Border of Her Heart (PC)

Love can bloom anywhere, but normally you’d expect someone working border patrol to be a lot more guarded with where their heart searches for it. Border of Her Heart’s main character seems all too willing to fall for the lovely ladies arriving at the city walls, and similarly they seem all too willing to reciprocate, but for a short visual novel with romance options, this wasn’t exactly unexpected.

Border of Her Heart is the story of a city that has just recovered from a nasty plague, and to ensure that it doesn’t resurface and any potential resurgence is contained, you are put in charge of managing all entries and exits for the city now that it has left quarantine. Taking place in a medieval fantasy world with things like magic and elves, the people approaching your walled city will ask for entrance, the player deciding who seems trustworthy and who should be sent packing, and if people try to leave the walls, you decide if you deem their activities outside of it should be allowed. This takes the form of dialogue choices, and while you won’t always be prompted to make a decision on who comes and goes and some situations are essentially foregone conclusions despite the options, the ones with importance influence which ending you will receive.

For the most part, Border of Her Heart follows standard visual novel design. You click to advance the text, but the game does have almost every single line of dialogue voiced, even the narration featuring its own voice actor. Your menu options aren’t read aloud though, our male protagonist remaining voiceless presumably to help the player assume the role more fluidly, right down to a name input at the start that has no actual relevance to the game. For the most part the game moves at a very brisk pace, people coming to the front gate one after the other and presenting themselves for consideration, but at the end of your work day, expect things to come to a grinding halt for a bit as the game struggles to load your daily meeting with the guard captain. The solid black loading screen becomes a familiar bother and can hang for a long time, and in a game with multiple endings that often require starting from the first day, these black screens definitely will discourage players from pursuing alternate story routes. You can make save points almost any time to reload and then pick other options, but for the most part, your choices are pretty clear in their impact and importance. Even when you reach the end of your day and can go visit different parts of the town to meet with people you let in, the options are few and the characters tend to have a set location to make finding them easy enough.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Border of Her Heart is the mysterious plague the town just recovered from. You’ll gradually get some details on how it happened, certain endings revealing more than others, but the big problem is, outside of one special ending, most of them repeat the same plot path for elements relevant to the plague. Once you know the proper actions to take during the relevant scenes as well, this part of playing through multiple times slows down experiencing the new scenes, even if you use the game’s skip feature to zoom past previously seen dialogue. These scenes work decently enough in your first run as you get a feel for who might be tied to the plague or what’s causing it, but their insistent presence in every story path can make seeing the alternate romances a bit less exciting, especially when these romances are often very shallow.

There are four ladies and one man you can romance in Border of Her Heart, but there are other characters with some relevance like an acrobat, a monk, the sultry lady seen in the Steam banner. The game keeps its sights mainly on five characters: Angmar the archer, Helewisa the healer, Yggraine the elf, Thiphania the scholar, and Stephen… the guy you meet in a forest. Stephen’s route unfortunately is somewhat shallow, focusing more on something tied to the plague, but it actually feels perhaps the most realistic because it’s not so rushed and you don’t bed him after two or three conversations. There is no adult content in Border of Her Heart, the game at most fading to black and simply telling you that you made love before moving forward to the following events, and these girls are pretty quick to get right to the action. At most you have to go two places with the girls to instantly have them as your girlfriend or prospective wife, although Thiphania’s route sticks to mostly puppy love since she’s much younger than the three mature women you can properly date. Regardless of who you pursue though, these characters all feel fairly one note, cute art and some funny moments not helping to make these relationships feel more substantial.

Border patrol duties don’t seem too pivotal to the main plot and romance mostly just means letting in your girl of choice and pursuing her properly, or for Stephen forgoing that to meet him out in the woods. There are bad endings to be found though, ones where your romances end more tragically or you fail in your duty as a city guard, but most endings are just a final conversation with relevant characters about what will happen next. A single run isn’t too painful, although it is a bit easy since the game mostly asks you to just be slightly wary to ensure none of the bad endings are triggered. None feel all that fulfilling because the game doesn’t spend a lot of time on anything or anyone, but it does nail enough of the basics that it has a complete enough narrative and your romance choice at least had the required steps to reach its end, it just had no nuance to how it arrives there for the most part. While the voicework, despite having some odd line reads, heightens a personal connection with the barely animated character images, it can’t make up for surface level personalities that don’t have the time to develop.

THE VERDICT: Border of Her Heart’s short length likely allowed it to have the nice touch of fully voiced characters, but this length provides almost no other benefit to the game. The relationships feel shallow despite being the main reason to play the game and the characters have no chance to really establish themselves beyond the basics. Replaying the game is hampered by the many long black screens you’ll have to sit through to do so, and your reward are a few different scenes as most other events play out identically. The plague plot is interesting one time through but is a required part of every path, and despite the decision making of your border patrol job being this game’s unique hook, it ends up feeling like your options are too straightforward and easy to lend any intrigue or subtlety to who you let in or turn away.

And so, I give Border of Her Heart for PC…

A BAD rating. Border of Her Heart rushes through its plot and romances with the same speed a game like Lovely Heroines does, but that game at least had the justification of trying to get you to its adult content. Border of Her Heart is a basic visual novel that hopes cute art and the nice touch of a person reading the romantic lines to you will make up for the lack of substance. The border patrol could have been an interesting angle if made more important or if it had more time to grow, but the game keeps its design fairly utilitarian, characters all having a role to play and doing very little to stand out otherwise. Characters have only as much depth as is necessary for them to be more than characterless images, but they can at least be cute or funny at times. Awkward line readings and typos in text boxes are easily brushed aside for a game that can be a breezy, almost inoffensive first playthrough… if not for more present problems like the long periods of an empty black screen, and with the path of events fairly rigid outside of far too few elements, these two aspects combine into a game that makes replaying to see the other shallow relationship plots unfold less exciting when they should have been more easily experienced.

Border of Her Heart needs a lot more flesh on its bones to deliver on its concept. The border patrol could be more nuanced or the relationships could make up for the simplicity of your main job if they felt more authentic, but everything is too simple for its own good and the problems start showing in a game that lacks the content necessary to distract from that. Even for those looking for a brisk visual novel there are ones that explore their premise or romances better in their time, and while this isn’t awful, its many missed opportunities and underwhelming writing mean you’re better off not entering this game’s world.