Leader is your choice—attack buff or defense buff. This double-support, double-DPS setup can handle almost any fight. Akiko opens with her yellow EX skill to slow the enemy team, then Rena does party knockback—the two of them can practically lock the enemy out of acting. If you’re worried, DJ throws up party shields, so even if the enemy gets a lucky turn, they hit shields for no damage. Little sister keeps healing, and by the end the enemy not only never acts but your HP is higher than the boss’s. If you want to show off, let Akiko attack—her combo and AOE skills hit like a truck. I think this character is straight-up a bug.

But because Akiko is so bugged, the game’s training camp has an internal practice match: choose Akiko + Rena + Mea (the utterly forgettable swordswoman) or hammer + little sister + DJ. The former is a cakewalk—because Akiko. The latter is nightmare difficulty.

Think about it: a short-legged Retribution paladin plus two Holy priests versus two Beast Master hunters and a rogue… you’d get ground into the dirt, right?

But it’s not impossible. You need strategy.

Pick hammer + hammer + DJ, with Emi Nitta’s little sister as the sole healer in the support slot. Choose DJ’s Leader aura “Kiseki” to greatly increase support chances.

So healing relies on little sister randomly showing up to heal—actually really useful, and it doesn’t waste your attacks…

Against those two speedsters, the strategy is: first, fight for first turn. When the Ready Go sound ends, click left mouse fast. Even then you might not get first turn and eat a round, but regardless, you must get DJ’s shield up…

Once shields are up, you can counterattack. The two hammers alternate knockbacks, again to break up enemy Unisons. Hammers need to save energy (SP or whatever it’s called). When “stun attack” is available, take turns stunning Hou Akiko and Rena—stun like your life depends on it. Stun whenever you can; even if you can’t afford shields, stun. Since you don’t have reliable knockback, stun is all you’ve got…

Then you win…

After this fight, nothing else is hard.

The most effective combo is Rena + Hou Akiko + Mea + DJ, with DJ’s “greatly increased support chance” aura as Leader. You’ll see constant assists healing and buffing you, and every Unison gets two extra helpers. Feels great…

The final boss Queen fight is worth mentioning, though there’s not much to say. Story-wise, the holy version of student council president EVA joins your party. She has the most shameless damage skill in the whole game: “Reduce enemy’s HP by 33% and convert 50% of damage dealt into your own HP.”

By the way, the final boss Queen has 99,999 HP. You know what that means.

If there’s anything to watch out for in the final battle, it’s “don’t let the Queen hit you before you get shields up,” because she has “skill lock”—she seals all your skills, leaving you unable to even basic attack while getting beaten…

Just like Twinkle Crusaders boss fights, don’t let her act. Basically once she acts, you’re dead…

However, the final boss may be immune to Hou Akiko’s slow, so you can switch her to pure damage—still hits hard.

Use holy EVA’s EX skill early—it’s percentage-based damage, so the higher the boss’s HP, the more damage, and it heals you too. Why not? After EX, use her second skill to dispel all buffs on the boss and seal her skills, so she can’t act at all.

In short, the final boss Queen fight isn’t hard besides her high HP. Way easier than Twinkle Crusaders’ war of the gods… I won easily, though sadly didn’t get a God rating.

After the battles, you remember this is an 18+ game, and it ends with a quick fuck… By the way, Hou Akiko’s route isn’t finished; the dev said a patch is coming end of September—wonder if there’ll be new battles.

Overall, HanaHime improves on Twinkle Crusaders quite a bit, but the new engine brings new problems.

1. 3D efficiency is terrible. I tried several machines: Surface Pro 4 runs hot and the GPU throttles, X230 throttles too, AMD 5770 can’t even run it. The only machine that ran it smoothly was one with an Nvidia 1070. Isn’t that a joke? An eroge with such high hardware requirements? I saw Japanese players complaining about how slow it is too. And this is after engine optimization—before optimization, even the trial version wouldn’t run on my Surface Pro 4…

2. Too many bugs—texture errors, random crashes. Fortunately, battles can be skipped, and if you forget to save after a fight it won’t punish you, since each battle autosaves.

3. Difficulty is too low. Really too low. In Twinkle Crusaders PSS difficulty, I felt so good getting my ass kicked… In this game, I’m just stomping the boss and grinding their face into the ground… no sense of accomplishment. I was hoping Kiritani Hana’s Queen would grind me instead!

Sometimes I wonder… why does the combat in HanaHime and Twinkle Crusaders feel so satisfying… and there’s no burden when fighting—no talents, no leveling, no items, no positioning. Win, and you’re in control; lose, and you can’t go grind levels and come back…

This feels familiar… A few days ago I saw a Blizzard fanboy ranting that Heroes of the Storm isn’t doing well because of policy neglect, not because the game is bad. I thought: if Blizzard made a semi-real-time RPG, would it look like this? Just like Heroes of the Storm, stripped of proper items, talents, this and that… only meet and fight…

The possibility is real. Considering this game was delayed for over two years, it does have a whiff of “inheriting Blizzard’s legacy.” (laughs)

But luckily HanaHime is just a small game from a small Japanese studio, and the combat isn’t boring—it’s actually fun. “Remove unnecessary things, keep only the thrill of combat” might be their goal, or maybe their programmers just couldn’t make maps and items. Either way, this simplified combat is pretty good, and I think it has potential for mobile PvP. Wonder if the studio is interested.

Of course, before that, they could make a HanaHime sequel and increase the difficulty—I’m not satisfied…