Steam Heart's (NTSC-J) ISO

Steam Heart's is a top-down scrolling shooter with a hentai themed storyline.

The game features an animated prologue (wait a while on the title screen to see it), voice actors to play out the story, and CD audio for the background music.  A player begins by selecting from two different pilots (though your choice appears to only be cosmetic) before challenging the game's 7 stages, each with an end boss to face.  During each mission, weapon power-ups can be found along the way to increase the offensive power and spread of your ship's primary weapon, which will thankfully carry over into the next mission.  The ships themselves have a HP bar, so unlike Konami's Gradius series, your ship can take a bit of a beating before you become space toast.  A series of voiced cutscenes will be your reward for defeating each boss, as well as that stage being unlocked on the main menu for replay at a later time if you so wish.

The good:
* Decent music quality, themed a bit like the first Sonic the Hedgehog game.
* The character art in the cutscenes are drawn well.  No complaints there.

The bad:
* Lack of variety.  Lots of reused enemy sprites and enemy AI.  The scrolling  backgrounds become very repetitive.
* The voice narration scenes are VERY long (they can be skipped, however)
* End-stage epilogues are just stationary wallpaper with voice overs.  I would have expected more from a disc-based game.

Overall: 2/5.  Lacking.  The nice audio and character art is hurt by overall mediocrity in every other category.  The length of the voiced scenes coupled with ZERO animation really make for boring sections between action.  Control of the ship is okay, but lack of variety with attacks creates repetitious play very early on.

Recommended to:  Nobody.  Not much to offer hardcore shooter fans, and those looking for a touch of lightweight hentai will be disappointed as well.  Try Lords of Thunder instead.