Game: Ascendant Hearts Switch Review
Genre: Visual Novel, Adventure
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developers|Publishers: Visualnoveler
Price: US $9.99|AU $ 15.00 | CA $ 13.22| £8.99| € 9,99
Age Rating: US T|EU 12
Release Date: January 30th, 2020
Review code provided by Visualnoveler
A Light Novel Turned Video Game
As someone who is as much a book lover as they are a video game lover, it isn’t hard to guess that I’m a huge fan of visual novels. I first discovered visual novels one night many moons ago when I was browsing the App store on my Iphone looking to spend a gift card that I had received. Somehow, I stumbled upon Hakuoki, the enticing story of a girl with a strange power who accidently gets involved with the infamous Shinsengumi. It’s a well-known visual novel, and like many other otome fans, had me sucked into a visual novel rabbit hole searching for more sensuous stories I could live through.
If you’re unfamiliar with a visual novel, let me stop you right there. Essentially, visual novels are exactly what they sound like. They’re stories paired with music and often very elaborate images. You, as the reader, take on the role of the main character and interact with other characters by making choices. So, unlike a novel, you decide the fate of the main hero-heroine. Many, but not all, visual novels are seeped into the genre of romance, and often feature the main character in a harem or reverse harem type of situation. What this means is that if the main character is a boy most of the other characters will be girls, and vice versa.
This is how Ascendant Hearts is fashioned to be. As soon as you boot up this story on either your PC or Switch, you assume the role of Hayato. He’s a boy that has originated from our world, the one you and I are familiar with, into an un-named world whose logic is identical to that of a JRPG.
The world Hayato is transported into is one entrenched with fantastical characters and design. Hayato, however, is plagued with amnesia (of course) and hasn’t a clue why he’s there. The farther you get into the story, the more you begin to see the world through Hayato’s perspective. In this world, you befriend three adorably cute and very trope-defined anime girls that join you on your quest. By the end of the visual novel you will get the option to pair with your favorite heroine.
If you’ve ever watched anime, read manga or even light novels, then you’ve probably read this familiar story of someone entering a video game world. However, Ascendant Hearts isn’t a rehashing of this genre filled with basic tropes. Rather, it’s a parody that has a genuinely heartwarming story and an abundant amount of truly laughable humor.
“What if you woke up in an RPG World?”
This is the question that pairs with the trailer of Ascendant Hearts. Like I’ve said, it’s a question that’s been answered through the plot of many anime and light novel stories. Think Sword Art Online, The Time I woke up as a Slime and even, to an extent, Ni no Kuni. However, as I’ve mentioned, this story pokes fun at the genre. The main character, Hayato, asking all the questions we ourselves have wondered as we’ve watched these stories unfold. Hayato’s real world logic against that of the RPG world is what drives much, if not all, of the humor in this game. Much of which I do in fact appreciate.
However, during the first twenty or so minutes of the game, where you meet your first of the three companions, Shiori, the amount of explaining all the RPG world mechanics is exhausting. Perhaps this is because I am already familiar with RPG logic. Regardless, you have to sit through much of this redundant dialogue before the real mystery of the first mystery of the game begins to unfold—Shiori’s past.
For some reason or other (keeping this review spoiler free), all the other adventurers in town avoid her. She’s a strong-willed and friendly character, but no one, except you, decides to befriend her. Desire to reveal Shiori’s past had me pushing ‘a’ to drive the story forward. Not only that, but another mystery began to unfold as well—the appearance of bloodthirsty monsters that warped randomly into town to reap havoc every now and then. The party that you and your friends form attempt to visit various locations in order to piece together clues to discover the strange origin of these creatures.
Besides Shiori, you befriend two other main female characters: Aiko and Chise. Like Shiori, I found Aiko and Chise to have quite an unexpected layer of depth to them. For example, Aiko, the cautious, shy, kind of cutesy type is actually quite fearful and expectant of her own demise. She’s nervous to join a party because she expects to be the one to be killed for the sake of a “story” quest. RPG logic, yeah, but I actually found her resolve of this idea to be quite compelling.
And then you have Chise, like Shiori she’s cut of tougher material than Aiko. She’s quite a serious character who I found to be slightly humorous as she’s, unlike Aiko, desperate to join a party with a “hero”, yet always finds herself in parties with useless “farm boys” or “runaway princesses”. On the surface these backstories can seem kind of, well, funny. However, in-between all the humor, I actually found the execution of these characters stories to be well-paced and, at times, heartfelt.
We gotta talk about it: Fanservice
Ascendant Hearts is not unique in the sense that this visual novel offers some pretty juicy “cutscenes”. In a variety of visual novels, the choices you make are rewarded with full-screen images of a particularly important scene or “cutscene”. Some can only be unlocked by following a certain character’s path, and others are to highlight the emotion in a scene. Regardless of the reason, cutscenes are rewards for the reader/gamer and offer some unique close-ups that are a nice change from the usual background sets and character frames.
That being said, Ascendant Hearts is the type of visual novel that rewards you with anime boobs. Yup, it’s a booby game. Sexuality isn’t too overwhelming in the game, but a majority of important cutscenes are semi-naked close-ups of the main females. For the most part, I did not find this distracting. However, there were certain conversations that I found to be somewhat unnecessary and ultimately inserted for the sake of…well…boobs. I guess boobs break up the monotony a reader may be feeling.
How much Freedom Does this Game Offer?
One of the biggest factors that set visual novels apart from each other is the extent of their mechanics. Some games, like the previously mentioned Hakuoki, allow you to essentially just read the story and make choices that don’t necessarily affect the plot; rather, your answers move you towards a specific ending.
Other visual novels, like Regency Love, allow you to do things like select places in town to visit or distribute skill points to unlock certain cutscenes. Ascendant Hearts is the latter. I found that the choices you make in this visual novel tend to range in affect in regards to the overall story.
Sometimes your choices lead to a variant dialogue, other times they lead to character-specific cutscenes. For example, in chapter eight, after exploring a temple and getting some pretty serious information for the development of the story, your party suddenly gets an important choice.
Shiori is my girl, and I usually side with her, but it was late and we just spent an age exploring a mysterious temple. Aiko and Chise wanted to sleep on the info we gathered and reconvene in the morning while Shiori wanted to discuss everything then and there. Normally I agree with Shiori, but I just wanted my party to head home. By not siding with her she ended up running off! I was disappointed, but figured my party could just walk home and not worry about her for now. What I thought would be a peaceful walk through the forest turned out to be a rather…explicit…cut scene involving a completely out of place giant octopus that enjoyed being aroused…Good thing there’s autosave!
What’s important to keep in mind is that your answers affect the four possible endings. Sometimes the options you get don’t seem to affect the story too much, while others lead you down crazy cutscenes. Either way, your choices rack up points towards a specific character. Before the game ends, you can choose which heroine’s ending you want to see (there’s even an option not to choose any of them!). However, if you’ve been siding with Shiori for every decision, then you may not be able to end the game with Chise. Just something to keep in mind as you play.
There are a couple other mechanics in the game. For the most part, you’ll essentially only be pressing ‘a’ to move the story forward. There are other buttons to have it set to ‘auto’, so you can just watch and read the story unfold, and even to fast forward. There were no instructions on navigating different buttons when I started the game, so when I was searching for a save button I ended up pressing fast-forward and skipped a huge chunk of dialogue. Luckily, the game does have an autosave feature, and the save and load features are found in the main menu which is accessible through the ‘b’ button on the Switch. Essentially, you could save your game before you get the choices for the endings and can view everyone’s ending without replaying the game over and over. But are you really going to play Shiori like that?
The last thing I wanted to mention was the developer, Visualnoveler. I took a peek around to try and get an idea of how many games this company publishes, but there’s very little information of them out there. Their website shows two games they’ve developed, Ascendant Hearts and Anime Studio Simulator, and the third one that is coming out in April 2020: Eternal Radiance. They have a Kickstarter campaign for the latter one, and it looks like it is soon to be released on PC and Switch (after playing this game, I’m looking forward to their latest one!). What I discovered was that it seems they are pretty active on Twitter, where they show 3D models of their characters in development, and have a pretty big following on Kickstarter. It’s clear to me that they are a consistent publisher that puts out quality work. It also seems like they’re exploring new game mechanics, as their latest game is going to have more features that allow you to run around, explore, and battle monsters.
Conclusion
I’ve played a couple visual novels on the Switch that were both far more expensive and far less fun than Ascendant Hearts.
This visual novel plays with anime tropes with an abundant of humor and, most importantly, has a story that actually had me engaged from the get-go. There is quite a bit of fan service in the game, which is surprising when you consider the age rating.
If you’re a fan of visual novels, then I would definitely recommend checking this one out.
Final Verdict: I liked it
Thanks for your review, Chloe! Your review was well written, and very spoiler free. Nice! After reading it I confidently put Acsendant Hearts on my Nintendo Switch wish list.