Stake in the heart: Not the best! – Dark Romance: Heart of the Beast HD - A Hidden Object Adventure (Full) Review

I updated this review since I see that the game itself was updated due to many complaints of technical issues. To be fair, I took out all references to glitches and resubmitted my review since it had disappeared. The story is that you are Beatrice, and your father is sick and needs the Rose of Life to cure him. You need to find it in a Kingdom where an evil witch is guarding it to keep her young and healthy. Because Prince Jonathan refused to cut a deal with her, she turned him, as well as other people, into animals. Along your journey, you interact with and help animals using an enchanted mirror to view these animals in their true human form. The only refreshing, unique aspect was that you play two characters from their respective personas; and you switch between them using their own portraits. The graphics were colorful but also less crisp and somewhat cartoonish. The voiceovers were decent. There are several modes of difficulty, including an option to customize your settings. The inventory is labeled and can require assembly. The map is a transportable one, but I don't know if prior glitches were fixed. In custom settings, I was able to view any available actions and what locations I could collect a butterfly. But sometimes the map was showing that a butterfly was available, but I had already collected it. You can access your collectibles, achievements and journal through the map. The journal is not a traditional one and only shows you replay of cut-scenes and snippets of info on each character through their portraits. You flip between the film strips and ticket to move back and forth between cut-scenes and notes. The HOS are varied and interactive using word lists and progressive silhouette (find and use). One type is when you follow a lantern around the scene; and when it lights up, you feed an animal a treat; then a word list initiates. The puzzles were more like micro puzzles and were quite simple. An example was rotating disks to open a lock. Nothing innovative or challenging. You are collecting butterflies, magic objects and portraits in the locations; most are easy to spot. The extras are the usual but include something to do with butterflies and magic objects. The reasons that this game is receiving two stars is because of the following: 1. There was not a "back" button, which resulted in unwanted returns to prior locations. 2. The game needed a better journal where you can read the story as you go. 3. The game was very short, even with the bonus. 4. Make sure you collect all of the butterflies during the main game (I did not) because I did not see any in the bonus locations or any notations on the map during the bonus so I could not complete some butterfly game. I was not enthralled with this game, even with a twist of playing two characters. It was a boring twist on a kind of Beauty and the Beast story with little or no creativity.
Review by KimTwilight69 on Dark Romance: Heart of the Beast HD - A Hidden Object Adventure (Full).