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.