Title: 恋するココロと魔法のコトバ
Developer: Hearts
Release Date: 25th May 2018
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~15 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
Harutoki Narumi is an average 2nd year high school student who happens to live above his parents’ cafe called Vivid. One day,at the end of school, he is asked to deliver some papers to his classmate Kazane – the class president and head of the school’s prestigious gardening club. He heads off towards the gardening clubroom but there’s no one around the club room and the door is unlocked so Narumi decides to quickly leave the papers inside. However, when he enters the room he happens to walk across a magic circle drawn on the floor and summons a naked girl onto his lap.
After the gardening club memebers walk back in on this eroge(tm) situation, it transpires that the summoned girl (later named Haruharu) is a high-level spring spirit and the gardening club is actually a front for witches to study magic. Add to this the fact that Narumi shows some surprising aptitude for magic and Haruharu won’t be seperated form him means that Narumi is convinced to join the “gardening” club alongside the 4 other girls. His springtime of new beginnings, friendship and love (with a little touch of magic) now begins!
My Thoughts
While the last Hearts game I played (rorolog) didn’t exactly leave the best impression on me, I must admit that the overall cuteness of this game (and Shiromochi Sakura’s artwork) enticed me to play. Did Koikoro manage to deliver the fluffy romance that one would expect?
One of the areas where I thought the game excelled was the overall atmosphere – typically, magical settings in eroge tend to have more of a serious/action nature or have extremely over-the-top executions. Koikoro goes for a much more calm and laid-back approach, with the magic basically relating to maintaining the balance of nature via communicating with spirits. This felt like a much more grounded, almost believable approach to magic and I really enjoyed this implementation.
The common route was also a highlight of this title, with it being a good introduction to the world, characters and story. There were also some surprisingly heartfelt moments!
Something that any prospective reader of this title should be aware of is the genre of this game. On DMM/Fanza (whatever they’re calling themselves these days) Koikoro is tagged as a Healing/Soothing game. This descriptor is something I would 100% agree with as the main goal of this title is to create a cute, relaxing world with soothing characters that help relieve the stresses of everyday life. Does this game do that well? In my opinion it does.
Time to speak a little about the characters and their routes. First up is Haruharu, whom is pretty much the main girl of the game as her route felt like the most complete/important. She’s adorable and very fluffy, being extremely deredere from the start of the game. I enjoyed her route and character a fair bit more than I initially expected.
I feel like explaining Kazane as a serious class/club president type would probably explain her personality okay, although she has some fun quirks such as being powered up by caffeine. Her goal is to become the “grand witch” – aka the most powerful and respected witch – so this is what a lot of her route is about. I’m mildly conflicted about her route – I liked parts of it but it felt very predictable overall. However, it wasn’t terrible. Kazane also isn’t really my type of character so that may also have affected my opinion.
Mikana is the typical adorable kouhai whom is always trying her best. I enjoyed the fact that she was a fellow newcomer to magic/witchcraft so she felt like the closest ally to the protagonist at times. She’s also just a really sweet girl so I was super excited for her route & did it first. Unfortunately, Mikana has the worst route in the game – it felt like it lacked something compared to the other heroines. It probably didn’t help that she had a lot of very similar CGs.
The final heroine is Mashiro, who clearly has the most interesting character design. Like Mikana, she is another kouhai. She is a naturally talented witch but struggles with the pressures of following in the footsteps of her recently passed grandmother. This made her one of the more interesting characters in the game in my opinion. The “cat” she carries around is her familiar Bastet, who previously belonged to her grandma. I liked Mashiro’s personality and her route a lot. Very cute.
Whilst the protagonist really isn’t memorable, there were actually some pretty interesting sub characters. I personally really liked Aushley(アウシュリー) the 100 year old spirit who works as a waitress in Vivid. She was kind and always on hand to offer the group advice, honestly it was kinda sad that she didn’t get a route.
As mentioned, the artwork is definitely one of the main draws of the game. I’m hugely biased because I adore Shiromochi Sakura but the CGs were generally very cute & a decent amount. The SD artwork provided by Pero was, of course, perfect as always.
Surprisingly, the music was also pretty good here and as is typical Unisonshift/Hearts products there are comments included from the composing group Alvine, which I also enjoyed reading. It’s such a simple addition that makes the player appreciate the thought that goes into the game’s music exponentially!
Final Thoughts
My Score: 6.5/10
As alluded to throughout the review, Koi Suru Kokoro to Mahou no Kotoba won’t go out and impress readers with an incredibly detailed or impressive story. However, if adorable characters in an extremely relaxing setting is your thing then honestly Koikoro doesn’t do a bad job of that.
The world created within this game is so cozy and comfy that it feels like a warm blanket around your shoulders. There are definitely a few areas for improvement (Mikana’s route for me personally) but this isn’t a bad choice if you want to forget the world for a few hours (and who could blame you).
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Koikoro and am sad that Hearts haven’t released any titles since this as I saw potential. Oh well, there is still their back catalogue to play…
Thanks for reading!
Zettai Renai! 