Nova Hearts Review – Flirting And Superpowers

Any other year, and Nova Hearts probably would have hit me harder than it did. Don’t get me wrong, that isn’t indicative of the enjoyment one might derive from the experience, but following closely on the heels of Date Everything, jumping into Nova Heats as the palette cleanser lacked the oomph one might hope for, not that they are entirely the same experience. Even going back before this, games like Boyfriend Dungeon get conjured into mind. By no means a perfect game, there are elements between the two that feel similar, just less effective.

What Nova Hearts manages to nail down is the intro, partially because the game’s more modern art style manages to draw you in pretty effectively into the narrative. This is a good thing since the story is told as a linear visual novel, which was expected from the trailers, telling a story reminiscent of one of my favorite games of all time, Night in the Woods, about a young girl named Luce returning to her hometown for summer break trying, in some part, to find herself so that she can move forward emotionally. The interesting twist here is that the town gets overrun with monsters, and the three lead characters of the story get magical girl alternate identities to fight these creatures, complete with transformation sequences. This leads to the experience alternating between that of the visual novel narrative and turn-based sequences, where you fight the creatures that are plaguing your town.

This narrative is enjoyable, exploring a multitude of themes that are explored over the course, but what Nova Hearts succeeds in is the romance, which isn’t limited to letting you get your flirt on. At its heart, this is a dating sim to some degree, though it never feels like as such given how the dating decisions are baked into this larger narrative of trying to solve the mystery at large of just what is going on. You’re able to flirt or not flirt in almost every cutscene, but there is never really any metric that drives towards one outcome, with characters at large seeming to want to take it further when they feel like they want to, then feeling like there is a reset after to pretend like maybe you didn’t jest have that date, or didn’t just make out with your two best friends from childhood in the part. It keeps everything still as a possibility, which I liked, gives many dating sim games now finally submitting to the idea I don’t have to be locked into one romantic choice, but in fairness, it does so at the lack of permanence.

The narrative of Nova Hearts itself also suffers from some noticeable pacing issues, even for a visual novel, a genre that can easily spend 40 minutes telling you nothing. The reason for this is that scenes alternate between Luce and her friends meeting up, then Luce and her friends texting each other. And this is every time. Luce will go out, meet up, and usually have a short sequence where she does something with everybody else, then these scenes are always followed by a single-panel scene where Luce is in her room texting each other. These scenes tend to go on much longer, which is very same since these are the bland scenes compared to the ones where you are out there. Where it gets weird is that she meets up, they make a plan to do something, usually to an end of solving the main mysteries, then they decide to go home and text each other about the plan for three hours before doing it? You can’t just hang around in town till then?

This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no ‘free time’ in Nova Hearts, which it desperately needs based on its structure. There are several elements on your phone that you can wander through, usually during texting scenes. They amount to nothing major, like a horoscope that serves to explain your relationship with characters that, if you’re like me, should all know you want them. One character runs a blog that serves to flesh out the world, but again, doesn’t really do much. In an early post one it you see an aerial of a town map and would be forgiven for thinking that, with its locations listed in bubbles overtop, it was an eventual feature you would get, which it’s not. Even if you can romance anybody with no issue, there are always going to be people you want to commit more time to. This is where that comparison to Boyfriend Dungeon comes in, because, while this was minor in that game, it greatly helped diversify your time. There are points where the story ‘branches’, but even then, it is a choice which one first type of deal, with the latter choice rarely having penalties for being chosen second.

The second reason this is needed is the combat itself, which takes a while to make its appearance, but then caps off every scene. There is this new growing trend that feels like old school Fire Emblem, to add combat to your narrative game to diversify the experience, but lock you on a rail between them. Combat isn’t hard, per se, but you level slowly, with three or even four combat moments needed for one level of a skill. If you reach a battle you struggle with, there really isn’t anything to do about it but die, die, and die till you figure it out. Combat itself is a turn-based experience that honestly has its moments but can also begin to drag on. The reason for this is that your party is often hit with lengthy cue times on the Grandia II-style line of turns. There are points where my characters, to do a move that dealt seventy damage, got outpaced by an enemy two or even three times that dealt forty damage, effectively doubling the pain while I wanted for one turn.

This is even worse when healing skills take a far longer time, and can fail to trigger in time for an ally that is three-quarters of their health and still takes enough damage to get KOed before your spell can trigger. Since the game uses a mechanic that cuts off your ability if the target dies, no matter what, you can then have to round a stand phase to cue another attack, then have that attack loaded, which loses you precious time. Teamwork ability is available as well, with two characters using skills that can sync on the same turn, but even that requires you to delay a character longer, usually for it to work, and these abilities can often not be worth it compared to the individual skills you planned to use. Each character has kinda an emergency skill that has a great ability, but can only be used once per battle. I never found a situation where popping everyone at the start didn’t cue the team for success, which felt unbalanced.

There lies the crux cause; there is some strategy to these moments in Nova Hearts. Attacks usually have side effects like stun or drain, so learning which abilities do what and how to effectively deploy them is something that actually feels like it will carry weight, until it doesn’t. I was safe through so much with a minimal understanding of what I could do because of the things I could use to break the experience without needing to learn that, which in and of itself still took some time to learn. Even with this fact, combat could have benefited from an open world, allowing me to avoid some in favor of character-targeted flirting, or participate in more, so my skills were buffed more, so I felt less stuck coming into it. Bosses also exist in this game and narratively work well, taking cues from Persona to have one character serve as kinda the focal point, then a kinked-up boss at the end. These enemies are harder, doing the boss with high HP, then enemies you can defeat, but are instantly replaced, concept. This is where I learned to break the game, since the above strategy of deploying your special skills, then just hammering the boss, is what took one that I lost too four times and put him in the rearview mirror quicker than expected.

Verdict

Nova Hearts, being a visual novel, romance, and dating sim, is where the game fully hits its stride. I love the artwork, and the zen soundtrack, both are a necessity in an experience where I am mostly going to be wading through tons of dialog. The characters are great, the main character is honestly very relatable, and when the game goes full-on magical girl, I am into it. It just needed more. All of these ideas, even the combat, feel like the game understands it needs to stand out in a crowd, but it never fully realizes that goal. There needed to be some open-endedness to the structure, rather than locking me into the narrative, texting, more narrative, and then some combat loop to feel like I could maximize my time. Nova Hearts commits to a structure I am seeing more often and like, I really do, but it just suffers from the fact I have seen it better elsewhere, which is a shame, cause even then, there is still a lot to love and enjoy here.

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