Soy muy fan de las historias sobrenaturales y justo aquí hubo un romance con una fantasma, además de que el misterio detrás del bosque también estaba interesante, la pareja de Tara y Morgan es muy bonita pero por lejos prefiero a Maddie y Abby(aún así creo que Tara y Morgan tienen la mejor dinámica y su romance el mejor desarrollo).
Incluso me sorprendió como quedaron las parejas, esperaba que Maddie y Tara fueran las que tuvieran un romance pero nunca me imaginé que tiraría por otro lado jaja.

Aunque la verdad el 1er capítulo se me hizo algo pesado pero a partir del final del mismo empezó a tomar mejor ritmo, aparte que es una VN corta, 7-8 horas pero que es la duración perfecta para este tipo de historia.
Obtuve el "good ending" pero debería de probar a elegir otras opciones para ver los "bad endings", aunque por lo que leí en internet tampoco cambian demasiado.

Bonitas ilustraciones y buena música(aunque si creo que la reusaban demasiado), personalmente hubiese querido que los personajes tuviesen voces.
En cuanto al contenido para adultos, creo que Tara y Morgan merecían tener mas escenas, porque Maddie y Abby tenían 2 mientras que ellas ninguna.

Not what I expected from the creators of Highway Blossoms, and unfortunately, I don't say that in a positive way.

The game advertises itself as "a modern fairy tale", so I was expecting a wholesome love story with supernatural elements. What I got was a story about an evil, ancient, abusive stepmother and four friends' quest to fucking kill her, frequently interrupted by two romance subplots. The tone varies from from saccharine romance to the unsettlingly supernatural to whimsical fantasy to eldritch horror. I didn't like how intense the story gets by the end - it felt so far removed from the game I was advertised.

Maddy and Abigail's romance is kinda lame. They spend a spectral honeymoon together in a magical forest. They visit beautiful locations and blush furiously at every insinuation that they might become an item. For the most part it's devoid of much conflict and it's a little dull. The 18+ scenes don't add anything to their relationship either, although it's a little endearing to know Abigail's a top.

I enjoyed Tara and Morgan's relationship a lot more. They start off as friends with benefits, neither of them wanting to be emotionally vulnerable. But then they slowly begin to trust one one another and realise how much they unwittingly care for each other. They eventually let their masks slip, and find comfort in sharing their feelings. It's a much more compelling dynamic, in my opinion, than Maddy and Abigail's perfect fairytale romance. And it's appropriately balanced with the tension they feel while investigating Maddy's disappearance, keeping their subplot interesting.

Tara herself is a great character, and probably the one aspect of this game I'll remember long after my playthrough. And not just because she's a trans main character. Her over-the-top charisma makes her a delight to watch, even when her jokes don't land. Hell, ESPECIALLY when her jokes don't land. I always love characters like this, so it's no surprise I love Tara.

I wasn't really sold on the fantasy elements we see throughout the story. It feels like the writers threw together 4 or 5 ideas they had without a lot of consideration for how well they mesh together. Like, is Evelyn even connected to the forest, at all? It seems like the simultaneous existence of an unearthly monster and a magical forest is completely coincidental.

The fairies are introduced extremely late for how important they are to the last act of the game, and Geladura doesn't have much of a presence, either. I wish a little more thought was put into what the major payoffs are, and how to effectively set them up and integrate them into the main narrative.

Looking back and writing about it, Heart of the Woods doesn't feel like a single game. The supernatural/fantasy elements and the two love stories feel at odds with each other, and throwing in the idea that "love makes magic stronger" at the end doesn't fix this. Neither story feels developed enough to support the other, and I think THAT'S what's been bugging me ever since I finished Heart of the Woods. Play Highway Blossoms instead.

One of the most impressive and enjoyable parts of Heart of the Woods is, especially in its opening couple acts, how it manages to gently push your suspension of disbelief further and further in its introduction of its fantastical elements. At the very beginning you find yourself asking, just like Maddie does, whether the magical elements could really be real, and Morgan is believably presented as unreliable in what she's saying. Yet, over the course of these opening hours, the game submerses you into these magical elements step by step so that each level deeper you go just adds to all the mystery and intrigue and excitement; the big reveal of the forest spirit, looming outside the church, is particularly breathtaking. Yet one of my favourite moments is when the game swapped point-of-view to Morgan for the first time, right before the introduction of Evelyn's ability to influence and control people's actions; the timing on this is so perfect for suspending disbelief as up until now Morgan has been presented as unreliable through the eyes of Maddie and Tara, and we need to see things through her own eyes to know that we can actually completely believe what she's about to say about her mother. A moment earlier and the mystery wouldn't have been so enjoyable, a moment later and we'd struggle to get on board with the notion that Evelyn is capable of such things.

I do think there are some elements of the story-telling that work less well, in particular I think this game is generally worse at resolving problems than developing them with a handful of situations that were resolved in what felt like deus-ex-machina-esque means that, whilst they later might make sense in context of the world-building, weren't hugely narratively satisfying at the time. I like the direction these moments take the story, and am somewhat forgiving towards them because of that, but wish they could have been brought to me in a more satisfying manner considering quite how good the game is at initially developing and submersing us into this world. On a different note, Evelyn forcing Morgan to burn down the main tree at the heart of the forest felt like an incredibly sudden development, introducing a bunch of different world-building elements all at once, and I really felt like it would have benefited from having more in the way of direct build-up. I'd also say the sense of time in the visual novel is very strange, with me always being caught by surprise to find out that a few days had passed here, only a couple days there, I was left with a very poor sense of how long anything was taking, where in the month I was, or why there were periods of sudden inaction (this gets particularly awkward after Maddie disappears, when the story has to dedicate a lot of in-world-days to the development of Maddie and Abby's relationship, and Maddie's understanding and exploration of the forest, and it feels like the story finds it hard at points to find stuff for Morgan and Tara to do other than hang out with one another and be scared of Evelyn in the time being most of which is enjoyable but it's really hard to shake the feeling that Maddie has experienced a lot more days than Tara has in this time period).

As far as the central relationships go, I have complicated feelings on Maddie and Abigail's relationship. I loved a lot of their interactions with each other that existed outside of their relationship; those initial meetings in the forest, Maddie bringing the books so that Abby could show her name and listen to the children's story, Abby sharing her favourite parts of the forest with Maddie after Maddie joined her as a spirit. These moments are so endearing, and it made me happy that Abby finally had company after so long alone. It felt like an almost sisterly bond was forming between them, Maddie becoming protective and caring towards Abby, and that's a part of why it felt kind of weird to me when the story pushed things between them in a romantic direction later on? Abby is rendered in a much more childish way in a bunch of different regards and this makes it so hard for me not to see these early interactions as those between a big and little sister. I think, on top of this, it's hard for me to see things between them as that romantic even outside of that aspect? Part of this is that I felt like the visual novel didn't confront how the trauma they'd both experienced might impact a relationship between them nearly as well as it did with regards to Morgan's trauma and the impact of that on her feelings towards Tara, and a part of this is that being stranded alone with someone, perhaps forever, floating through the forest with them and knowing you may never see another human again and only then seeing them as a potential romantic partner strikes me as more sad than romantic. Like they went from this sisterly affection to being partners potentially more out of loneliness than anything? I know that's not what the story is going for, but the sense that it could be read that way added to my inability to get on-board with their relationship as much as I'd like.

Conversely, I loved Tara and Morgan's relationship. The development from their early interactions up to them being girlfriends by the end of the visual novel, and everything that came in-between, felt incredibly organic, their interactions with each other were consistently a delight, and it felt like their relationship was handled in a really mature way respecting the challenges they're both facing and their attempts to figure out what they actually want in a hard time in their lives. Seeing them gradually grow closer, and open up more and more, and communicate so well with one another throughout this process, was a real joy. Tara and Maddie's friendship, and Morgan and Abigail's discovery of their sisterhood, are both engaging and really add to the story in different ways too, and the sense of these four people becoming a chosen family towards the end was really enjoyable and felt earnt.