Feedback
Thoroughly enjoyed the playtime I was able to put into this game. The combat mechanics are fun, rewarding, and a refreshing break from turn-based RPGs or hack and slash titles.
The H-Content is good, the writing surrounding it is also good and enhances the immersion into the scenes with only a few errors here and there (thoughts and spoken words not separated by quotes, spelling or grammar mistakes). Not enough to spoil the mood or ruin the fun, by far. The art is good, and in one scene you can toggle a disguise for the main character. I was impressed by the quality of the art and animations during that, specifically, as each animations had to have a disguise version. It did keep toggling between them on it's own between dialogue boxes, not sure why.
I experienced slowdowns while running around the areas and exploring. Not a huge issue, most notable in the areas where stealth sections compounded that slowdown, turning them into a bit of a slog if I got caught. (Which was almost always due to the character leaving stealth from traveling diagonally along the edge of an area of tall grass, thus popping out of stealth for a split second while in detection range.)
The only actual issue I had was a crash after a boss fight (Arcane Golem), which then made it impossible to load the save. The boss got to a third phase, unleashed it's major attack and one-shot me. The game crashed during the transition to the post-defeat screen.
I've seen mention of this bug in prior posts and it's unfortunately still a thing. As I only had the one save, I'd have to start over entirely. Recommend saving to multiple slots as you go to help circumvent this issue and lose less progress, but this is absolutely a critical issue as far as bug-squashing goes. It's made worse by the inability to skip through cut scenes, as far as I'm aware.
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Discourse
This.
The dev of Heavy Hearts seems to be focusing on the wrong things, even if they claim they are making an RPG game first - lewd game second.
Because that line of thinking, I believe, is already starting off on the wrong foot: as soon as you add hentai elements to your game, it becomes a hentai game - with RPG elements. You can't escape that categorization, so trying to "suppress" it by focusing on the RPG part will inevitably lead into poor reception.
A similar phenomenon happens with games that try to dabble with NTR in their otherwise vanilla stories - as soon as you add those elements into the mix, you've become an NTR game: and inevitably, you will attract the NTR crowd, while alienating the vanilla crowd.
Exactly, that's what some devs don't seem to understand! Regardless of how the devs feel about it, if a majority of people point out a certain aspect of your game being tied to something much larger it will become that very thing. RPG with hentai elements? Congratulations it is a hentai game because you have HENTAI in it. Added NTR to a vanilla love story style game? Congratulations it is an NTR game because you decided to go the route of adding NT-MOTHER-FUCKING-R (no matter how small) to a vanilla game that could have just done without any need for NTR to begin with. Its like they don't stop for 2 seconds to consider how their decisions will look like to the community itself, especially when tags are involved.
Absolutely hear what you're both saying, and though I disagree on a few fronts the feedback you're giving is completely valid. A game that includes hentai elements is a hentai game. A game that has the NTR tag certainly isn't vanilla.
I'm just not sure what purpose that feedback serves. It's a rather sweeping set of statements, and ones I'll take at face value and accept as true for the majority of users here.
They aren't true for me though.
For me, focusing on one element isn't suppressing another. A game
can be an RPG with Hentai elements, and that's honestly what I prefer. I want a
game to play first and foremost, and H-Game forums like this are about the only place I can find projects or games that don't shy away from the grittier, realistic portions of adult life in a fantasy world. Games are an interactive story above anything else. Ones like this that have enjoyable battle mechanics are a rarity. Games that have a story that lends weight to the interactions between characters with decent writing are few and far between as well.
Games that are essentially a glorified gallery where the gameplay itself is an afterthought? A dime a dozen. I'm honestly really tired of those. The lewds hardly mean anything in context of the world or story.
I'm sure game developers usually consider whether or not certain content is valuable to the story they're trying to tell. It's not like someone accidentally writes dialogue and codes scenes in with a slip of the fingers. It takes work and a dev will have decided it's worth including. NTR Legend is a
NTR game. This is a game with some (pretty light) NTR elements. I just can't really say the two are the same.
Those elements are going to put people off, and that's fine. What matters is that a developer is creating something they enjoy, are passionate about, and that others can enjoy that experience.
