Melting Hearts: Our Love Will Grow 2 Reviews

I actually liked this game! Despite the reviews, I bought it and had a great time playing (it was hard to stop and take a break) and for the $2 I paid for it, 11 hours of interesting gameplay! I've played STardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons... I love farming games, and I loved how different this one was. It has its own quirkiness and I love it.

I took a chance and bought the game because I thought it was going to be similar to Rune Factory. You start out with access to 3 plots of land to farm. I've played around 6 hours (day ~53) and, as far as I can tell, I've reached the maximum plot count at a whopping 18 plots. There's not much else in the way of farming - you get access to some animals that can be pleased by giving them certain items or using certain items on them, but that's about all there is to it. You are required to take part in town gatherings and occasionally give the mayor some item in order to advance your equipment and the story, but it's all very generic. If there was a half-decent story, I might keep playing, but there's not. There're more destinations for me to visit and perhaps a couple more pieces of equipment to unlock, but I have no desire to play more. Sorry to bash the game, but there was no information out on this game and it comes accross as something it's not. It's not the worst game I've ever played and it's at a cheap price, but don't expect a Rune Factory remake here. EDIT: Okay, so I'm feeling the itch to keep playing this darn game. I still haven't married and I haven't visited the new market location yet. As such, I feel obligated to edit my review. I've gotten a fair amount of time out of a game I bought for $3.99. It's not what I expected, but it seems I'm drawn to keep playing it.

I am past day 200 in the game I am over half way, because I have 3 stars out of six, the game may start out slow when you don't know what to do next, just talk to each person and you will find the way to each step so far I have a B&B getting my 4th renter on my farm, also make sure the animals are fed even though they demand such high quality stuff. I didn't feed the goat and it slowed down my progress in the game- the more you play the better it gets and its adorable and it is alot like Our love will grow 1 but with a twist - there are not alot of people here but I know them all by name- they all give clues for each step of the way- its another adorable game by John Wizard for 3.99 its worth alot more as far as creative game play- its better than the 12.99 Worlds Dawn- if John Wizard puts out more games like this even with a bigger price tag- its worth 15. compared to other game you pay more and get less- I will buy his games again! Very well designed- interesting and so addictive- Don't even listen to anyone who has not really played the game- they gave up way to soon- 6 hours into the game is to soon! I finished our love will grow-1 and this one is just as good! Enjoy-10/10

Everything you loved about harvest moon and rune factory are not in this game It feels & plays like a RPGMaker harvest moon knockoff with Unappealing farming systems and somehow an empty large town, and not that interesting characters and forced restricted generic ugly marriage candidates, And it gets really boring after a wail, I advise picking stardew valley instead.

The ending is bugged - game literally unbeatable What is this feeling of emptyness?

I bought this game as a bundle, along with the first Our Love will Grow. That being said, here is a list of pros and cons with my final thoughts at the end. Pros: - It is a bright, colorful atmosphere. - Unique avatars for npcs - Gender selection -Cooking available with no house upgrade Cons: - No map. Why is there no map. - Poor instructions/Lack of direction - Grindy feel to most everthing - Not much content to spend day time on I've played most of the indie agriculture sims that Steam has to offer. That being said, this one reminds me a lot of Harvest Moon for the GBA. I like the general idea of this game focusing more on NPC interaction, but it feels pretty stiff and honestly, incomplete. The lack of a map seems like a pretty big oversight. This is especially called the attention as there is little sense to the layout of the city. The farming system was intersting at first but proved to be grindy and didn't really give a sense of satisfation when the crops were ready to harvest. There is no menu to see your relationship with the other towns people, either. Overall I did enjoy the visuals and the cheery atmosphere, but there was too much wrong here for me to give this a thumbs up.

Before you buy this game you should know that if you go for Rina or Riley you won't actually get their ending. It will instead go to another person's ending. This bug has apparently been known for over a year and the developer hasn't fixed it.

I [i] really [/i] wanted to like this game. I've played a lot of farmlife simulators, from the shameful days of Facebook's Farmville to the ever so popular Stardew Valley, there is just something so relaxing about the genre that keeps me coming back for more. So, I bought this game on sale for .49 cents. I think it's important to note that I go into these games looking for a new story and not being bias against them or having higher expectations by comparing them to similiar games, but I just cannot get behind Melting Hearts: Our love will grow 2. I barely have an hour worth of gameplay and I have to force myself to play it. The story is generic and mediocre, the town seems huge but feels desolate, the controls system is almost too simplified and there just isn't anything captivating enough to make me want to come back for more. And while I said I try not to be bias toward games, I have to say this games biggest issue is that Stardew Valley exists. Everything this game does wrong, Stardew Valley does right, from having a map, customizable characters, a better inventory system to npc's that are actually interesting. On a positive note, the graphics aren't terrible and the music is quite nice. But I just cannot recommend this game to anyone, especially not at it's full price of $5.

[i]Edit: 5-9-2016[/i] I've finished the game at this point but I've decided that it's time to change my recommendation to a negative. The ending was clever and entertaining, if a bit shallow, but I can't recommend a game where sexism sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when a main character does something entirely counter to their goal the entire game. [spoiler]I.E. the mayor, who wanted to save the town the majority of the game, decided to sell the town just to espouse that women were second-rate.[/spoiler] Furthermore, if it was meant as satire, it was poorly done enough so as to no longer appear as satire in any way. There was a lot of good in this game, but some of these story choices leave a bad taste in my mouth for a game that was otherwise light-hearted, goofy, and enjoyable. [i]Edit: 5-8-2016[/i] I still haven't quite finished with the game but periodically the game continues to express very blatant opinions about the place of men and women in society that are degrading to both. Such as [spoiler]the mayor telling his daugther to act like a girl and not the mayor because his son let him down and that leading a town is a man's job so he decided to sell the town they've been trying to save the entire game, despite having never cared about your gender (as you can be either male or female) and always asking you to do stuff for the town. He said it was better to let the town die with him than be led by a woman before laughing about how now he was very wealthy[/spoiler]. I'm not sure if these are meant as satire or if these are views actually endorsed by the developers. I seriously hope it's satire, even if the cues of it being satire are nowhere to be found. While the game itself is fine, this part of the storyline actually makes me want to change my recommendation to 'buy it if you can ignore this aspect and enjoy the rest' or to negative because we shouldn't be supporting such sexism. [b]-Original Review-[/b] Scroll down a couple of paragraphs please for the updated one. It's full of a lot of surprises despite being a fairly small game. I haven't finished the storyline yet. There aren't a lot of side quests and while there aren't a whole lot of options, it can definitely keep an interest if you get past the relatively slow early game where the characters haven't fleshed themselves or their relationships with others out terribly well. At this point, the only real complaint I have is that there was a cute side-story about helping some other folk find love but it turned out to be kind of sexist and heteronormative when it didn't have to be and it only happened at the very end of that little side story. [spoiler]It had been so cute up until that point but it was basically 'moms can't teach kids how to read and write so they need a dad,' 'dads can only teach practical things and are the primary teacher of offspring,' and 'I need a dad because of this' and 'I need a mom because dads aren't tender enough to prevent bad personality.' That was suprememly disappointing especially to have those views espoused by toddlers. [/spoiler] It was a bit derogatory to both men and women. The rest of the story beside this side-bit has so far been fairly good, though not terribly original. [b]-Revised Review-[/b] May 4th, 2016 This game has a lot of good points and some bad points. I've played through, I think, a lot of the game though I'm not sure how far I actually am at about 16 hours into it (like day 100 or so) and I'm sure where I've gotten to could be completed more quickly if things have lined up better for which crops were planted, when someone wanted some dish, and so on. ANYWAY, here's some actual notes. [i]Pros-[/i] +Interesting, though the original premise of saving a small town from a mall isn't new, and somewhat complicated storyline for the size of the game +Characters reveal their personalities and relationships with others over time +Somewhat complicated recipe system +Funny, if cheesy, descriptions of upcoming events in the mail +Large variety of animals and a healthy variety of crops +Well-planned, complicated dungeon maps that are set up to encourage you to come back to see what any new mechanics you unlocked can reveal +Most side events are at least a cute distraction or genuinely interesting, but not all +You don't have to know a damned thing about the first game [i]Cons-[/i] +Slow start, really slow and your brother is basically the stereotype of a rich, privileged, douchebag city boy (he is set up as an antagonist and is a very shallow one at that). +Graphics, graphics, graphics (the pixels are blown up for the default resolution and it's a little fugly but only really on the character sprites) +The farming is really only a means to an end and not terribly complex +Livestock are also a means to an end and are mostly for unlocking things as some don't do anything at all. +Sometimes you feel very lost about what you're supposed to do +Sometimes you have to wait and do nothing while you're waiting for something to happen to advance what you're doing or for that one blasted crop to grow so you can make a dish +Fairly shallow romance system and very few choices for either gender +The characters you can romance depending on your gender are just gender-swapped versions of themselves. All choices are also heterosexual, but to be fair, it is a small town. +No friendship system for becoming pals with the other villagers though it's implied over time that they're cool with you +Some side events/quests are kind of tedious +At least one side event espouses opinions that are sexist and derogatory to [i]both[/i] men and women. +Some mechanics seem to have no purpose, but they might be revealed further on +The town is very small and many people seem to live nowhere +You have to go all over the place to buy ingredients for cooking +You can't manually save, you can only save when you sleep and it happens automatically [i]Either Con or Pro depending on you-[/i] +The storyline starts off slow and takes a while to get through +Sometimes you have to get through certain parts of the main story before you can complete some of your side-quests because mechanics are introduced even fairly late into the game +Kitchen available from day one +No character portraits despite the adorable store art and menu art that could easily have been co-opted to make character portraits, even if at least for a couple of characters. +Winter never ends, one season the whole game (which can lead to 100+ days of winter) +No choices in how the storyline plays out, it railroads you the whole way minus the slight extra freedom of choosing from a tiny selection of lifemates +Maps can sometimes take a long time to navigate +Sometimes the key controls surprise you, I.E. DO NOT WASD. DO NOT DO IT. [i]Summary[/i] I liked the game and I feel like I've at least gotten my money's worth out of it. Unless something drastic happens, I intend to play the game to the end. It's not some fantastic Harvest Moon for the PC platform, but I'm okay with that. It doesn't have a whole lot of options, but it's a small game and it was also produced fairly fast. If you are okay with trying to unravel a purposefully slow storyline and less interested in the relaxation of farming sims, than this game would be pretty okay for you. I would recommend it, especially since it's not terribly expensive and the developers sometimes put their games on sale. It's an improvement in many ways over the previous game as well, but even if just there's more story.

I thought I would love this game. Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley are my jam. But this game could have been so much better. With very little direction, no map (or any way to figure out where anything is without spending days wandering) and no legend or way to find people without knowing exactly who they are is a complete drain. It's not relaxing when you spend days, and days and days trying to find someone in order to progress, because there are literally no other quests or things you can complete without them is infuriating. If I hadn't spend so much time playing it and trying to understand what I was doing I would have refunded it.