Secret of the Heart
- Roger
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Distant Girl Discovering Distant Worlds
In Secrets of the Heart, we follow a young woman who participates in the athletes' club during her years of studies.
She uncovers a new, hidden aspect of herself along the way.
Story - Content
Secrets of the Heart seems to be a visual novel with great possibility, but it feels like it’s turned towards the Chinese viewers, as the original game is based on Chinese.
(I could be wrong, and if I am, I do apologize.)
When opening the game, the main menu, title, and side tabs for Start, Load, Settings, and Quit are all in Chinese. If the player manages to find the settings and switch to English, not all the tabs switch to English immediately. It requires the player to start/load a save of the game, and then it switches all text into English.
And when reopening or leaving and deciding to continue/play again, all the settings are reset to origin—language, audio, everything.
Since the English words are poorly translated and only a few scenes/dialogues are in a more refined English, this shows the words have been simply translated with Google Translate.
Even the achievements on Steam are in Chinese, so it's unreadable for English-speaking viewers.
When it comes to actual gameplay, it confuses the player even more. For this visual novel, it requires the player to press on either the people they want to speak to or areas they want to go to.
And sometimes they are required to speak with someone twice or three times but instead of connecting those times. They’re cut and forcing the player to press on the character again with no given information about doing so or help with what to do next to progress in the story.
There are zero hints, and some interactions with either people or places don't recognize that you pressed on them, needing you to press multiple times or exit and re-enter the area you were in. (Not the whole game itself)
As the cherry on top, the game uses a day system & location map. This gives the player the control to choose where they go but doesn’t give any sort of hint about where the player needs to go.
Concluding with the player going to each place until they find the correct place and can continue the story. Everything is somewhat confusing combined.
Visual & Audio
Visuals
The drawing style for the game looks good and pleasing to the eyes, but it doesn’t clearly display the areas that are pressed to enter a dialog with either a white or black outline.
Audio
The music style is very gentle and gives the pink blossom tree theme/vibe. But the volume is way too loud when starting the game. And with the settings resetting every time you reopen the game, you can imagine how it is.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Has Potential
Good Graphics
Cons
Badly Translated English
Base Game In Chinese
Made For Chinese Audience
Confusing Gameplay
My Final Little Thoughts
I only played for 26 minutes, almost half an hour. But thereafter, I felt like I had all the information that I needed. And for an NSFW visual novel, I have not noticed any sort of NSFW content within the Steam images, and with the amount of confusing gameplay, I wasn’t able to get as far as needed to see the first intimate scene.
For the Chinese audience, I would recommend it, but for the rest of the audience all over the world, I do not recommend this game. And I do hope the developers fix up their game since, again, it has a lot of potential.
Rating: 2/10
NSFW Game With No NSFW
