Little Hearts

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At the current out of the box experience it's hard to recommend Little Hearts unless you really, really want to see what this SRPG Studio game has to offer - I played for the composer's work and the CGs, which were actually not too bad. You have to be prepared for a lot of work arounds if you want to play the localized English version. I personally had to download an earlier version (at time of review) since the 1.4 update doesn't launch with the localization file, and even the earlier version is filled with machine translation "Engrish" and spacing errors that occasionally push dialogue off or cause characters to speak out of order. The ending credits as well broke with this 1.3 version, so I eventually had to switch to playing the original Japanese language. As for the strategy game itself, though it has moments of strategy, it ultimately is more fun as an exercise to break (though Little Hearts is not a game you necessarily play for ball-busting difficulty if you read up). There's not too much characters, but each of them have their niche and personal weapon such that no one is truly bench warming. If you know anything about Fire Emblem warp/rescue shenanigans though, the mid and late game can definitely get really wacky. It's kept in check somewhat by needing the 'focus' status to use the more powerful staves, weapons, and skills; the existence of the Concentrate staff and it's relatively low rank makes like 5 characters prime Concentrate bots to fuel the other Focus hungry units, though. Beating the game gets you a NG+ mode with access to some otherwise unobtainable weapons and items in a chapter select; I can't comment on how much it affects the fun factor. The story, viewed through the "localization", is hard to follow, but you could make the gist of the story beats... It's a fairly standard fantasy plot that would fit at home with an earnest Fire Emblem rom hack. I'm sure there's more comprehensible pronouns that could've made it, at least...

このゲームの特に良かった所は、戦闘アニメとキャラの強さ。 戦闘アニメのテンポも出来も良いので、4回クリアしたけど1度も戦闘アニメを飛ばさなかった。 キャラの固有武器、固有スキル、クラスチェンジ。3つの要素をプレイヤーがよく考えれば、どのキャラも大活躍できるはず。