A short, sweet palate cleanser from the sour aftertaste of Lunar. Hayate no Gotoku! Ojousama Blah Blah ~ What is it with Hata and Long Titles, Anyway?~ is a raising sim slash beauty pageant sim with a little bit of romance rounding it out. I stopped reading Hayate no Gotoku! over a year ago so I decided to play this quickly before I forgot all the characters. It’s my way of saying goodbye.

Story

You’re a new butler (not Hayate). To prove yourself you decide to train one lady to win a beauty contest. The winner gets to wish for anything they want from the legendary tree in the corner of the school campus. I played it twice and won with Maria, who wished for nothing, and Hinagiku, who almost wished for a bigger bust but got angry and threatened the tree into silence instead.

Characters

The usual pre-Greece cast, i.e. no Athena or Ruka or those two girls in the first year whose names I could never remember. Also Hayate barely shows up and Klaus, Tama and the cat only appear in images. For pageant purposes you get to pick Nagi, Maria, Hinagiku, Sakuya and Izumi and Saki to raise. When it’s time to compete, Wataru, Ayumu, Isumi and Yukiji appear as contestants.

Raising sim

From Monday to Friday you raise the girl’s stats by picking three a day for her to focus on. There are 6 types of personality: Cool, Tsundere, Moe, Elegant, Eccentric and Genki, and 12 corresponding types of stats for them to focus on. Raise Pride to boost Tsundereness, raise Wisdom to boost Coolness, raise Strength to boost Genkiness, that sort of thing.

The stats you choose to raise affect the success of her contest appeals and the kind of activities she performs better in, i.e. the more Pride you raise, the easier Pride gets to raise. Raised high enough they also change the girl’s personality. Hinagiku comes with an innate “Cool” personality, but with high Pride she’ll start acting Tsundere. That will affect the way she acts towards you, which can be both interesting and a little disconcerting to watch. For example a Moe Hinagiku will giggle and simper at you in a very un-Hinalike manner.

The game is easy enough that I won 9 out of 10 contests on my first playthrough with Maria just by trying to boost everything equally. The second time I used ‘cheat’ items, which aren’t really cheats since the game sells them from day 1, to uber-boost Hinagiku’s stats. I still won 10/10 contests easily. Basically as long as you raise something every week you’ll be fine.

Romance elements

You get a few CGs where the girl indicates some romantic interest in you. On Saturdays when you go shopping in town, you can visit the park for a date. Not much of one though, just a quick chat and a simple choice with no real consequences. You can touch her in various places on the main screen in order to increase her mood. And at the end she’ll tell you she’s really glad she met you and really likes you. Then you’ll go your separate ways, the end.

Pageant sim

Every Sunday you pick a rival and compete with them on the basis of your popularity with fans of different tastes, represented by colors. In the screenshot on the right, the yellow fans are Tsundere fans and the green ones are Genki fans. You appeal to them in the way they like and they’ll either come over to your side, go to your rival if s/he does better or fall into a pit if they can’t decide (yes, seriously).

You have three kinds of appeals.

1. A regular appeal of one color
2. A special appeal that can a) appeal to two colors at the same time or b) appeal to one color and block another color. E.g. you could take all the Tsunderes while stopping Isumi from taking the Genkis. Will not work if Isumi does not pursue the Genkis.
3. A special attack particular to that character that can only be used once per contest. Has appeal power and also casts debuffs like lowering rival stats and casting Silence on them.

Appeals play out in the form of “cute” performances by the boxy 3D girls, who twirl and pirouette for your viewing pleasure. It might have worked if they had used anime graphics instead of 3D but as it is they just look weird. It’s also unfortunate that all the girls use the same animations. A “Tsundere” appeal from Nagi is the same as one from Hinagiku and the same as one from Maria. That’s probably the best they could do budget-wise but it is somewhat disappointing.

The main strategy involved is in figuring out what kind of attack your rival is going to use and trying to counter it while simultaneously trying to grab as many fans as possible. It helps to know the rival’s personality, it helps to learn what attacks they have equipped (checkable on Saturdays), it helps to use Type 2 attacks early and often. If it wasn’t so easy it is to raise your stats to stratospheric levels in no time, all this might require some real thinking. As the game stands, though, it’s next to impossible to lose a contest. As long as you avoid late-game AI Maria or AI Hinagiku you’ll be fine.

Problems

It would have been 200x better if you controlled Hayate instead of some new non-canon butler. I don’t know about other HnG fans, but what I liked most about the series was watching Hayate’s cute and crazy interactions with his bevy of beauties. I don’t want to live out a ronery otaku’s fantasy by trying to hook up with the girls ‘myself’. It’s not convincing, it’s not satisfying and it robs the game of all potential humor.

The other main problem with Ojousama wo Produce Daisakusen is that it’s not very replayable. After one or two playthroughs you’ll realize it’s the same thing every time. The contests are fun, but too easy to win. Stats are too easy to raise. The girls invariably fall in love with “you” no matter how you treat them. They never wish for anything even if they win. They rarely interact with other characters even when they reasonably should, e.g. Maria and Nagi, Hinagiku and the Student Council trio. As a fan playing an anime game, that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for and that’s precisely what you’re not going to get.

I did learn one thing from this game and from Tactics Layer: beauty pageants are fun! I’d like to play the contest minigame again someday, hopefully with added complexity. Maybe Konami should consider making it a mobile game app? I was entertained for a few hours, but otherwise it’s not a game I can recommend for anyone other than really hardcore and really bored fans of the Hayate no Gotoku series.