At First Blush will be a series of written first experiences with a game, giving my thoughts and feelings on it after the first couple of hours. Any judgements on their quality and praise/critique will be purely based on those and not on the game as a whole.

Well now, an Advance Wars/Fire Emblem-style TRPG starring cute anime girls on motorbikes? That certainly caught my eye when checking out the latest recommended translated PC-98 games on a site that shall remain nameless. And so, with a .hdi version downloaded, I fired up Neko Project W and prepared to hit the road.

Highway to the Crime Zone!

In an unnamed year, though presumably it would end in XX, armed vehicle crime is on the rise in Japan. Biker and car gangs roam the highways, engaging in sprees of kidnapping and robbing termed ‘Mobile Crime’. In response, the Japanese government forms ‘Mobile Task Forces’; squads of mounted police officers in armoured ‘Assault Gear’ vehicles trained and equipped to rapidly respond to the gangs – and take them down!

The game focuses on the five members of the newest Mobile Task Force: Tuned Heart. The all-female squad has both domestic and international members, all with their own quirks, skills, and colourful personalities.

You’re introduced to the scenario and the members via Visual Novel-style cutscenes. They’re mostly non-interactive, but sometimes you get to make a choice or two.

This is a later PC-98 game, released in 1996, so there’s a different feel to the character artwork than I’m used to with early titles on that computer? More refined, somehow.

Oh! And in the intro, you’re also given some initial clues to the existence of a (literally) shadowy organisation that may be behind the sharp rise in Mobile Crime, intent on ushering in some kind of ‘new world’.

The manual, helpfully translated into English alongside the game itself, profiles the members of Tuned Heart. Reika, at the age of 20 and the oldest of the squad, has been elevated to the position of team mom.

There are also some designers’ notes in the back of the manual, with lead programmer Eitaro Nijishima being quite honest about how they didn’t make the game too complex so those who are just in it for the cute girls can enjoy it too. Bless.

Alongside the girls, there’s a cast of equally colourful side characters, one of which looks like he’s walked out of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Driving While Tactical

Tuned Heart are dispatched on their first mission: take down a biker gang terrorising a local neighbourhood. And it’s here we get to the main meat of the gameplay: grid-based tactics.

If you’re familiar with the older Advance Wars or Fire Emblem games, then you’ll feel immediately at home here. Each squad member can move and take one action, and either rides a motorcycle or drives a compact car. They’re also armed with a variety of real-world guns, which isn’t something you often see in games like this.

Gearheads might notice that the motorcycles are real-life ones too; Lynn’s ‘cycle is a Kawasaki ZX-R 250 Ninja. The manual thanks Kawasaki for their support and collaboration, albeit the intro has a disclaimer that makes it very clear that the way the bikes are used is purely a work of fiction.

There are a few simple rules to keep in mind while playing Tuned Hearts: pistols can hit targets one square away, rifles can fire at targets two squares away but not at an adjacent enemy, while shotguns can fire at targets both one and two squares away. And as is common in these kind of games, terrain will affect combat rolls and movement. The type of vehicle someone is riding/driving also have their own specific characteristics that have to be taken into account, too.

Once you engage an enemy in combat, you’re shown hit chance percentages for each combatant and then transitioned to the battle screen where another style of character design awaits you. It feels more caricature than chibi? I’ve seen it used in art and manga, but if there’s a specific term for it, it eludes me right now.

As with its tactical RPG peers’ battle screens, you’ll be shown a battle animation, of the two opponents firing at one another from their vehicles without any direct control. This first scenario is especially gentle when it comes to difficulty; enemies won’t move and attack you, and their chance to hit is often much lower than the members of the team.

Nine times out of ten in this first mission, you’ll take a ganger down in one attack, whereupon you’ll be rewarded with experience points and, if you’re lucky, a part drop.

These are your upgrades, your loot, and can be equipped on the ”tune-up’ screen that functions as an inventory/equipment status screen for the squad. They’re all vehicle-appropriate gear such as mufflers, frames, spoilers, and all have meaningful boosts to stats such as armour and speed.

Each squad member has their own ‘special skill’ too, with three uses of each per mission at the start of the game. Rumi’s, as indicated by the spanners in the picture above, will re-supply and heal any squaddie that’s within a four-square adjacent range. Lynn’s will be a knife attack that will hit multiple targets on the map without needing to do an attack roll. Chinastu’s boulder attack will stun targets for a turn. Be aware that you can only use them at the start of their turn and not after you’ve moved/fired.

Each of the girls’ specials are accompanied by cute, full-screen action pose illustrations that further add character and flair to them.

Should you require repair or run low on ammunition, there are also ‘service stations (indicated by an SS sign) on the maps, where HP can be recovered and ammunition replenished. It’s worth moving a squaddie over to anything with a door as you’ll get some dialogue and sometimes a bonus item for doing so.

Ah, that’s a nice segue into the game’s music. While I have no complaints about it elsewhere, the battle music gets repetitive fast. It’s a relatively short little bouncy ditty that loops far too quickly and becomes interminable when combined with the slow pace of the missions due to the size of the maps and relatively short movement ranges of the characters. Thankfully, you can turn it off when it does become too much for you, as it did for me.

As we closed in on the gang’s leader and defeated him in battle, we were then offered a little narrative choice whether to beat the crap out of him to reveal where he’d stashed a hostage or to convince him to surrender. I went for the diplomatic approach, but ended up threatening further violence anyway, at which point he capitulated. And that was the end of the first mission!

The First Session Verdict

I like Tuned Hearts, and I enjoyed my time with it. It’s a lovely looking game with some great PC-98 pixel artwork, and a light-hearted spirit that reminds me of You’re Under Arrest. The fan-localisation is solid too, with the translators detailing how much of a struggle it was to translate the game due to technical issues.

I do have some reservations regarding just how long some of the missions might take to complete, but thankfully, there is an in-mission save function and resuming from the main menu is very quick. I also think it was a mistake not to allow for diagonal attacks. It’ll be a design choice to be part of the tactical considerations you need to make in moving and placing your squad, but it led to a couple of awkward moments in that first map where the squaddies I had closest to an enemy with its back to a wall couldn’t do anything due to being armed with pistols. If the balance of pistols to rifles and shotguns doesn’t change as the missions progress, it may lead to frustration as the majority of the squad being armed with pistols can slow the pace of the game down.

I played through half of the second mission before my allotted time was up, and the difficulty ramped up considerably. Enemies moved and attacked as you would expect, and their chance to hit was considerably higher and more on a level playing field with the squad. So, I can already tell that their special skills and managing access to Service Stations will become even more vital.

Tuned Hearts gets an enthusiastic ‘Check It Out!’ recommendation from me.