Glass Heart Review by JeminiJess
With only one month left to live, what would you choose to do? A sweet Otome about living life to the fullest with the people that you care about. You never truly know how much time you have left.
"No one knows when they will die… No one knows what's beyond the next moment. Pursue your passions… Live and fight for your dreams… But most importantly… Love. Love what you do and love others."
-A line from Glass Heart
Warning: There are some potentially triggering scenes in the game (read the Mature Content Description). There is an option to turn on an option called Safe Spaces. I had this turned off. Option to avoid some of the more triggering scenes.
Plot
What would you do if you had a month left to live? What choice would you make with that time? Meira, is the girl with a glass heart and has lived her entire life in hospitals. Her heart has begun to give out and at best she only has six more months to live. The only chance she has at living a longer life is to get a heart transplant. The catch is that it only has a 20% chance of success. With one month until her surgery, Meira has decided that she wants to at least try to live her life to the fullest with the time she has left.
Depending on what choice you choose with your month left, is what determines which of the six love interests route you get on. One of the love interest's route is locked and must be unlocked by playing through one of the routes. Each of the characters have two endings, one bad and one good, with two epilogues: Seductive and Sweet. There are no sudden endings throughout the route, so your choices only determine which ending you get once you finish the route. The game makes a noise letting you know which choice is the correct one to make. There is no way to turn this off. This is helpful for those who don't wish to get the bad endings, though if a player wants to get all of the CGs, then they will need to play the bad endings. I think the Seductive and Sweet epilogues are one of my favorite parts of the game. The Seductive epilogues are so, so good. Although I have to mute the game for the epilogues because it is extremely cringy to hear the VA voice some of those lines and make kissing noises.
Sounds
The voice acting is generally very good overall. It can be a bit hit or miss at times though. I think most of the side characters actually have the best voice acting. Unfortunately, there are some characters with mics that aren't as clean sounding where the mic settings could be set better. Thankfully, there are only a few side characters where this is the case, so it doesn't make the experience painful. There doesn't seem to be much quality control with some of the names, especially when it comes to Tamaki and Meira. The VAs were saying them at least two different ways and it wasn't very consistent. Meira does not have a voice actor. The only exception to this is in the special movies. I wish that she had a voice the entire game, especially because the VA is exactly how I pictured her voice sounding.
The sound balance for the videos, opening and special movies, could be worked on a bit. The music is overpowering over the voices. This is okay for the intro movie since it has subtitles, but the special movies do not have subtitles. There is no way to listen to past voice lines with the log.
Art
The sprites are well drawn and they've got a few different poses/facial expressions. Whenever they talk, their mouths move, except for Meira. The unimportant side characters that actually have sprites, like the nurses, don't have eyes. It's kind of unnerving. The sprites also move around the screen and move up closer and back away depending on what they are doing. Sometimes the sprite even reflects what is being said, like they took their glasses off and the sprite did. Meira doesn't have a sprite for bits of the game, and it's almost non-existent in Nathan's routes. This is most likely because she is wearing a different outfit that does not have a sprite for, but it's kind of a shame.
UI & System
There is no name in the text box when the character is having an inner monologue. It would have been nice to have the characters name and somehow indicate it was their inner thoughts instead. Some of the characters also cannot stick to one name for Meira and go back and forth between the options. Tamaki jumps between his nickname for her and her real name and Nathan jumps between calling her by her first name and last name.
The only keyboard controls that the game has is "enter" which progresses the text box. Space bar does not progress the text, nor does it hide the UI which I assume is supposed to work based on one of the game updates history. This is especially annoying because the text box does block out a bit of the background art and character sprites. Even when a CG pops up there's no real way to look at it in full until you go to view it in the gallery. Some of the art and even UI art is not very crisp and a bit fuzzy. The chapter intermission screens also aren't as clear with the moving background. There is a way to hide the UI on the image in the gallery, except for when it has a second image and when you are viewing the second image.
There are a few errors with words missing letters, being misspelled, or even some sentences missing their periods. There's also an excessive use of exclamation marks occasionally. If the skip button is highlighted and the text hasn't been read, there is no way to advance the text until you click the skip button again to turn it off. There is no confirmation for overwriting saves, yet there is a confirmation asking if you wish to load a save. There is also no rollback function or quick save or quick load.
The diary is a nice touch with the updates as you make progress through the route by choosing the correct choices, and the little doodles are cute as well. It's possible to miss when an update happens though if you aren't remembering to check it every now and then. Words to live by.
Final Thoughts
Meira is a very stubborn MC, but it's nice that she knows exactly what she wants. She can occasionally get on the players nerves because all she says sometimes is that her life doesn't matter, because she is going to die anyway. I was unsure if I would find any of the love interest's interesting when I first started the game, as none of them really stood out to me, personality-wise, appearance-wise, or even job-wise. I was thankfully proven wrong and actually enjoyed most of the guys and their routes overall. Brayson and Tamaki absolutely have my heart.
This is not a slow burn romance. This is a "the guy has fallen for her immediately or has been in love with her before the game even began". If that's not your cup of tea, then this may not be the game for you. If you go in expecting the guy to already be head over heels for Meira and her to be absolutely oblivious and think that the guy could never love her back, then it can still be enjoyed. I am very happy with how the happy ending ended for each of the characters and felt very satisfied when I finished the game. Everything feels like it's wrapped up very well. Each route is also varied for the plot and story that it has.
If you want a kind of overarching story line to have some of the plot and characters not spoil other routes, I suggest this order: Nathan/Eli -> Tamaki -> Will -> Brayson -> Jay
Also, for the love of all things, please do not make the game close with the "ESC" button. I have closed this game without saving more than once on accident because of this button press because of muscle memory of expecting it to open/close the menu. It is extremely infuriating.
Otome Lovers wishes to thank Eternal Love Studios for providing a free review copy for this game.
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