Heartbeat is the most fun I've had with a SNES/PS1 style JRPG I've had in years. I'm not a big fan of menu-based JRPG combat, but the vibrant characters and heartfelt story carried me right through the 25 hours of storyline in a single, otherwise busy, week.

Story: You play as the conjurer, Eve Staccato. As a conjurer, you are able to form pacts with mogwai -- ancient, powerful, adorable monsters. You're joined by your loyal, even noble, cat mogwai, Klein, in your task to pick up some supplies from the next town over for your grandpa's shop. Of course, this sets of a massive chain of events that leads you to meet new friends and learn the troubled past of human-mogwai relations. The story starts off wonderfully whimsical, but slowly reveals a complex world with serious problems brewing. Saying any more would be spoilers, but I was always interested to see the next beat in the story, and there were a number of well executed twists.

Characters: Each and every main character in this game finds some way to stand out, both in terms of the excellent character design and dialogue. Eve is a case study in doing the good-natured, naive protagonist trope right. She's never unbelievable in her actions, and always charming. Klein is wise and noble, though always happy to tease Eve. These two are the core of your party, and the only two that you will have with you the entire game. Everyone else comes and goes as the storyline dictates, and you won't get to choose your party members until the post game. I honestly thinks this works very well for the game, and Eve and Klein have great interactions to form a backbone for the game.

As far as other characters go, within the first hour of the game you meet Troz, the Cerberus guardian, who has left the mogwai homeland to find the princess. She's a great mix of somewhat dull, loyal to a fault, and skeptical of anyone and everything new. Her initial interactions with each of the subsequent characters you meet are a real treat. You also get a shapeshiting moth who mainly just creeps people out and makes cute sounds, when not kicking ass in battle. You later meet a super-stubborn and social inept minotaur, a creepy scientist bug lady, and a whole host of odd personalities. All of these characters are memorable without being overbearing, and are really what make the game tick. Heartbeat does an excellent job of giving the antagonists plenty of personality as well, and I found myself enjoying their scenes just as much as the protangoists'.

World: Heartbeat is absolutely full of wonderful dialogue with side characters, and excellent little details in the world. Any time a new character joins your team, almost every other supporting character will have new dialogue with them if you go back. These conversations are always amusing and almost always serve to build even more lore.

There are a number of sidequests that also build lore. Fishing and card collecting are nice ways to see more details about the games world, and more traditional side quests frequently explore experiences of other conjurers that differ from the main characters.

Tiny onis are great and funny as heck, man. Like them or just die, man.

The supporting cast regular send out some pretty awesome texts, which really add to their personalities, even down to their individual texting styles.

Battle: It's basic menu-based JRPG stuff, and the main reason I didn't give the gamea 5. Your health is called Pulse and your mana called Beat. Outside of that, you have 'Heart' which is your limit break meter. Stat increasing abilities and status effects are useful in just about every combat in the game, which is a design decision I greatly appreciate.

Heartbeat does a decent job of keeping the difficulty appropriate without being overwhleming. The only time I really had game overs was when attempting red-eye clusters (essentially pseudo-optional boss fights) when under-leveled or down party members for storyline reasons.

Graphics and Sound: The world is gorgeous 16-bit style pixel art, and as I alluded to in the character section, the character design is on point. The battle effects are standard fare for this sort of game, nothing particularly impressive and nothing particularly horrible or obnoxious.

The music is catchy and well-done, providing a nice modern feel that fits the setting. The sound effects are just ok.

Performance: For a 16bit game, it sometimes performed oddly poorly. I'm not sure if this is an RPGmaker issue or what, but the game was rather frame-y when sprinting around towns. This generally didn't bother me too much, but there were a couple of timed puzzles throughout the game that were made rather obnoxious by this issue. There may also be a memory leak issue. On my first attempt of an early timed puzzle, I straight up couldn't complete it because the game was dropping my inputs. When I took a break and came back, I completed it easily on my first try, with no inputs dropped. These issues were minor, but noticeable, detractors over the course of the game.

Final Thoughts: If you like RPGs from the late 90s/early 2000s, buy this game. Just do it. It's a ton of fun, and even had me tearing up in a couple of places. My slight gripes with the battle system and performance don't matter when compared to the beautiful world and vibrant characters. Definitely one of my favorites I've played this year.