I’m well over the 30 hour mark (35 hours in, to be precise), I just didn’t feel like writing anything more about Shining Hearts until now. It happens.

Reading over the previous post, I don’t think I fully articulated what was bothering me about the game, so I’ll try to spell it out more clearly, as well as to explain what has since happened to improve/worsen my opinion of the game.

Baking the same bread all the time was boring: It really was. But I’ve since gotten a ton of new recipes and lots of new ingredients to try out. Apart from your standard breads, I can now make pies, pizzas, muffins, croissants, danish pastries and more. I can make close to a hundred different things now. The process is getting old, but experimentation is fun.

Visiting the same places all the time was boring: This is much better now that I’ve opened up 4 main islands and several smaller ones. I’m so busy dashing from place to place that the days pass in a flash. I’ve actually put story progression on hold so I can explore the newest islands a little more thoroughly and stockpile a few more cooking ingredients.

Catching the same fish all the time was boring: It still is. Which is why I’ve largely given up on fishing. Oh I’ll dip my rod in a few times whenever I find a new hole, but otherwise I don’t bother.

Interacting with the same townspeople all the time was boring: Ehh… yeah, it’s still boring. I’ve got a few new party members now, that helps. And I’ve learned to separate the wheat from the chaff and narrowed my focus to a few NPCs I like to curry favor with. Shin and Mii forever!

I ignore everyone else except my party members, who have interesting character quests that open up every once in a while. Some of them are super-lucrative as well, like Xiaomei’s quest that just netted me 100,000G. You don’t really learn much about the characters in the process, but not every game needs “deep” backstories.

Fighting the same battles all the time was boring: Nope, that hasn’t changed either. There’s gotta be a bread around that will reduce the encounter rate drastically, I just haven’t found it yet. But my MC Rick got an overpowered attack that hits everything on the map for a moderate cost in hearts. I either spam that or put everyone on Auto-battle and I get through things okay.

The story was boring: Or more like, there was no real story when I last wrote, but something seems to be taking shape now. TBH it’s still boring as hell, and I’ve taken to fast-forwarding when they start yapping on so… I… kinda don’t really know what’s going on. There’s this girl named Kaguya and she locked away her emotions and we have to help her get them back and once we do something bad might happen but we’re going to do it anyway and there’s this mysterious woman who knows everything that’s going on but JUST WON’T TELL US yadda yadda yadda. The story is the last thing I’m playing for at this point.

And so on, and so forth. What I’m going to do now is look for an encounter-reducing bread, and then spend some more time baking and distributing bread. I haven’t even touched danish pastries yet, I’m so far behind. Shining Hearts seems like a game I could finish quite quickly if I wanted to, but screw that. This is probably the only bread-making RPG out there, so I’m going to bake the heck out of it while I can. Back to the kitchen with me.