Little Hearts

First of all, a disclaimer before I begin the review: Do not mind the 80 hrs on record I have here, the game isn't quite that long, I just left it open sometimes in the background and there is the fact I played it in Japanese as a relative beginner in the language, which made me take longer whenever I got to read the story. Also as aforementioned, I played the game in Japanese so I cannot comment on how good/bad the English translation is, use the free demo and judge for yourself! Gameplay: It is very reminiscent of Fire Emblem in many aspects. -grid based -turn based -overpowered Wyvern Riders -etc. but there are some mechanics that build upon the basic mechanics that this game shares with Fire Emblem, so don't think of it as a simple clone. The most important distinction would be the "Focus" mechanic. Either by using a Focus Ring or the Concentrate Staff you can attain the Focus status which allows you to use weapons that are stronger, but as a tradeoff, require the Focus status. Powerful staves like Warp and Rescue for example require Focus, so do long range magic tomes. Another important point to mention is that weapons and staves do NOT have durability, you can use them e…

Poor maps, poor dialogue, generic maps, laughably easy. Most other srpg studio games or even your average FE gba rom hack is considerably better. Its translated into english well enough to understand but otherwise only a level or two above machine translation witch such gems are referring to the princess as a Nobleman. Go play Walk with The Living 1 or 2 or Esperia Scarlet Witch or rom hacks like Dark Lord and the Maiden Of Light instead.

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 …