Review: Nova Hearts Romance Interrupted by Tedious Fights

In general, I really appreciate the execution in Nova Hearts. The story is told through visual novel-style cutscenes and moments in which Luce is in her room texting people on her phone. Relationships develop as a result of responses, with an astrology app letting you see if you’re close to being friends or possible lovers with other individuals. Sometimes, these segments can be quite clever!

The weird thing is that the narrative and characterizations in Nova Hearts are at their most awkward and worst whenever romance is involved. Rather than actually getting to know people and see relationships develop naturally through conversations, such as in some life sims, JRPGs, and Japanese-made otome games, the execution here makes me feel like Lightbulb Crew is in a rush to immediately make things happen. Before you even get to know a person, you can essentially have Luce leering and awkwardly hitting on people. Sometimes the dialogue selections for them come across as such a cringe pickup line that I actually avoided making that choice in-game because it felt inappropriate to say to someone I’d just met. (This happens with Basile, as an example.) 

I felt like it got in the way of the plot too. Yes, we know going into it that Nova Hearts will feature dating sim elements and an opportunity to romance characters. But instead of that coming up as a complement to a story exploring what’s happening in Vermillion, why Luce, CJ, and Will gained powers, and stopping it, it feels like it forces its way into the forefront of everything. Luce just got back to town and very obviously going through a thing, so maybe the first thing her longtime friend shouldn’t be doing is encouraging her to find a hook up at a party? Childhood friend Sacha comes up? Talk about how not only he was Luce’s first kiss, but Will was dating him too. Learning combo moves? One of them is associated with a “romantic” rope-tying class. There is nothing wrong with being sex positive, but the way in which Shoreline Games wrote it makes every relationship come across as incredibly superficial, even with folks Luce is talking to on a regular basis. If I’m going to virtually flirt with someone and shoot for an ending with them, I should at least know who they are as a person. 

While the direction “dating” takes doesn’t exactly make the Nova Hearts romance options incredibly appealing, the turn-based combat system is one of the slowest and worst I’ve encountered. A set number of battles come up as part of the story during certain events. The general enemy designs are repeated throughout each “chapter,” with the boss featuring the only novel design. You’re forced to trudge through fights, selecting from only a handful of commands, though in my experience the only worthwhile options are anything with AOE to hopefully end things as quickly as possible. Even the most basic enemies feel like a slog and potentially a challenge since there’s no real “leveling up.” Your party members remain at a stagnant HP. Attacks will always do a fraction of damage to any opponent. Some of the bosses will involve pretty unfair attacks. It isn’t fun. You aren’t even getting to level up individual abilities in the “fitness” app at a brisk pace, since those will tend to require a minimum of 500 points. Combo attacks mean more waiting, since you need to try and sync up attack timing, and those can be helpful! But you’re limited to four equipped at a time instead of just… I don’t know… allowing me to use any combo I please in a game where combat crawls and a boss fight can be completely unfair at times?

I don’t think the Switch is the ideal platform for Nova Hearts either, as there are a number of technical issues. The biggest issue I encountered involved loading. There are substantial loading times between getting into the game, getting to the text message menu in Luce’s room between story segments and fights, and between fights and story segments again. If you aren’t spending an absurdly long time waiting to get through a battle, then you’re dealing with unexpectedly long loads to get to or from them. 

On the Switch, some bugs come up during those Nova Hearts fights too. During the first boss fight, an instance came up in which Wish fell during the fight to an attack from that foe. When she did, that opponent just… disappeared. Chaos and Luck attacked the enemy as usual, beating the character on their next turns, and then the effect animation for the one falling showed up where the person should have been. When I’d check the Power Up app during a fight to check enemy attacks or set ally combos, it’d often say “Power Name Very Long” instead of an actual opponent’s attack when in the enemy section, which was pretty weird. 

The concept behind Nova Hearts is good and I like some story elements, but I’m not a fan of its romance and hate its combat. The relationships come across as awkward and superficial, with the script never really providing reasons why I should want Luce to end up with anyone besides “they’re hot.” The combat crawls along, is unenjoyable, and doesn’t feel fair sometimes. Top it all off with some issues with the Switch version, and I’d say it’s best to look to other dating sims on the system.

Nova Hearts is available for the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.