Anchored Hearts Review by Foxxelle
Female lead pirate based VN adventure with stress-free high seas shootout intervals. Can our intrepid pirate captain prove her innocence of a murderous truce-breaking crime? Fun times ahead...
"That's a sturdy mast.. or are you just pleased to see me?"
Anchored Hearts is not the easiest of games to define. At its heart, it is a visual novel, but solely in terms of playing time, it may qualify as primarily a top-down simple strategy battle-at-sea shooter. You'll have to forgive me. I don't follow all these subgenre variations that appear on Steam.
Story
Let's look at the game as a visual novel in the first instance. We take on the role of pirate Nova (changeable) Ramos, female captain of the ship "Lady Vengeance"; who finds herself thrown in jail, accused of sinking a number of Republic ships, having been widely seen as the last person to have been aboard all of the lost vessels; and who therefore stands as number one suspect for a grievous act which has broken a 300 year truce between the Arcomare Alliance (the aforementioned republic of four states) and the pirates of Libertown.
To begin, she needs to escape jail (which is a very straightforward affair) and is achieved simply by progressing the story, which in itself is done by talking with other people. Whenever someone is available for conversation, their portrait appears with a large exclamation mark alongside it. Clicking on the portrait begins an exchange and also presents that character's full sprite, as seen below:
Upon reaching Libertown, the story kicks into gear properly, with Miss Ramos having to prove her innocence, and the only way she can do this is through a thorough investigation in order to establish the real culprit. She is aided/hindered by a number of others, two of whom also have the chance to become romantic interests – her first mate, and perhaps surprisingly, a high-ranking official from one of the republic states.
Gameplay
In between each visual novel section of the game, our MC must set sail for clues, and this brings us to the overhead "shooting" section. In this, two ships line up side by side, and we must take the opposing vessel out of action before our own hull becomes too damaged to continue. Should our heroine be defeated, she will be carted off back to jail, forcibly conceding any gained loot to the jailer in the process.
Thankfully, there is not too much to get to grips with in these sections, and upon starting your first battle, you will receive a thorough tutorial on handling it – but an understanding alone will not see you make a successful escape at first time of asking. Each sailing has several clashes to deal with before safety, and damage taken from one battle is carried forward to the next, meaning that by the time you face the toughest ship at the end, you're going to be facing a defeat. At least until you have started to acquire pirate boons (through reputation) or ship improvements bought with looted coin.
There is a menu option to give you easier ship battles, and in order to avoid too much frustration in getting started, I'd highly recommend that you set this to begin with, and perhaps take it off once you have gotten the hang of it if you want the later battles to be more engaging. Note though, that even if you manage to win your way right through at an initial attempt, you will find yourself back in jail as there are some important story-setting conversations to be had in the cells before you win your freedom!
I struggled quite badly with these battles to begin with, but once I hit upon a reliable winning strategy they became, for want of a less corny expression, "plain sailing".
Back in the novel sections, there are regular choices of 3 options provided (sometimes these also appear in one of the stages on board the ship). As best as I can tell, these provide colour/narrative variation for the most part. There are occasions where your selection will make a difference, initially in the sequence that the story plays out, and later, in deciding which of the love interests you wish to pursue.
Sound, graphics, and UI
There are menu options for these, and they include full screen/windowed (although I found the windowed option made the viewing area slightly bigger than my laptop screen and I couldn't find a way to reduce it, so had to settle for full); text speed/auto, and volume controls for both overall levels and individually for music, effects, and UI.
The supporting music is fine, not especially piratey, but jolly enough and doesn't detract from the overall, which is generally good enough. Effects are appropriate, and include ambient town life, cannons firing and swords clashing, although I would have liked the latter to be a little louder.
Character sprites look nice. In keeping with the backdrops, fine details have been dispensed with, so they're quite simplistic at a glance, yet also both bright and busy enough to grab and hold your attention. There are also a couple of very nice kissing CGs to be found. You'll have to play the game through yourself if you want to reveal those!
Incredibly, there are only two static location backdrops, and I attribute this to some very clever game design. If I hadn't mentioned it, you wouldn't give it a second thought when playing. Along with the sea scenes, no more are needed. This has allowed the developers to devote their time and resources to gameplay and story writing, and, quite simply, it works.
The UI is also very stripped down. There are buttons for step back, step forward, and autoplay. And that's it. The text can be reversed or forwarded very quickly with a slide on the trackpad, or, presumably, a mouse wheel. Be warned that the fast forward is exactly that. It is not a "skip" button in the familiar sense. I advise not forwarding on during your first play.
The game remembers where you've got to at all times. There is NO manual save facility. You end a session at any point, and when you return, select the continue button. I know reading such a revelation can often be an instant off-put, and I'd be among the first to think "no thanks" as a rule when I discover this from a review – but hold on. The truth is that, the way the game plays out, you will not NEED a saved game … until you want to select your love interest, which is near the conclusion.
Experience and verdict
I found the story to be more in-depth than I expected and this ensured I had a longer first play through than anticipated. Certainly the ultimately-repetitive nature of the ship battles contributed to this, and there is no escaping that, although they are not a long-drawn-out grind and do through the earlier stages provide a break from reading; they also become somewhat monotonous after you've been through 50+ virtually identical battles just to progress the story a little more.
However, despite eventually developing a "not again!" attitude to another run of shoot-and-wait, my enjoyment of the narrative, development of the lead characters, and curiosity over who the guilty party was, remained undiminished until the end; which in itself was well thought out and entirely satisfactory.
Although presented as part of the main story, romance scenes could be viewed as epilogues, and as such, they are fully fleshed out and leave a contented feeling for the reader.
My only real gripe about the whole experience, ultimately does revolve around that absence of a save option. The final decision upon who you want to romance comes very late, and if you want to see both romantic endings – unless the developer responds to this review with information to the contrary – then you are going to have to play RIGHT THROUGH twice.
My first run – including the early ship battle struggles – lasted 10.6 hours, and then, using the fast forward option as much as possible, my second one added a further 3.7 hours, which felt like a lot of effort for what is effectively an alternative epilogue. (I know this doesn't equal the total hours played – the extra bit was nipping back for review purposes).
Overall though, this was a fun experience. For me personally, a pirate visual novel with a female captain – big cheer! Whether pirates are your thing or not though shouldn't really impact your decision to look at this game – it's a well crafted story with supportable characters and some variation in gameplay, so if you like visual novels that are not solely restricted to reading and making choices, then this is certainly a worthy option for your consideration.
Otome Lovers wishes to thank Studio Witchstar for providing a free review copy for this game.
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