Spirited Heart Deluxe

I had trouble with the game back when I first played it and was rudely told by the creator that "It was playtested and not broken/unbalanced!" So, I found out I could get a Steam key and tried it again. The game is still essentially still broken/unbalanced because the stat system is terrible. There is really no plot to speak of and the only world building you get are little snippets here and there. The stat raising itself is garbage. You have the option to choose random dice to add up to a number without going over OR Auto Job, which just gives you a random outcome. Honestly, you'll just want to pick Auto Job everytime as it'll give you more favorable results. Speaking of! Of you do poor you get nothing, if you do average you get half and if you do Good you get the amount you are supposed to. Perfect I think nets you 1/3 more or something. Considering how bad the dice fail is, Average should net you the full amount with Poor netting you half as you'll be seeing POOR more often than not. STATS! It seems stats go up randomly if you get Average-Perfect and even then it seems that the stat gains are random as well, I've gotten perfects and have had 0 stat gain. ALSO BTW! You can have multiple events that steal your money, lower your health AND lower your stats. Stats you worked hard to raise through the crappy dice system or the meager wages you scraped up. So I'd often find myself taking 6 weeks or more just to recover from everything to Work/Train again. ROMANCE! SO the romance is based on random chance. As other's have said, you'll randomly encounter your love and then have to pick the right choice to make the meter go up. Fail to do so and you didn't pick the right choice.. I hope you can get that character to show up again. So really you'll be switching off the boys and girls in the options to incrase your chance of an encounter, or at least eliminate choices you don't want to appear. In the end, the game where everything is made up and points don't matter. No really the points just seem to be there to get you a second tier job and I don't think there is a third tier despite the graphics looking as if there are more tiers. Comparing this to Princess Maker 2 and Prince Maker Braveness (MSN2), it fails to do stat sim and romance decently. Using PM2 as an example, the marriage options were strewn throughout the game and the points were more or less used to get them. Want to marry the prince, talk to him every January and raise the Decorum, Social and such stats. Want to marry a dragon? Become a warrior and go on an adventure in the dragon ruins, thus all the combat stats go up. The prince is in the no time advancement Social menu, the dragon is on an adventure and there is yet even MORE people you can meet. There were things like talking to the character, going to town, talking to the palace people. Stuff that gave you a goal to focus on. Spirited Heart? There is no point to the stats. At least in Long Live the Queen the stats were useful to try and maybe stay alive (though that game has issues). You could try and focus on combat to war your way through the game or dancing and such to try and swocialite your way through the game. Magical Diary? Mandatory to get through the game (Even though a lot of spells were useless). The three character stats affected if you were going to romance anyone. There seems to be a sequel in the make, hopefully it will be better than this and actually try and emulate the games it seeks to copy from. It just seems here the person didn't 'get' what was fun about those games and thought kludging stats + romances without meshign them with a story in some way was going to work.

Spirited Heart is a difficult game to recommend. Fans of dating and life management sims will no doubt be quickly immersed, but for everyone else, I doubt the game will maintain their interest. Although your character will always be female, you are allowed to choose three different races to choose from: human, elf, and demon. Each race has particular, inherent stats, and through the life choices you navigate, those stats are adjusted to create a custom character. I played through the game once with each race, and while I ended up with a demure elf and human, my demon was delightfully spunky. There is a full roster of individuals your character can date, including male and female options. The potential lovers are fantastically varied and interesting, but sometimes winning the affections of a particular person takes a little trial and error. You start the game as a adult who has just moved into her first apartment, and the game will end when one of a variety of endings is reached. The experience will either end when you reach the age of 30, when you get married, or when you fulfill the goal set by the goddess of your race. At a certain point in your life, the goddess will appear with a specific job goal for you, and if you meet it before the age of 30, she will grant you a wish, and this will trigger the end of the game. Much of the game comes down to spamming jobs. Jobs are completed by random dice rolls, and you must balance your character's work life with an appropriate amount of rest. Jobs earn you money which allow you to train skills, visit exotic locals which also increase skills, and pay taxes. The game indicates that if you have no money when it is time to pay taxes, you go to jail. Sometimes, random events such as bandit attacks will dramatically decrease your available currency, and at other times, you'll have the option to be charitable to a customer at a loss of money but with a reward of stat increases. While many of the stat increases feel arbitrary, they are actually beneficial -- depending on your career goal. If your career goal is outside of one of the stat categories, it is a good idea to ignore those options which pump unnessessary stats and focus on reaching your goal. If you are interested in a potential spouse centralized to one career path, then you will also be spamming that career to win their heart. Once your love interest confesses their attraction to you and you move in with them, you can navigate the game in such a way that you no longer have to visit that career option but still end up marrying them. After the first playthrough or two, you'll have the hang of the game. It is a delightful experience initially, but the fun wears down with necessary stat-pumping and job-spamming. I found myself clicking through all options as quickly as possible to get to the next random encounter, where I would hopefully progress the relationship I had been fostering. There's a lot of charm and terrific artwork to Spirited Heart, but the $20 price point feels unfair. This is a $5 experience and no more, so if you are interested in the romantic notions of a charming young girl, you will be well-advised to wait for a bundle or sale.

This is a slice of life simulation in the vein of Magical Diary or Long Live the Queen; however unilke those games which are actually worth paying for, this one sadly, is not. While the world presented to you in the game is interesting you ultimately learn very little about it; there are three characters you can play as and many choices for each of them, but ultimately your choices are shallow and don't really matter much, as the game doesn't really differ based on what choices you make, and game play stays exactly the same whether you've mastered magic, or become a professional dominatrix. There are ten choices for romantic interests (five male, five female); but good luck getting with the one you want. Your relationship advances through a series of random events with the characters in question and you can go whole playthroughs without ever getting a random event with the lover you want to pursue. And then the romance system is basically bunk anyway. Your relationship is a gauge consisting of five hearts and the better your relationship the more hearts are filled... in theory. I had my romantic "interest" proposing to me at two hearts, and the only reason he was even my romantic interest is because he just happened to show up more often than the guy I actually wanted to pursue; and thus our relationship progressed farther... and I got sick of not getting any sort of events with the one I wanted. As I said; the game really isn't all that fulfilling, it's systems are pretty pointless and the only reason to gain stats is to get a better job... and the only reason to get a better job is to make money, and the only reason to make money is because the king takes a percentage of it every three months... and if you can't pay his tax you lose the game... The story does a poor job of driving along the stat grinding (which is fairly random whether your stats will even increase or not); and ultimately the game feels hollow and pointless. Sadly; I cannot recommend this game.