Heartful Chance Review

Platform: PC
Team: Studio Sprinkles
Web page: Heartful Chance Home Site

I was so itching to try an OELVN that caught my eye and screamed "Quality" for a free OELVN.  That's when I noticed that Heartful Chance was finished one day when I was browsing through updated Lemmasoft forum threads.

Characters

Eimi: She's just an average high school girl (aren't most HS girls "average" in otome games?) with one notable involvement with the writer's club.  Accepting her fate as "Ms. Nobody" at her school, Eimi just eats, sleep, and go to school like any other student with not much thought to her purpose in life.

Kouhei: The typical all-around prince charming, President of the math club, plays tennis, and is an honor student.  Kouhei's the unintentionally unapproachable popular student because of his godliness.  Why he would ever involve himself with Eimi is revealed after Charlotte's ruse.

Charlotte: Eimi's so-called friend, who is really a bitch in my opinion.  She's the total embodiment of the love-blinded high school girl.  Her goal is to snag a boyfriend and then later gloat about it.  Charlotte is the reason why Eimi's world turned upside down out of thoughtless joy.

Henri: The "delinquent" in the game who's really not a delinquent.  Not much is revealed about him other than the stalker typical guy he is asking about Eimi's love troubles.  He likes to help out people's dramatic problems and is the more outgoing, athletic type.












Story
Eimi was late to her math class and realized that her Nazi math teacher was going to collect her class' assignments.  Feeling like the world is going to end just by a stroke of bad luck, Charlotte saves the day by offering Eimi to copy her answers.  Before Eimi reached her luck, Charlotte sets up a deal for Eimi to write a love letter.  Eimi tries to get out of the deal by suggesting that love letters should be written from the sender's heart, but cheapass Charlotte wanted to make her crush think she's the sweetest girl in the world (yuck man, not cool Charlotte).  Since Nazi teacher > Charlotte's attempt at love letter superficiality, Eimi caved in to the blackmail.  With Eimi's background from the writer's club, Eimi wrote the most convincing letter she has and said her job was over.  But lazy Charlotte wanted Eimi to deliver the letter to her crush's locker in the boys' locker room, saying that it's "improper for a lady to be seen there" (every second I see Charlotte, I want to punch her lights out or expose her awful attitude).

So Eimi tries to put the letter in the locker, but starts mixing up the location and then gets caught right-handed by half-naked Kouhei.  Surprisingly enough, Kouhei was pretty chill aside from being surprised that a girl sneaked into the locker room to give a love letter to his friend's locker.  And BAM, love at first sight for Eimi (lol, what?).  Next day, Charlotte gets the boyfriend of her dreams and proceeds to tell the whole damn school about Eimi's writing skills.  From that point, Eimi was known as the Love  Letter Princess.

Graphics
Pretty decent for a free OELVN.  The GUI's super polished and suits the theme of the visual novel.  Maybe there's something super childish about the character's faces but that's not a complaint.  Eimi and Charlotte's facial expressions were very suited to the comedic style of the game.  There was no shortage of original background, CGs, and chibi-fied scenes.  SUPER PINK THOUGH.


Music
I was surprised to know that most of the music came from Kevin McLeod's collection since the tracks were very suited to the comedic, romantic theme.  I give props for the sugary J-pop opening song.

Overall Impression
Given the lack of OELVNs that look very refined for its standards as well as having the perk of an otome game, Heartful Chance should be - ahem- given a chance to be played.  It takes about 2 and a half hours to finish both Kouhei and Henri's path depending on how fast the text is read.  The time span is only a week in the VN's universe, so spurring romantic relationships will seem cheesy and incredulous.  Typos and awkward grammar ahoy!  It didn't seem like the group invested in a proofreader to check typos that give a negative impression when accumulated.  One typo I can remember is "heroin" confused for "heroine".

I wanted something terrible happen to Charlotte so badly whenever I see her because not only was she shallow right from the get-go, taking advantage of Eimi's fear of the teacher, but she brought unnecessary attention on Eimi.  I keep expecting something dramatic or terrible to happen in this simplistic, predictable love story but of no avail.  Something like Eimi's business as the Love Letter Princess goes wrong as guys find out about the falsely-written love letters or Charlotte blames losing her boyfriend on Eimi, but nothing like that happens.  It's a simple love story that's not meant to be taken seriously, but Heartful Chance is something to look at for a quick otome snack.


Character Paths (SPOILERS)


Kouhei's Path


The same half-naked Kouhei Eimi encountered in the locker is the same guy who takes a step into her classroom for an errand.  Then googly eyes activate as Eimi falls even harder for Kouhei.  Kouhei is all Eimi thinks about and then Eimi tries to contact him one night with an IM.  All it took was a "Hi" for Kouhei to go offline and failure music cues.  The next day, Kouhei approaches Eimi with the request of writing a love letter for his crush.  And... BANG, goes her dreams of being with him.  As the Love Letter Princess, she could be a nice person and do this favor for Kouhei or be selfish and not write the letter.  Getting on Kouhei's path means accepting his request.

Eimi tells Kouhei that she can write the letter for him and he's overjoyed.  Charlotte later tells Eimi that their math teacher is absent so that means 100 math problem wonderland.  Stumped at doing all of the work, Kouhei happens to show up and offer to help do Eimi's work.  That's right folks, her crush just offered to do all of her homework, an anomaly I have just witnessed.  The two take all day until sunset to do all the problems because Kouhei forgot his calculator and Eimi forgot the charger for her laptop's calculator.
Eimi gives Kouhei the love letter written with all of her love and wishes the girl returns Kouhei's feelings.  I thought 'No way man, it can't be a route where the girl winds up alone watching her crush confess to another girl is it?'.  Only one way to find out.  Kouhei invites her to hang out after school and Eimi thinks it's just weird for his crush to ask her to hang out when there's another girl in his mind.  So the two have cotton candy and talk about love.  Eimi vaguely tells Kouhei that she likes someone and Kouhei does the same, both Eimi and Kouhei don't know if their crushes like them.  And then the two part, awaiting for Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day comes and Eimi sulks about not having a boyfriend for the first time.  Charlotte comes to brag about her giant, stuffed teddy bear until she mentioned that Kouhei was looking for Eimi.  Eimi asks what up with Kouhei choosing to go to Eimi instead of going to his crush to confess.  And the big reveal comes when Kouhei hands the love letter to Eimi, admitting that he actually likes Eimi and didn't know how to confess to her.  The love letter was just a ruse to get close to Eimi and Kouhei purposefully lied about the homework questions being hard so he can spend more time with Eimi (DAWWWWW!! THE CUTENESS >///<;).  Kouhei gives Eimi a kiss on the cheek and the two become a couple.

Henri's Path

The "bad boy" of the game.  Henri and Eimi just bicker non-stop from the day they met.  He pretty much brings the worse out of Eimi when it comes to knowing love and Eimi lashes out at him.  Whenever Eimi seems to be  in a rut with writing a letter for Kouhei, Henri shows up.  It came to a point that Eimi refused to write for Kouhei and then Kouhei just forgets about Eimi (LOL, YEAH BRILLIANT PLAN TRYING TO GET YOUR CRUSH TO WRITE TO HERSELF).  There's a night-time radio show where a DJ consults with callers with their love problems, a show Eimi frequents for her problems with Kouhei.

It's a big issue as to why Henri pesters Eimi about her love problems and how he could possibly understand her feelings.  That's when a big reveal came that he had an ex-girlfriend.  Sob story is that he and his ex were together for 5 years and the ex fell ill.  While the ex stayed at the hospital, she cheated on Henri with the doctor who took care of her.  So the two broke up and Eimi felt so moved that she wanted to help Henri get back with her when Henri said getting back together was possible.
After the two eat strawberry ice cream on the rooftop, Henri blurts out, "Do you want to be my girlfriend?" and Eimi reacts with, " WTF, you high?"  He's just kidding around and awaits Eimi's letter.  Eimi gives him the letter and then watches him give the letter to his ex.  Heartbroken at the sudden realization that Eimi fell for Henri, Eimi walks around the courtyard super sad.  Henri looks for Eimi and Eimi asked why Henri isn't spending Valentine's Day with his now former ex.  Henri says, "You don't get it, that was a formal break up letter.  Why the heck would I want to get back with an ex who cheated on me?" and does the cliche of handing Eimi the love letter, confessing his feelings for her.  Another big reveal was that Henri was the radio DJ who's been listening to Eimi's problems and was following her around with the reputation of the love letter princess for kicks.  So the story ends with the two of them kissing.

Overall Impressions


Kouhei's route was definitely cookie-cutter for the simplistic plot of the VN.  While Kouhei is the typical teenager who is realistic in terms of interaction and romantic tension, Kouhei was just more boring compared to Henri.  I keep thinking that Kouhei will date someone else and Eimi just watches on, but nothing like that happens.

I felt the same way with Henri's route where Eimi gets friendzoned either way.  But Henri's route was more fun compared to Kouhei's route.  Both routes were cute though.