While the animations improve as you move through the (as of this review, eight) chapters of Heart Problems, the story never does. The quality of the renders and animations are enough for a once through, but not only is there no real replay value (apart from the gallery available through mods) but you’ll likely find yourself skipping through the largely conflict free and repetitive story that overstays its welcome long before you reach the end of current development.
First, some high notes. There is a decent soundtrack that, while not memorable, is still nice to have. Later scenes have sound effects during sex scenes that were modestly used and another welcome addition. The renders are gorgeous from the get go. All of the love interests are knockouts and are beautifully rendered. The facial expressions may be limited, but that is more of a nitpick then a genuine criticism. The adult content improves dramatically in the later chapters, with early scenes involving renders only, then low-framerate animations, to eventually high FPS animations with multiple stages, such as when you finally have sex with one of the cousins.
The major downside is the story, or lack thereof. It begins with a drunken outing with one of the MC’s cousins that ends with you getting caught by your uncle while fooling around. He reluctantly (he’s not a monster, go figure!) sends you off to live in an apartment he keeps which happens to be near the cousin’s sexy best friend and sex-starved mother. At this point I thought, “Okay, we’re off to the races!” but then the oddest thing happens. After only a day or two at the apartment, you’re whisked back into the house and the story devolves into repeatedly trying to get into everyone’s pants.
Don’t get me wrong. Getting into everyone’s pants is, more often than not, the point of the game, but when it’s the only point of the game, it can get tedious very fast. I was hoping for a story, romantic or otherwise, to tie all the adult content together, but unfortunately the story boils down to endless subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to whittle down your families’ defenses and get them to have sex with you. Any avid fan of adult visual novels will note that the top games on the site invariably have the adult content come as a consequence of a separate story rather than being the sole focus. Whether it’s the trials and tribulations of college life, learning to run a brothel, or trying to uncover a conspiracy in a Matrix-style universe, the adult content is treated as secondary to the story. In Heart Problems, the only real story is “How many times will I have to fondle my aunt’s tits before she’ll let me go further?” or “How many times must I tell my cousin that it’s not a big deal for cousins to fool around before I can get to third base?”
On top of the absence of a compelling narrative, it takes a significantly long time to advance the adult content. This makes some sense with the aunt, who would be understandably skeptical about a relationship with her sister/brother’s kid, but I know from experience that cousins are far easier to convince. If they were brother and sister than it might make sense, but the elder cousin puts up far too much of a struggle, especially given that neither her nor the MC are virgins. The slow pace from kissing, to kissing and fondling, to playing with breasts, to touching your penis, to a hand job, to another hand job, to kissing with a hand job, etc. It just takes far too long to get where it’s inevitably going. As of chapter 8, you’ve only just managed to bed one cousin, along with two one-offs with characters in the early chapters who almost completely disappear for multiple chapters afterwards.
Quite frankly, it gets quite tedious reading, “oh, but we shouldn’t” for the 50th, 60th, 70th time while yet again getting the sinking feeling that you’re about to be cockblocked until the next chapter.
With a bit faster pace, a bit more adult content, and a separate story so as to add some dramatic elements connecting all the adult scenes together, this could easily be a top contender. The renders and animations are already a step above most of the other games on the site. That said, even with all the criticisms, including my having to reluctantly rely on the Ctrl and Tab keys in the later chapters to get through the repetitiveness, it was a pleasant experience overall and I’m looking forward to the next chapter.
