The third title in the Story of Eroolia series, How to Sing to Open Your Heart expands on the story preceding it while also having twists of its own.
How to Sing to Open Your Heart takes place where the last game, How to Fool a Liar King, left off. Luccretias and humans have a pact where humans will treat those with Inadaptability Disease in Eroolia in exchange for the grass that grows in Laarz.
But something nefarious is happening. The luccretcias that are being treated have noticed that their powers are slowly changing or completely going away.
What is going on?
In this story, you play as Myana, the Princess of Laarz, whom we met in the last game who wanted to wifey up Regina until she found out she was not a cat person. Myana makes a trip to Eroolia to visit her people in the treatment centers there. Immediately upon arriving, she meets her love interest, Ludovic.
Ludovic is cold, a jerk, and an anti-Luccretian. So, he has a lot of very big red flags going into this story. The difference here is the writer, Chu-3, actually KNOWS how to write a character who is a jerk and not an irredeemable asshole. I have seen a lot of jerk characters who are just presented as terrible people and these games want me to love a character and trust that he’s a good person (even with characters telling me he’s a good person???), which I cannot do with how they are presented. While Ludovic is a jerk, he never comes off as a man who is being cruel for the sake of being cruel, you can tell that each time he says something bluntly or mean, there is a reason behind it because he doesn’t do it just to hurt Myana’s feelings.
Myana puts him in check on the regular, calls him out on stuff, they talk, and, the biggest thing here is, he changes. We watch him as he changes. It also helps that we get to see little bits of his point of view here and there. He also very much realized that he had feelings for Myana pretty quickly which very much conflicts with his anti-Luccretian side. It’s just really nice to see that writing a character like this can be done and the change in them can make sense even with the game’s short run time compared to other otome games.
If you have never played a game in this series, there are two routes in the game and one love interest. You make choices in the first three chapters in this game and are placed into a route in the fourth chapter. Unlike
How to Fool a Liar King, the two routes have the story play out very differently. While getting to see the many ways the story is set up, the routes are Independent and Teamwork and the way the game branches off from there have vastly different ways of reaching the same conclusion. It’s really nice to read a different story and not just the story completely from another character’s point of view.
The game is 100% voice acted (minus like, inner monologue), so it’s nice to sit back and listen to the voice actors do their work. They are all very talented and you can tell they enjoyed their roles. It’s always a delight when my cat son, Lio shows up and you can bet on Mars to get you some good laughs.
The art of this game is pretty nice to look at. There are some minor things here and there that are a bit off, but for the most part, I am quite happy overall with it.
If I had any grips about the game is that, the background music, when on the lowest setting and not completely turned off is still quite loud over the voice acting.
When you get down to it, the game is quite fun. The writing is great, knowing when it’s time to be funny and when it’s time to be serious and can transition between the two in a way that isn’t jarring. I’d say give this game a chance (including the other two before it) if you are looking for a change of pace between the usual overly dramatic stuff.
Breakdown
- Great writing including some nice story twists
- Fun characters including a conflicting character who could have easily been just an asshole for the sake of it
- A nice addition to the world-building of Eroolia
- Sound settings still too loud on their lowest volume
Rating: 4.5/5
Final Comments: This is a pleasing story from start to finish with a character I’m happy to see again. There are some dark undertones and still an open question about an introduced character. When’s game four going tell us what that’s all about?
Suggested Play Order: Independent to Teamwork. I feel that Teamwork answers most of the open questions in Independent, so reading it first might make Independent route seem boring in comparison.
Disclaimer: A copy of this game was provided by the publisher.
Release Date: January 17, 2019
System(s): PC & Mac
Price: $14.99
Text Language: English, German, Japanese
Audio: Japanese
Steam Download: https://store.steampowered.com/app/924780/
Website: https://eroolia.roseverte.net/song/en/
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