Dating sims are harder to create than people give them credit for. Hundreds of thousands of words, dialogue trees that stretch to the horizon and take into account successes and failures, trying to fit in as many characters as possible to suit different preferences; the complexity piles up and threatens to collapse. It gets more difficult when you try to merge it with another genre.
I’ve seen failure happen many times throughout my years as Destructoid’s resident self-proclaimed dating sim expert. There’s a reason why games like Mass Effect usually have relationships no more complex than “listen to life story, complete side quest, bang.” Anything more ambitious leads to juggling problems, and it takes a lot of talent and planning to handle all those balls.
Nova Hearts is a game that, so far, drops those balls. However, mercifully, Lightbulb Crew is starting with just a prologue, so there’s still time to grab those balls and get them airborne.
Nova Hearts: First Spark is the free introduction to the full Nova Hearts experience expected this summer. It has you play as Luce, who has moved back to her hometown after spending some time trying to make it in the city. She’s staying the summer on a sabbatical. From what? Frustratingly, you aren’t told, but you’re expected to go along with it.
“So what happened?” you’re asked on multiple occasions. But you can only make hints because you, the player, don’t know. Why give the choice in how you respond? I’m not sure.
Much of the story takes place on Luce’s cellphone screen. Scenes are set up through text chat. Where the players are going and what they’re planning to do; that all happens on a phone screen. This isn’t a bad way to do it, but it’s handled very intrusively.
At one point, I was invited out to eat right before a party by Luce’s old friends. I’m guessing “eat” is just code for pre-drink. I go to that scene, the bartender asks me what I’m having, I tell him that I’m waiting for friends. Suddenly, Luce is lounging at her desk with the cell phone in hand. What the fuck just happened? What was the point of that scene?
I’m guessing it was just an opportunity to meet/hit on the bartender. However, I don’t drink, so normally, the characters I play don’t either, and all the direct flirting options were way too strong for the vibes I wanted to put down, so I didn’t. However, the fact that my decisions meant that Luce didn’t even meet her friends in that scene just left me extremely confused. And it wouldn’t be the only time.
As Nova Hearts proceeded through its introduction, I started wondering how long it was going to take before super-powers happened. The game’s hook is that it combines a dating sim with a super-hero RPG, but it frequently seemed like the setup was going to take a very long time to get to the whole part where everyone gets super-powers.
It happened in mid-conversation.
One moment, I was hitting on an entrancing reporter, and then suddenly, I was in combat with cats. There was a moment in between where Luce stands dumbstruck by something, but the game doesn’t really show what she sees. Everyone is just gone, she just has super-powers, and suddenly there are monsters.
This is where I noticed that Nova Hearts has no narration. Actions aren’t described, which is kind of strange for a game that is largely just text and static images. Sure, I can see the backgrounds and characters, but they don’t do anything. The action is, therefore, restricted to what the characters say, and it leaves a lot of gaps that are filled with nothing.
The combat itself is a bit of a problem. I can dig the timeline battle system, which is somewhat similar to Fuga: Melodies of Steel but with less strategy. Essentially, you have a visual aid for when a character or enemy’s turn is going to happen. However, this is largely just useful for using combo attacks where you overlap two of your heroes attack turns to create a bigger attack.
Shallow combat isn’t great, but the real problem is the lack of balance and polish in Nova Hearts: First Spark. The characters’ powers just aren’t that Super. Most attacks feel very underpowered, which makes combat as a whole a slog. The combo power between Luce and CJ doesn’t feel much more effective than CJ’s normal area-of-effect attack, so that kills strategy even further.
But moreover, a lot of the combat in First Spark feels arbitrary. It just happens. It’s a visual novel that, every so often, gets interrupted by fighting.
Violence has long been leaned on by video games as one of the few forms of conflict resolution that can be easily depicted in code. However, most of the time in Nova Hearts, there isn’t any conflict, just combat. The fighting doesn’t happen because you pissed off another character or chose to journey to the wrong side of town. They just happen because it’s fight o’clock. It’s hard to feel like the combat really fits with the romance when there isn’t any tension or intensity to be found anywhere.
As for the romance? Well, all the characters are DTF AF, so there’s that. You’re presented with a wide range of options to try and fit as many preferences as possible. However, the game kept pushing me toward this guy whom Luce apparently shared her first kiss with in the past. However, it turns out he’s a masochist, and there isn’t room for two of those in this relationship.
Beyond that, I’m not sure. At about the time I was getting frustrated with the masochistic werewolf, something broke in Nova Hearts, and two teams were left facing off in perpetuity with no way to advance. That is to say, it soft-locked. I checked, and an autosave did trigger at the same fight, so I wasn’t going to lose any progress. At that point, however, I had seen enough. Not even the promise of potential smooching was able to get me to dive back in. I’m done.
As I said at the start, dating sims are far more difficult and complex than anyone gives them credit for. It’s not all that surprising when someone tries to incorporate the hydra of mechanics that make up the genre, only to come up short. It says more about the difficulty of genre than it does about a developer.
However, the art, music, and premise all have promise to them. I’m hoping Lightbulb Crew will go back to the drawing board with what works and, with a bit of careful planning, come back with a more polished Nova Hearts experience that delivers. It’ll take a bit of a commitment, but that’s what makes a worthwhile relationship.
