I don't want to say this as a flat "no." While I did not enjoy it, the game has some really good things going for it. I loved the transformation sequences, the art style and detail are very good, sound design and music were all good.
The game markets itself as a mix of things. Part visual novel, part dating sim, and part turn-based RPG complete with special abilities. But upon starting the game up, it leans very heavily into the dating sim aspects. While I am aware that this is a dating sim so of course I should expect [i]some[/i] romantic content, the game doesn't really give you any time to get to know any of the characters and make any of the romantic interactions meaningful. The game is proding you to flirt with people before you've met most of the main cast, before the game's first combat, and before you've even fully gotten to experience all of the other parts of the game. In a lot of games with romance options, the romantic opportunities are presented later on, and I like to think this is on purpose so you can understand all of the characters better. So it's odd to have it shoved in your face at first as if it's the central focus of the game. Maybe later I would have discovered that it is the central focus, but with combat and other things in the mix, it still felt forced and awkward to me.
And on top of that, the game's dialog choices also similarly seem to undermine your freedom even further. I thought we had learned the lessons of early BioWare games about dialog being presented disingenuously, and choosing something that seems benign only to find out that it's actually hostile, or overly flirty, or even friendly to a character you don't like. Nova Hearts has this same issue unfortunately, and I found myself being confused and bitter when I would choose what seemed like a pretty safe, neutral option only to have the character lose favor with me and reply with a passive-aggressive retort that tells me they aparently found what I said very offensive.
In some dialog, I would be presented with options that all seemed to be laced with innuendo and I didn't feel like I had any genuine options at all. And that's not even getting into the heavy railroading the game conducts to try and force you into pairing with a certain character who seems to be your default ship. I felt almost bullied in some instances when I was pestered multiple times in a row to tell my friends if I was "into" the default ship, having to say no multiple times only for them to continue to berate me about it just a scene or two later.
When a game like this with heavy customization options that presumably also has a lot of choice and options in it dumps backstory baggage on you out of nowhere and then puts the screws to you in claustrophobic dialog options, it doesn't feel like I have any input. Your pre-arranged ship is coded as your "first kiss," which seems like they're trying to make it easy for players to disengage if they want, but it's still painfully clear that the devs think this is the person you [i]should[/i] be romancing. I bought you a conductor hat because you are on a railroad. Maybe my character is familiar with this person, but I am not, and I think bringing a major character into the story this way is a poor writing device that actually disconnects you from the character you play and puts a barrier up between you and the game setting because now it's very clear the character knows and has experienced things that you have not.
The combat is brutal and confusing. Usually, first battles have easy enemies to familiarize yourself with the combat flow and mechanics in a low-risk situation. But the first enemy you enounter does so much damage that you can't survive a 1 on 1 fight without healing every couple of turns. It's turn-based with a turn order in the bottom "track" of the combat screen, and your party members don't all attack in order or as a group, but based on their position on the track. You can change the timing of character's turns by pressing left and right but this isn't told to you, it just allows you to press those buttons but never prompts you to or explains this is possible. You switch powers with Q and E, but likewise, I thought when I saw the HUD that those keys correspond to those abilities instead of just switching them. The combat also takes too long for my liking. There are a lot of turns when nothing happens, which I am always confused by. Even the enemy targeting is weird and confusing. If you have 4 enemies in a row on the right side of your screen. You can use WASD as arrow keys to select enemies from this row of 4 badguys. You would assume that "A" moves your reticle left and "D" moves it right, but "A" moves your reticle right and "D" moves your reticle left, exact opposites of what they should do. Toggling through enemies in this way also seemed to just skip around to any of them it felt like in a random order instead of through the line in order. Any action I took feel like a chore since there wasn't a reliable way to select the enemies I wanted.
Those things aside, the game has pacing issues and some UX/UI issues that bugged me. At one point I used Alt+F4 to close the game because I just could not get out of a dialog with someone to just save the game and quit. Railroading seems to be the soup de jour for this game. You are pushed forcefully from conversation to conversation, encounter to encounter, love interest to love interest. Usually games like this might break up these sequences with some neutral activities you can do in between conversations and events, but this game just has a queue of these things ready to go to the point where I wish they had just taken the phone out altogether and had everything select itself.
There is some kind of large day/night cycle in the game that involves a circle that spins around sometimes, but I was not able to understand what it means or use it to tell what time of day it was. You're presented with a screen that has a sky at the top and an illustrated cityscape at the bottom. The circle, the sky, and the cityscape change colors, but they kind of invert instead of all changing at once. You may check the screen and see a bright sky but a dark city. What does that mean? If the sky is bright does that mean it's day? But if the city is still dark, is it sunrise? Is the sun going down and that's why the city is already dark? I didn't understand it. I wonder if the game eventually opens up and lets you select different activies during the day, making it important to manage the time you have left. This was not the case form the part I played, but either A) if this is the case, then the time of day indicator should maybe be clearer or better yet part of the HUD or B) if not then the screen should be removed to avoid confusion.
I wish I could say I am torn, but I really genuinely don't like this game. Kudos to the designers, a lot of the fine details I just find unpalatable.
EDIT: A lot has changed since this review was written. The combat I know for a fact was updated, and the devs actually took the time to respond to my review, which is rare and appreciated. You can read their response for yourself, But I wanted to first of all say that what I wrote here is probably outdated so you should form your own opinions. The Spark is a demo / early access preview of the game in essence, so I think devs should get the chance to respond to criticism and make updates on their work. And second, I rewrote this review to be less mean, and I want to apologize to the devs for the original review. It's trendy to write a snarky review that passive aggressive, but as I've written more reviews I've challenged myself to improve. It's fine to not like something, but I felt like originally what I wrote was too aggressive and a vehicle to make dumb jokes and garner awards at the expense of the people who made the game. This one I think is closer to my intention--to inform others and give the devs meaningful feedback.
