Steam Heart's (NTSC-J) ISO

Steam Heart's is a top-down scrolling shooter with a hentai themed storyline.

The game features an animated prologue (wait a while on the title screen to see it), voice actors to play out the story, and CD audio for the background music.� A player begins by selecting from two different pilots (though your choice appears to only be cosmetic) before challenging the game's 7 stages, each with an end boss to face.� During each mission, weapon power-ups can be found along the way to increase the offensive power and spread of your ship's primary weapon, which will thankfully carry over into the next mission.� The ships themselves have a HP bar, so unlike Konami's Gradius series, your ship can take a bit of a beating before you become space toast.� A series of voiced cutscenes will be your reward for defeating each boss, as well as that stage being unlocked on the main menu for replay at a later time if you so wish.

The good:
* Decent music quality, themed a bit like the first Sonic the Hedgehog game.
* The character art in the cutscenes are drawn well.� No complaints there.

The bad:
* Lack of variety.� Lots of reused enemy sprites and enemy AI.� The scrolling� backgrounds become very repetitive.
* The voice narration scenes are VERY long (they can be skipped, however)
* End-stage epilogues are just stationary wallpaper with voice overs.� I would have expected more from a disc-based game.

Overall: 2/5.� Lacking.� The nice audio and character art is hurt by overall mediocrity in every other category.� The length of the voiced scenes coupled with ZERO animation really make for boring sections between action.� Control of the ship is okay, but lack of variety with attacks creates repetitious play very early on.

Recommended to:� Nobody.� Not much to offer hardcore shooter fans, and those looking for a touch of lightweight hentai will be disappointed as well.� Try Lords of Thunder instead.